Hard Drives - Speed and Cooling

[rory 0]

Which is the best configuration for Speed and Cooling:

Multiple HDDs or Single HDD .. these will be Sata Drives.

 

In other words as an example, if I can buy 2x 320GB HDDs, would that be better than 4x 160GB HDDs. Price difference isnt an issue.

 

I would think the less the better, am I correct?

Also, anything to watch out with when using 4x Larger HDDs such as 400GB Satas?

 

Thanks

Rory

[crirvine 0]

It has been with me 1 400 gig pata 100 makes less heat than 2 200 gig pata 100 hard drives. I have 1 case with 7 pata drives and dvd burner.

2 120 mm fans ps fan 80 mm side vent fan p4 2.80 1 gig ddr400 16 channel capture card with a total of 2 TB of storage 600 watt PS

[CSG 0]

I like the bigger drives cause it uses less of the drive controller slots. I think think the 500gb drives are the best price point right now. ( I know u said price wasn't a factor).

 

I am using an Asus board that has 4 Sata and 6 Ide. Even after the CD and 1 drive for the OS, thats still 8 drives for storage!

 

Can't really see much advantage of the smaller drives other than a cheaper dollar/Gigabyte ratio.

[CollinR 0]

You are spot on on the cooling and power consumption fronts but the speed has me somewhat. Also reliablity apears to not be a factor???

 

 

Of the "fast" drives you really can't get one much bigger then 150-200gb without spending lots of $.

 

 

As disk capacity increases it's reliablity decreases somewhat, almost all HDs are all still mechanical thats just the way it is. This is partially why the really fast drives barely break 300gb, if you have a RAID array you will have multiple disks anyway for redundency

 

 

Is noise level a concern? 15k RPM drives make some.

 

 

Speed costs.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822111152

 

 

Whatcha gunna do with it?

[rory 0]

Thanks guys .. seems 320GB Sata is the fastest large HDD in the 7200 ranges (im using Western Digitals SATA-300) so ill just work with the 160's and the 320's for now, just keep the 400's if they want 1600GB ..

 

$900 for a 150GB HDD ... nah .. ill just tweak windows some more to make it feel like its 20k rmp

[kensplace 0]

If your worried about cooling, extra fans can come in handy, or even better a proper rackmount server case/mobo that has temperature monitoring built in, they often also come with fan monitoring to alert you if any fans fail or to a rise in temp.

 

Be careful of those hard drive mounted coolers, the ones that sit on the hard drive with a fan built in, bought one of those a while ago and the fan failed, causing the hard drive to become even hotter than normal!

 

If possible try to mount the hard drives with plenty space in between them, often two or more drives are mounted on top of each other in pc cases which restricts airflow between them, and also means the heat from the first one rises straight up to cook the one on top.

[Rebco 0]

HI Rory from my experience with building my own DVRs, The more drive you have the more heat, I usuall put a fan in front of the drives (in my case 2 500's ) and then another at the back of the case and havent and haven't had a problem yet, But now that i am talking about it i will probably have a call today.

[cctv_down_under 0]

Keep in mind PSU consumption as well, more drives = more power needed

[WildCard 0]

No one mentioned yet the benefit to having more drives - which is data read/write speed.

 

In RAID5, those large video files are saved not to just one drive, but equally over X amount of drives.

 

I have been using a nice tower case that has the ability to hold 5 drives in front bottom - and there's a nice 120mm fan in front there sucking air in pushing the air past the drives.

 

Yes, there's extra heat and power wattage needs, but I find it definitely worth it.

 

-WC-

[Rebco 0]

i have a friend that builds computers for gamers and he uses a smog machine to see the airflow in the case, a little top much for me but i use his computers for some of my clents and never had a complaint or overheating issue.

[Thomas 0]

The one thing that people forget about airflow is your cabling. You can put in a ton of fans and a bad cabling job can make it all waste. Tie downs are your friend!

[rory 0]

and round cables ...

[Doug 0]

Another point to consider is that if you have one 500gb drive and it crashes, then you have probably lost all your recorded video, if you used 3 x 160gb drives then you would only lose a third of your video, which may or may help. since sods law will dictate that all the important video is on the crashed drive anyway.

Personally I normally use two 320gb Seagate or Western Digital SATA drives for video storage in the machines I put together.

 

Doug

[Thomas 0]

Depends on the mean failure time. 3 x 160's can have a worse average failure time then 1 500 GB drive.

[Doug 0]

At best MTBF allows you to guesstimate when a drive may fail, it has no bearing on the % of video lost if and when a drive fails. If you have 480gb of video on a single 500gb drive and you lose the drive, then in all liklehood you have lost 100% of your video, if you have 480gb spread over three 160gb drives and you lose a drive, then you have only lost 33% of your video, regardless of the MTBF.

 

Doug

 

Depends on the mean failure time. 3 x 160's can have a worse average failure time then 1 500 GB drive.

[Thomas 0]

I was assuming Raid 0 or JBOD for such a set up. At which point the loss of a single disk is just as bad.

[Jasper 0]

Which is the best configuration for Speed and Cooling:

Multiple HDDs or Single HDD .. these will be Sata Drives.

 

In other words as an example, if I can buy 2x 320GB HDDs, would that be better than 4x 160GB HDDs. Price difference isnt an issue.

 

I would think the less the better, am I correct?

Also, anything to watch out with when using 4x Larger HDDs such as 400GB Satas?

 

Thanks

Rory

 

Less Drives, less heat in the system, plus more room for other hard drives.

If using SATA drives keep in mind many systems only support 2 hard drives. You can add an external SATA enclosure to your system, but you can't daisy chain them like firewire drives.

 

If you ever want more storage than what you can fit inside the computer you can use a SATA port replicator to turn one external connection into five for example. This gives a lot of room for future hard drives to be added to the system.

 

I just bought the Seagate 750GB drive, which is the worlds first drive to use the new perpendicular recording method wich allows for larger capacity and higher arial density on the disk platters which increases read and write peformance significantly.

 

Hitachi will be releasing a 1TB drive by March.

Seagate will have one by June. The Seagate will have higher arial density though for those hard drive peformance junkies like myself.

[rory 0]

where yah been

 

thanks .. yeah actually most of the mobos come with at least 4 SATA slots now .. at least the ones im using now .. the older micro ATX ones only have 2 though.

[Jasper 0]

where yah been

 

thanks .. yeah actually most of the mobos come with at least 4 SATA slots now .. at least the ones im using now .. the older micro ATX ones only have 2 though.

 

Been real sick for over 6 months. Haven't felt like doing anything.

 

4 slots should be good as long as you use the big hard drives. The BTX formfactor that was supposed replaced ATX died. There are some BTX's out there, but they just haven't caught on like they thought though.

[rory 0]

im using the new Micro ATX now ..

Ive seen some BTX but nothing I could really use ..

Yeah those 750GB Seagates are sweet .. i need one myself ..

 

Man hope you feel better, stay in touch ..

 

Rory

[Jasper 0]

I took the 750GB drive and put it in a coolgear aluminum enclosure, no fan. The outside temp of the enclosure is 100 degrees at normal room temperature.

 

The enclosure is nice because it has USB, Firewire 400 & 800 + External SATA support. And of course it is quiet.