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Video Storage And Hard Drive Manufacturers

Posted by timothy on from the haitch-dee-tee-vee dept.

IrateSurf writes "A new column posted over at the Storage Supersite questions whether or not PVRs (Personal Video Recorders) are good for the hard drive industry. It's interesting, considering topics like whether the noise of a hard drive is worse than a VCR. The discussion is a response to an earlier column talking about the bad market for hard drive makers."

4 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. HDD noise by mike449 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've bought a Seagate HDD with fluid bearings recently, and I am very impressed. I don't hear it at all, except when it spins up. Its noise is well below the CPU fan noise (and I have a quiet Zalman one).
    My concern about the PVR application is HDD reliability, not the noise.

    1. Re:HDD noise by gordyf · · Score: 5, Informative

      New drives have varying acoustic states which can be changed with manufacturer-provided software.

      IBM drives, for instance, have two modes, full-performance mode and quiet mode. Performance mode has the usual seek noise, although all modern drives are quite quiet, but quiet mode is absolutely silent. Even with my ear inches from the drive, I can't hear it seeking at all. It's eerie when you're loading windows and you can't hear your drive - makes you think it locked up. :)

      You can use the "IBM Feature Tool" to manage IBM drives' acoustic management, along with monitoring drive temperature and setting power-saving modes. Maxtor drives, from what I've heard, have three modes, quiet, performance and a blend of the two.

      The schemes used to reduce seek noise introduce a slight penalty to seek time, however, but in many applications seek time is not that important (such as PVRs, where high throughput is needed). Quiet mode makes defragging take noticably longer, though.

  2. Fluid Bearings? by deathcow · · Score: 5, Informative


    I have to say, bought three of these Seagate Barracuda IV's with the new fluid bearings, and they are extremely quiet. I wouldn't see one of these drives raising anyones hackles. Hell, have you heard how loud some DVD players are?? I've got a couple that the entire chassis vibrates!

  3. Noise by mgs1000 · · Score: 4, Informative
    This might be off-topic, but...

    My wife complained that the Tivo (Sony SAT-T60) in our bedroom made too much noise at night and it bothered her. I replaced the stock cooling fan in it with one of those quiet models, and it cut down on the noise enough to where the noise from the Tivo is imperceptible to her.

    Anyway, the point of the story is that noise from a PVR's hard drive is not such a big a deal to my wife, and I suspect that most consumers wouldn't disagree. (They just need to put quiter fans in 'em)

    (BTW, this Tivo has the stock hard drive, nothing special)