Quiet Raid 0?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jeff
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Jeff

I've already built one machine with the OS installed on a Western Digital
10K rpm raptor sata2 drive. ...works nicely, but the drive is just slightly
noiser than I will want for a second machine that I'll put together soon.
Instead of the noisier raptor, I'm thinking along the lines of running 2 or
more 7200rpm drives in a raid 0 configuration for the OS and often used
files (other than larger video files that would likely be placed on a
slower, higher capacity drive). Other than the fact that the raid setup will
cost slightly more, and 2 drives in a raid 0 is actually more likely to fail
than a single drive (2 things to potentially break instead of 1) is there
other drawbacks to this option? I'm still a bit new to raid, but if I am
looking at this correctly, 2 slightly slower drives in a raid 0 will
transfer (burst and sustained) much faster than 1 faster drive, and the
noise of the 2 should still be much less than the noise from the 10K raptor.
....perhaps I might consider raid 10 instead so that I have some fault
tolerance along with the speed.

What is the next fastest sata2 drive after the raptor that would be nearly
silent ?

Jeff
 
Jeff said:
I've already built one machine with the OS installed on a Western Digital
10K rpm raptor sata2 drive. ...works nicely, but the drive is just slightly
noiser than I will want for a second machine that I'll put together soon.
Instead of the noisier raptor, I'm thinking along the lines of running 2 or
more 7200rpm drives in a raid 0 configuration for the OS and often used
files (other than larger video files that would likely be placed on a
slower, higher capacity drive). Other than the fact that the raid setup will
cost slightly more, and 2 drives in a raid 0 is actually more likely to fail
than a single drive (2 things to potentially break instead of 1) is there
other drawbacks to this option? I'm still a bit new to raid, but if I am
looking at this correctly, 2 slightly slower drives in a raid 0 will
transfer (burst and sustained) much faster than 1 faster drive, and the
noise of the 2 should still be much less than the noise from the 10K raptor.
...perhaps I might consider raid 10 instead so that I have some fault
tolerance along with the speed.

What is the next fastest sata2 drive after the raptor that would be nearly
silent ?
Click to expand...

You'll probably be disappointed in the speed difference
with RAID0, especially loading a modern OS. The bulk
of time is taken with things (e.g. PnP discovery) that have
nothing to do with disk performance.
 
Jeff said:
I've already built one machine with the OS installed on a Western
Digital 10K rpm raptor sata2 drive. ...works nicely, but the drive is
just slightly noiser than I will want for a second machine that I'll put
together soon. Instead of the noisier raptor, I'm thinking along the
lines of running 2 or more 7200rpm drives in a raid 0 configuration for
the OS and often used files (other than larger video files that would
likely be placed on a slower, higher capacity drive). Other than the
fact that the raid setup will cost slightly more, and 2 drives in a raid
0 is actually more likely to fail than a single drive (2 things to
potentially break instead of 1) is there other drawbacks to this option?
I'm still a bit new to raid, but if I am looking at this correctly, 2
slightly slower drives in a raid 0 will transfer (burst and sustained)
much faster than 1 faster drive, and the noise of the 2 should still be
much less than the noise from the 10K raptor. ...perhaps I might
consider raid 10 instead so that I have some fault tolerance along with
the speed.

What is the next fastest sata2 drive after the raptor that would be
nearly silent ?

Jeff
Click to expand...

Select the idle noise chart here, to see some possible disk solutions.

http://www.storagereview.com/comparison.html

Seek noise is pretty unavoidable. I believe there is an AAM
adjustment you can make, which slows down a seek by a millisecond
or so, and changes the acceleration profile of the head movement.
That is one way to make slight improvements to seek noise. The
downloadable Hitachi Feature Tool, can be used to set or clear this bit.

Automatic Acoustic Management
http://www.t13.org/technical/d99131r1.pdf

Hitachi Feature Tool - can work with some other brands
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/ftool_userguide.pdf

Otherwise, the noise you hear, might be captured in the idle noise
chart above. A Seagate 7200.9 or the Samsung Spinpoint are at
the top of the chart.

That noise measurement is "A weighted". That doesn't adequately handle
the case, where there is a dominant noise frequency (a "tone"). A
drive emitting a "tone", will not register as very loud on an
"A weighted" sound meter. That is something to keep in mind when
comparing disks. One disk may have wideband noise, while another
may have an annoying whine. To a human, the whine is more objectionable.

Perhaps a single drive is enough for your work ? Why bother with
some RAID configuration, when a single drive might do
everything you need ? I used to use a lot of disks in my
computers, but now I like just one drive per computer. My latest
purchases have been mostly Seagates.

Paul
 
If you're really willing to go far with disk silence... Take a simple
7200 RPM WD 8 MB cache disk, and install any linux. You won't ever hear
your harddrive any more than you'll hear it spin.

I use RAID0 at home myself tho... it's silent yeah. Speed is VERY nice,
except that it's not nice when you are copying something from the disk,
to the disk or copying more files simultaneously. But say, loading a
file from RAID0 onto the network or something.. you'll be shocked.

The upside of RAID0 is that it adds togather the caches of both disks.
So two 8 MB cache disks = 16 MB cache, two 16 MB cache disk = 32 MB
cache. The cache is the thing that makes all the difference in how
audiable the disk activity is. Linux has the cache thing implemented in
it correctly, which makes the disks silent. Some SATA implementations
also have this caching built in, so the same effect can be reached in
Windows as well. Seek them out. :)
 
DustWolf said:
If you're really willing to go far with disk silence... Take a simple
7200 RPM WD 8 MB cache disk, and install any linux. You won't ever
hear your harddrive any more than you'll hear it spin.

I use RAID0 at home myself tho... it's silent yeah. Speed is VERY
nice, except that it's not nice when you are copying something from
the disk, to the disk or copying more files simultaneously. But say,
loading a file from RAID0 onto the network or something.. you'll be
shocked.

The upside of RAID0 is that it adds togather the caches of both disks.
So two 8 MB cache disks = 16 MB cache, two 16 MB cache disk = 32 MB
cache. The cache is the thing that makes all the difference in how
audiable the disk activity is.
Click to expand...

No it isnt.
 
Jeff said:
What is the next fastest sata2 drive after the raptor that would be nearly
silent ?
Click to expand...

I have 6 SATA1 & 2 Seagate HDs and they are very quiet. I bought them
because of the quietness. Especially, retail versions are *silent* while OEM
versions do make a little noise when being accessed.
You may want to buy HD silencers. My children's PC has a noisy WD HD. After
putting the noisy beast in the HD silencer, I don't hear anything.
 
I have 2 SATA Samsung SP2004C 200GB in RAID 0.

They are quieter than other drives I've had in the past. I've had them
for almost a year now and they are performing well. I noticed
improvements in games mostly like Rome Total War. Bottlenecks I
thought were due to graphics cards were actually because of the hard
drive.

I got them mainly for audio work though as they are silent when
enclosed in hard drive enclosures.
 
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