Road worthy hard drives

[Bruce T. Berger]

I need to build a rack mounted PC for mobile audio recording. This has got
me thinking about shock rating for various drives:
Am I right to assume that 2 1/2" notebook drives have a higher shock rating
than 3 1/2" desktop models? If so will I sacrifice significant performance
by using them? Is there a meaningful difference in shock rating between
various high performance 3 1/2" IDE drives (Raptor etc.)? Finally are SCSI
drives hardier than IDE?
Thanks for any input.

btb

 

[Rod Speed]

I need to build a rack mounted PC for mobile audio recording.
This has got me thinking about shock rating for various drives:
Am I right to assume that 2 1/2" notebook drives have a higher
shock rating than 3 1/2" desktop models?

Yes, clearly visible in the datasheets. The Hitachi
datasheets are particularly comprehensive.

If so will I sacrifice significant performance by using them?

Yes, they are significantly lower performance.

That may not matter for audio recording tho, not that demanding.

Is there a meaningful difference in shock rating between
various high performance 3 1/2" IDE drives (Raptor etc.)?

Not really.

Finally are SCSI drives hardier than IDE?

Nope. Less in some ways because of the higher RPM.

How mobile is the recording ? Do you want to be able to
record while driving around on rough roads etc or only mobile
in the sense that you actually record when stationary and just
want to be able to drive it around between recordings ?

 

[Arno Wagner]

I need to build a rack mounted PC for mobile audio recording. This has got
me thinking about shock rating for various drives:
Am I right to assume that 2 1/2" notebook drives have a higher shock rating
than 3 1/2" desktop models?

Yes, massively so in many cases, but only when they run.
However look into the individaul datasheets to be sure.
There are differences between 2 1/2" drives too.

If so will I sacrifice significant performance
by using them?

Rough guess: A factor of 2-3 in HDD speed. Translates to slowdown
by 0%-66% depending on the application used. For audio-recording
this should be uncritical, unless you plan to do > 10 channels
in CD quality and the application writes these to individual
files instead of one large file. Could still be more than fast
enough. Impossible to tell without trying it. My relatively old
Fujitsu 30GB notebok HDD as 12MB/sec throughput at the end (slowest
zone), enough for >50 CD-audio channels, if they are written
sequentially to one file.

Is there a meaningful difference in shock rating between
various high performance 3 1/2" IDE drives (Raptor etc.)?

Under operation (!) shock ratings for 3 1/2" HDDs are pretty
low. 2 1/2 HDDa are much better, since they would not survive
ordinary operation in laptops otherwise. Powered down, e.g.
the current seagate 3 1/2" disks have a 300G shock rating.
Mounted with some mechanical buffering this is a lot and
should be enough for your application. Notebook HDDs are
not much better here.

Finally are SCSI drives hardier than IDE?

No, not generally. As I said you need to look into the
individual datasheets. They will give vibration and
shock ratings for operating and non-operating.

Arno

 

[Bruce T. Berger]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rod Speed" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Sent: Saturday, September 06, 2003 12:01 PM
Subject: Re: Road worthy hard drives

How mobile is the recording ? Do you want to be able to
record while driving around on rough roads etc or only mobile
in the sense that you actually record when stationary and just
want to be able to drive it around between recordings ?

The recording will be done while stationary, its the transport between
venues (baggage handlers. roadies, etc.) that concerns me.
I could just go with two 3 1/2" drives in a mirror array & make sure the
client uses an ATA approved shock-mounted rack. Does that make sense or will
any shock that kills one be likely to kill the other as well? Thanks for
the info.

btb


P.S. I mistakenly first sent this reply to your yahoo mbx. Sorry about that,
just being careless.

 

[Rod Speed]

The recording will be done while stationary, its the transport between
venues (baggage handlers. roadies, etc.) that concerns me.

Yeah, I'd use a mobile hard drive myself in those circumstances.

I could just go with two 3 1/2" drives in a mirror
array & make sure the client uses an ATA approved
shock-mounted rack. Does that make sense or will
any shock that kills one be likely to kill the other as well?

Its more that using mobile hard drives means that you
are much less likely to have any deaths, and since its
audio recording, they should be plenty fast enough for that.

I'd certainly still have a mirror array even with mobile hard
drives, just because it would be a complete pain to have
to organise another recording session if a drive dies etc.
Any drive can die, quite apart from handling etc.

P.S. I mistakenly first sent this reply to your yahoo mbx.
Sorry about that, just being careless.

No problem, I only read it daily because it does get quite a bit of spam.