Slashdot Mirror
Seagate Claims New Drive Silent and Fastest
yknott writes "It seems that Seagate just released a virtually silent hard drive. It emits only 2.0 bels while spinning and 2.4 bels while seeking; the human ear can't hear sounds below 2.5 bels. No more grinding sounds! It features Fluid Dynamic Bearings, and has an internal transfer rate of 69.3 Megabytes per second. " I'm currently questing to build a quieter computer - and while I'd love to test this, I will definitely say that Silent Drives I recently bought from New England Digital is awesome - but is rated to only work with 5400 rpms drives.
LEDS softly blinking,
Yet no hum of cooling fan.
What evil magic this?
Blimey. Genuinely impressive. Now I only need to buy myself eight televisions.
ooooooh! What does this button do? - DeeDee, Dexters Lab.
Have a read of The Innovators Dilemma - When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail - One of the main examples used throughout the book is how the hard disk industry is moving very rapidly, but that even innovative companies breaking new ground in the market, and keeping their customers sweet, still fail and die. I don't have my copy with me, but there was an interesting diagram in the first few chapters, showing how solid state disks are catching up, and will overtake hard disks, in the next few years.
ooooooh! What does this button do? - DeeDee, Dexters Lab.
Maxtor has been doing this for a while. I bought a DiamondMax 60 about a year ago, and I've never heard a peep out of it. I tried to find some info on their site to link, but couldn't. I think they call it SilentStore, and it's been on most of their drives for awhile now. It is a bit disturbing for awhile, thinking that your computer isn't doing anything, till you look down at the blinking light! I'm not sure what the dB rating is on the Maxtor's, but if you've got a power supply and/or cpu fan, you'll be hard pressed to hear it.
*Life is too serious to be taken too seriously.*
Sigh. There are times I really miss Vaxes.
Best Slashdot Co
"the human ear can't hear sounds below 2.5 bels"
That's totally false. Humans can hear below 1 bel (except babies, older people, and people with ear diseases) . It's approximately twice the level of human breath.
-- Pure FTP server - Upgrade your FTP server to something simple and secure.
{{.sig}}
The more I watch, the more I learn-
- Costumer service, how can I help you ?
- It's this damn drive you sold me. It's broken. I bought it, installed in my computer and it won't boot.
- Uh, did you partition and format it before using ?
- No, but I don't need to do it to know it's not working.
- Why ?
- Listen, kid, I know what I'm doing. I have experience with computers. I built mine myself. And this drive is dead. It makes no noise. And I just installed it, and, yes, the power cable's on.
- (thinking) It's going to be a long day.
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
The problem with FDB motors is they generate about 15-18C more heat in normal operation. You better have monster airflow around the thing if you want to keep the sucker cool.
Most drives run around 30-35C in normal operation, and will guarantee they work up to mid-50s. (55C is pretty standard)
Oh, and if your drive *does* overheat, then your FDB motor will start outgassing which will eventually contaminate the media, producing defects and lost data.
They say they use "quiet" seek algorithms... A quiet seek = slow in most cases, since you get quieter by just not accelerating the heads quite so hard.
Like the others, I'll believe it when I don't hear it...
More data, damnit!
Some of you clam that you want to hear the drive spinning.
Why don't you connect the PC speaker the to HD LED? And if you want to be realy cool, install a knob to control the volume.
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
Seagate makes notoriously crappy ATA drives. Their SCSI line may be great, but they have never made a name for themselves in the ATA industry.
When was the last time you saw someone attaching more than 2 devices to an ATA channel? That's right, never. If you want to make a RAID array, you have to get at least two channels, and that's just for the hard drives!
ATA/100 just ain't that fast when compared to the awesome power of Ultra160 SCSI.
The most important reason: This product wasn't even out when I bought my storage system.
However, it's good to see that this kind of technology exists in the market, and perhaps it will produce a trickle-down effect so that we will see cheaper drives equipped with this technology available to a wider audience.
--
< )
( \
X
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
I mean, come on!! It's 2001, and computers still have moving parts? Why not ditch this ancient tech and pour some more $$ into developing affordable solid-state disks?
^]:wq!^M