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.

5 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. Re:at every turn by Glytch · · Score: 5

    LEDS softly blinking,
    Yet no hum of cooling fan.
    What evil magic this?

  2. But I like the noise! by wiredog · · Score: 5
    It lets me know something's happening. The whacka-whacka of the heads seeking. Blinking lights on the panel. Status messages at the console. Kids these days don't know whether the darned thing's on or off!

    Sigh. There are times I really miss Vaxes.

  3. The human ear by chrysalis · · Score: 5

    "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}}
  4. Tech. support by Molina+the+Bofh · · Score: 5

    - 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
  5. The problem with FDB... by edmudama · · Score: 5

    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!