what to look for in a hd

timbitdude · Post by **timbitdude** » Mon Jul 29, 2002 9:08 pm

i have a 4.1gb that is slower than a snail so i obously need a new hard drive. so i decided to ask the people at the guild for ideas on what kind of hd to get since the thing i have now is very old and i have no idea what to look for. i have also posted in the softwear form for a temp solution to the problem but i think this or a combo of the both will be better

thanks in advanced for the help

jbone · Post by **jbone** » Mon Jul 29, 2002 9:12 pm

You can easily find 60GB or larger hard drives for $100 or less.

Get a 7200RPM ATA-100 hard drive for optimal speed/performance.

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Mon Jul 29, 2002 9:20 pm

Assuming your motherboard is sufficiently modern:

A fast drive -- and I'm not just talking interfaces. Get one that operates at at least 7200 RPM, and supports at least Ultra DMA/100 (make sure your motherboard is capable of this, as well; otherwise, you can't use it!) if you're planning on purchasing an IDE drive. If you're going for SCSI -- well, I've not worked with that very much, but if you can do SCSI you should also be able to choose drives by yourself

Though, you may want to wait a bit for Serial ATA to become popular. It's a promising technology that looks to seriously increase the speeds of IDE hard drives; minimum-maximum transfer rates are expected to be 150 MBps -> 600 MBps, respectively. You will, of course, need a new motherboard (and the OS must evolve as well), but for speed gains like that I'd do it.

But for the here and now...I've an 80 gig IBM DeskStar (can't remember the model name, but perhaps the stuff I'm about to paste will help you) in this machine, and it works very well for capturing and editing digital video, if you're interested in pursuing stuff made by Big Blue:

Code: Select all

trythil@lothlann trythil $ dmesg | grep hdf
ide2: BM-DMA at 0x7400-0x7407, BIOS settings: hde:DMA, hdf:DMA
hdf: IC35L080AVVA07-0, ATA DISK drive
hdf: 160836480 sectors (82348 MB) w/1863KiB Cache, CHS=159560/16/63, UDMA(100)

root@lothlann trythil # hdparm -t -T /dev/hdf

/dev/hdf:
 Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.76 seconds =168.42 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  1.42 seconds = 45.07 MB/sec

jbone · Post by **jbone** » Mon Jul 29, 2002 9:44 pm

trythil wrote:Assuming your motherboard is sufficiently modern:

A fast drive -- and I'm not just talking interfaces. Get one that operates at at least 7200 RPM, and supports at least Ultra DMA/100 (make sure your motherboard is capable of this, as well; otherwise, you can't use it!) if you're planning on purchasing an IDE drive. If you're going for SCSI -- well, I've not worked with that very much, but if you can do SCSI you should also be able to choose drives by yourself

Though, you may want to wait a bit for Serial ATA to become popular. It's a promising technology that looks to seriously increase the speeds of IDE hard drives; minimum-maximum transfer rates are expected to be 150 MBps -> 600 MBps, respectively. You will, of course, need a new motherboard (and the OS must evolve as well), but for speed gains like that I'd do it.

But for the here and now...I've an 80 gig IBM DeskStar (can't remember the model name, but perhaps the stuff I'm about to paste will help you) in this machine, and it works very well for capturing and editing digital video, if you're interested in pursuing stuff made by Big Blue:

You can use a modern ATA-100 IDE hard drive, even if your motherboard isn't ultra-modern and doesn't support the newish ATA-100 standard. It is fully backwards-compatible with ATA-33 and ATA-66 IDE, you just wouldn't get the maximum transfer rate without an ATA-100-supporting system. However, you would still get the benefit of the fast rotational speed and the large, fast cache found on modern hard drives.

Don't wait for Serial ATA. Sure, it'll be fast, but is it worth spending hundreds of dollars (or more) to upgrade your entire system - or even to buy a $100 add-on card - just to get a slightly fastar hard drive? Buy one of the current new-model large and fast drives.

Finally - and I can't stress this enough - do not buy an IBM brand IDE hard drive. New-model IBMs have published reliability problems. In fact, IBM officialy recommends that many of its newer hard disk models be powered on for only eight hours a day. (Compare this to other brands, which don't tend to experience unusual reliability problems when the drives are powered on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.)

Personally, I'd recommend <A HREF=http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.a ... 5&DEPA=1>a Seagate ATA Barracuda-IV frmo newegg.com</A>. $103 + free FedEx shipping for an 80GB ATA100 7200RPM hard drive

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Mon Jul 29, 2002 11:40 pm

Don't wait for Serial ATA. Sure, it'll be fast, but is it worth spending hundreds of dollars (or more) to upgrade your entire system - or even to buy a $100 add-on card - just to get a slightly fastar hard drive? Buy one of the current new-model large and fast drives.

There's more involved in that upgrade than just a faster hard drive subsystem, so yes, it is worth it, especially when you consider what's involved in digital video editing.

Finally - and I can't stress this enough - do not buy an IBM brand IDE hard drive. New-model IBMs have published reliability problems. In fact, IBM officialy recommends that many of its newer hard disk models be powered on for only eight hours a day. (Compare this to other brands, which don't tend to experience unusual reliability problems when the drives are powered on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.)

Hmm. I've had this computer on for much longer than eight hours a day routinely, this DeskStar in for a bit over six months, and have put the thing through more than its fair share of work (or I'd suppose constant reading and writing of multi-gigabyte files qualifies for that).
I've yet to experience any sort of data errors with the thing.

But if you insist...

jbone · Post by **jbone** » Mon Jul 29, 2002 11:46 pm

trythil wrote:Hmm. I've had this computer on for much longer than eight hours a day routinely, this DeskStar in for a bit over six months, and have put the thing through more than its fair share of work (or I'd suppose constant reading and writing of multi-gigabyte files qualifies for that).
I've yet to experience any sort of data errors with the thing.

But if you insist...

Do some research, you'll see IBM's published the information.

Odds are you won't experience any trouble - but isn't it better to choose a brand that doesn't have widely-published high-failure ratings?

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Tue Jul 30, 2002 3:23 am

jbone wrote: Do some research, you'll see IBM's published the information.

Odds are you won't experience any trouble - but isn't it better to choose a brand that doesn't have widely-published high-failure ratings?

I see what you're saying now. Though, I'm surprised IBM hasn't issued a recall.

AbsoluteDestiny · Post by **AbsoluteDestiny** » Tue Jul 30, 2002 3:43 am

Well, as they've now sold their HD technology to someone else, they couldnt give a shit anymore.

It actually says on their website that the HD should not be run for more than a few hours a day or some crap like that.

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Tue Jul 30, 2002 12:17 pm

trythil>> While your SerialATA maybe all well and good, you're a l33t lloonix user, so don't expect everyone to know what SerialATA is all about...

Also this person would most likely want to spend $100 on the whole deal...

SCSI = too $$$
SerialATA isn't available to the masses yet, and will probably be costly when it does arrive.

A 7200RPM IDE 80GB drive gives the best bang for the buck and yes, you're taking a risk getting a IBM drive, of course one of my Maxtor drives failed recently.

~klinky

timbitdude · Post by **timbitdude** » Tue Jul 30, 2002 4:18 pm

ok i now have a idea what to look for thanks for all ur help in that matter

but now i apperently need a new motherbord since mine dont suport what i need any sudgestions?