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PERFORMANCE
Generally, most quiet drive users report negligible — if any — real practical difference in perceived desktop system performance between a fast 7200 rpm drive and a slower, quieter 7200 rpm drive. We know from experience that average random access or seek time has the greatest perceivable impact on HDD related desktop performance. Here we are looking at 5400 rpm notebook drives whose stated latency is nearly 2ms slower than typical 7200 rpm drives, and whose rated average seek time is at least 3ms slower than the fastest 7200 rpm drives. You would think that the performance hit would be quite significant; we have not found this to be the case.
Samsung MP0402H notebook drives are in use at SPCR not only in the audio recording PC described above, but also a couple of other workhorse PCs. They have been employed for at least three months. In that time, we've rarely, if ever, noticed any significant performance penalty with any of the work or activities conducted on these PCs. These tasks include:
- Web surfing
- Email
- General Windows tasks
- Office document creation / processing (Word, Excel, Powerpoint)
- Photoshop image processing of both very large and quite small images
- Review / creation of Adobe InDesign electronic publishing files
- DVD movie playback
- DiVX / MP3 playback
- Audio file processing (sometimes very large)
SiSoftware Sandra 2005 (10.37) was used to run the file system benchmark on these notebook drives.
Samsung MP0402H: A lazy 21 ms Average Access Time was recorded.
A huge 10 ms gain over the Samsung, but the Hitachi's overall drive index is only 1MB/s better.
A Samsung SP80 80G 7200 rpm 3.5" desktop drive fared the same as its smaller brethren, one Index point behind the Hitachi.
This despite Access Time on par with the Hitachi. This may not be representative of all Samsung SP80s.
The Hitachi notebook drive was used as an OS drive only for a few days. The general impression was that it is a bit faster than the Samsung notebook drive. Invariably, it is only after prolonged use that we feel confident to make broad statements about HDD performance, because its impact on different applications can vary. We will report in a future follow-up how the Hitachi fares in the context of a daily use lab system.
CONCLUSIONS
The Hitachi Travelstar 5K80 and Samsung MP0402H notebook drives are exciting discoveries for silent computing.
The Samsung drive is within a decibel of the quietest hard drive we've ever listened to or tested. Such a close measurement makes it difficult to give much weight to the difference; slight variances in testing conditions, procedure or samples might even flip the results. Yet unlike the 4200 rpm Fujitsu that it matches for noise, the Samsung is a faster 5400 rpm drive that, at least in practical use, gives little away in performance to bigger faster desktop drives.
The Hitachi Travelstar 5K80 also turns in a great showing, with noise lower than the quietest 3.5" hard drive, and even better performance (at least on the SiSoftware Sandra benchmark) than our particular Samsung SP80 7200 rpm desktop drive sample. A single platter 40G model Travelstar like the Samsung notebook HDD sample might well have matched it in noise; both Samsung and Hitachi say the single platter models are a little quieter. The 40G Travelstar model is one we'll want to look at in future, in search of the best balance of high performance and super low noise.
As with most notebook drives, vibration is greatly reduced, so if the other noise sources in your PC are not at the ~20 dBA/1m level, there's not much to be gained from decoupling suspensions. However, those who wish to plumb the depths of silence will find the small size of notebook drives extremely handy. It is possible to rig up an elastic cord suspension even in a standard 3.5" drive bay without worrying about drive temperature.
These drives emit so little heat that temperature is rarely a concern in most desktop / tower PC setups. And quiet though they are normally mounted with adapters in a standard 3.5" bay, it's a real pleasure to behold the sheer absence of any lower frequency HDD vibration induced noise when they are softly mounted.
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Kind of an aside: Notebook HDDs are very sturdy when installed, but a little delicate to handle. It is best to hold them by the sides rather then by their top and bottom. Even a thumb and forefinger can apply enough pressure to damage the movable actuator heads because of the thiness of the cover. (Does that sound like experience speaking?) Another thing is that you need an adapter to use them with standard IDE cables. If in doubt about how they fit, do ask someone who knows, hopefully whoever sells it to you. Because two of the pins take in 5V, if the connector is reversed, it's probably possible to burn the drive. We use the type of adapters show in the photo below.
Another item you might consider is a pair of side extension rails so you can mount them in 3.5" bays normally (with standard screws), but we recommend against this. It's so easy to damp / suspend it in a 3.5" bay!
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Our thanks to Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and to Frontier PC for the notebook drive samples.
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