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Hard Drive Overclocking Competition From Secau

Posted by timothy on from the spit-it-out dept.

Blittzed writes "We were reminiscing about the good old days of overclocking CPUs and memory, and the subject of hard drive overcloking came up. The discussion / argument we were having in the research lab ended up in a bet which now has to be settled. So, we are putting our money where our mouth is, and putting up $10,000 to anyone who can read a 500GB drive in under an hour. We will also consider other attempts with a smaller amount of money in the event that the one hour is not possible. There are a few rules (e.g. the drive still needs to work afterwards), but otherwise nothing is ruled out. Specific details can be found on the URL. Go let the white smoke out!"

14 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Re:First Post by wizzy403 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Someone let the white smoke out...

  2. An hour? by hawguy · · Score: 5, Funny

    An hour!? I have a 500GB drive on my desk and I can read it in under a minute! The first line says: "Seagate Barracua 7200.11 500 Gbytes" The entire label has only a few dozen words and serial numbers.

    1. Re:An hour? by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Funny

      With a Seagate Barracuda I think the challenge is getting the thing to actually run for over a minute.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    2. Re:An hour? by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Informative

      With a Seagate Barracuda I think the challenge is getting the thing to actually run for over a minute.

      I just ran smartcl here and the two Seagate Barracudas in this machine have each been running for 29,908 hours.

    3. Re:An hour? by jamesh · · Score: 5, Funny

      With a Seagate Barracuda I think the challenge is getting the thing to actually run for over a minute.

      I just ran smartcl here and the two Seagate Barracudas in this machine have each been running for 29,908 hours.

      I see what you're saying... even the SMART data is corrupt.

  3. Hmm... by screwzloos · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't get it. 500GB in an hour would be about 140MB per second (yes, I am rounding up). Most of the enterprise level 15K drives are right in that range without any overclocking, with a couple well above that. Do I win ten grand for buying a Seagate Cheetah 15K.7 for $450 and bringing it in to show that it works?

    http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/enterprise-hard-drive-charts-2010/Throughput-Read-Average,2156.html

    No, I didn't look at the page. It's Slashdotted.

    1. Re:Hmm... by mariushm · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's about 132 MB/s actually - remember, it's multiples of 1000, not 1024 and then some space is used by the file system.

      Anyway, it's not clear what they want just from the description here on Slashdot. Read the labels of the drive? But seriously, one could get a 2 TB drive or whatever drive has the most density these days and make it show up as 500GB drive... I believe it's called http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/short-stroking-hdd,2157.html

    2. Re:Hmm... by a_nonamiss · · Score: 4, Informative

      Is that 15k RPM drive a "Western Digital Caviar Black 3.5" SATA 500GB hard drive (WD5002AALX)." It's stated pretty clearly in the rules that it needs to be that model. I don't think they're going for a speed test here, because there are plenty of SSDs that blow that speed away. They're trying to take a "normal" drive and super-speed it, for forensic purposes.

      --
      -Arthur
      Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
  4. Done already! by allanw · · Score: 5, Funny

    http://www.afrotechmods.com/hdoc.htm

  5. Re:Is that all? by a_nonamiss · · Score: 4, Interesting

    According to the rules, it needs to be reversible. They mention forensics, so maybe they're trying to do it undetected. At any rate, I'm pretty sure cracking the seal on the hard drive is verboten.

    --
    -Arthur
    Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
  6. Re:Fizzzzzzttt by blair1q · · Score: 4, Funny

    Maybe that's what they mean.

    "If you can get anything off our 500 GB drive in the next hour, we'll give you $10K."

  7. Re:Is that all? by Sloppy · · Score: 3, Informative

    I always wondered why this was not done

    If you look at it the right way (translation: I'm about to break a rule) it's done all the time. It's called RAID0.

    But seriously, that tells you why it's not done: because if your really care about performance that much, you can get more performance than a multi-head-set drive and spend less money by using commodity parts. If you make a drive that works this way, no one will buy it. (Except for money laundering purposes. ;-)

    --
    As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
  8. do not do this by JonySuede · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is an attempt by a forensic company to crowd-source the development of a product on the cheap. I you can do this, you can make a fortune selling to the different LEAs around the world. But please don't do it, we do not need more efficient spooks.

    --
    Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
  9. Re:First Post by eharvill · · Score: 4, Funny

    We have a new pope already??

    --
    At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care that you're not here with me