quietest config for 3TB?

[lm]

Suppose you wanted to build 3TB worth of storage. What would lead to the quietest overall solution? This is completely academic, I'm not going to build such atm, just wondering.

3TB is either:

a) 3x Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 1000GB, 5 platters per drive = 15 platters total

b) 4x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750 GB, 4 platters per drive = 16 platters total

c) 6x some quiet 500GB drive, 3 or 4 platters per drive = 18 or 24 platters total

d) other, please specify

SPCR review & recommendations don't really help with this, as they seem to be only targeting users that want just a single drive in their machine, no matter how much data they need to store.
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[gb115b]

yeah, i'm also interested in how people view it... i have an 8 drive setup at the mo with 2.4 TB in Raid 6

how does the db scale work, is two drives twice as loud? (~3db higher?)

how about people's subjective impressions?

[jessekopelman]

[jessekopelman]

My vote is for a) 3x Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 1000GB, 5 platters per drive = 15 platters total. While three Deskstars may or may not be quieter than four of some other large capacity drive, I'd be surprised if they were noticeably louder. Meanwhile, three 3.5" drives will always produce less heat than four. So, when you factor in reduced cooling needs, this is the winner.

[DryFire]

You have noise + vibration + potential drive failure.

I would not want to run 6 drives without some form of raid (most likely raid 5).

the heating situation can be somewhat alleviated by moving 2 or more of the drives to 5.25" bays with passive hard drive coolers, and if you have a psu with a rear intake you could even do some ducting.

[IsaacKuo]

[DryFire]

You could put at least 1 playlist per hd. 500GB is a lot of music, even if it's FLAC or APE.

[gb115b]

thanks jesse! that makes sense now

so far the cooling for the hds doesn't seem to be an issue - temps are good.

i think noise is definitely (subjectively) more pronounced from the drives...though it could be that difference between the low thrum of fan noise and high pitch of hds is more noticeable...

i guess as my hearing goes the hds will become less noticeable!!

[jessekopelman]

[Sylph-DS]

I'd say three times 1TB in a suspended Quiet Drive (or something alike), and then just put two 92mm low RPM fans (nexus perhaps) in front, run the fans at 7v or something. Doesn't sound half bad to me.

Although I may be off on the thermal properties of the Quiet Drive, haven't really had much experience with those.
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[gb115b]

sorry jesse i am cooling 8HDs with 2 120mm scythe fans (speedfan controlled). when they're at max they do mask the hd noise (though they have different frequencies), but they do ramp down and then the hd noise becomes more audible..

[halcyon]

I'm not sure if it's shipping, but consider:

Samsung F-series

HD102UJ, SATA300, 1 TB, Samsung claims 3 platters / disk (not confirmed, could be 4 platters as well)

Retails for around 230euros in Germany.

[whiic]

That Samsung might take a while for availability. I hope it's soon, since not only does it offer an alternative to 7K1000, it will also force down prices of all high-capacity drives, also 750GB.

And I don't expect Seagate's upcoming 7200.11 to be competitive against 7K1000 in performarce nor in silence. It may win some low-leven benchmarks (like STR, seek time) but it doesn't matter to real performance that much, at least in non-server use.

I also have my doubts about Samsung "F1" being 3-platter drive. Not only would that mean 333GB platters but also that "U" in HD102UJ would mean excactly the same as "L": 6 heads. "U" hasn't been around before, so maybe "U" stands for 8 heads. Who knows.

Otherwise the model code seems logical HD-prefix as with T-series, 10 means 1000, 2 means 32MB (1 means 16MB and 0 means 8MB) cache, then is a letter describing the number of heads, and last is interface type.

(P series had the number of head as the last number. For example: SP1603N is P-series Spinpoint (SP), 160GB, 3 heads, ATA. They used three numbers for capacity regardless of capacity adding a 0 to the beginning if required. With T-series, this was reduced down to 2 numbers and one extra number was converted to a letter.)

Regardless of the number of platters, I hope for availability soon... but I'm not holding my breath.

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CORRECTION: HD103UJ is 32MB variant. HD102UJ is 16MB variant. But with T166 series, HD500LJ was 8MB and HD501LJ was 16MB. Doesn't make much sense.

[lm]

[Kaleid]

I hope the Samsung rumours are true, I want two 666GB drives.
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[whiic]

"I hope the Samsung rumours are true, I want two 666GB drives."

Don't take the rumours too seriously. I haven't seen any rumours claiming 666GB variant to become available.

The rumours say:
3x 333GB => 1000GB
3x 250GB => 750GB
...so there probably will be no 2-platter variant.

I you remember seeing it somewhere, I said something like that on SR... as a joke. Because I have my doubts on "3x 333GB" Samsung at this point of time. Adnt that's because:
- HD102UJ ("U" instead of "L") might have some other head count than 6. And anything different from 6 means high likelyhood it's not a 3 platter drive.
- Jump to 333GB is "only" 100% from current Samsungs.
- Jumping ahead all the competition when having done next to no research by themselves. Samsung merely assembles HDDs from part purhased from other companies. (WD makes more but even they aren't innovative. Pretty much all the pantents in the industry belong to Hitachi and Seagate, so they are pretty much driving it, others are merely passengers.)
- 333GB/platter variant and 250GB/platter variant released at the same time? If there was some time between the releases, it'd seem almost believable. Say, 750GB available now and 1000GB remaining vaporware 'til X-mas. Releasing 1000GB at the same time suggests a 4-platter construction.

I know, Samsung haven't been making 4-platter drives. And not too long ago they weren't making anything with more than 2. Reminds me of Seagate that had only 2 platters, until 7200.8 introduces up to 4 platters. The capacity race was started by Hitachi with a jump from 3-platter to 5-platter construction. Soon after that WD added that 4th platter too. Only Samsung was slow to react, with T-series taking a long time to market and still falling one platter short from Seagate and WD and 2 platters short from Hitachi.

I do hope the rumours were true but I have my doubts.

[whiic]

Since it's "printed" on "paper" (ie. datasheet)
http://ec.ingrammicro.de/pdf/8864948.pdf
It probably is 3-platter. It's funny though that some other corporation than Samsung itself distributes all the information about the drive. And that all corporations that claim these Samsungs available happen to be German. Some people on SR even suggest it's a hoax but it'd have to be an elaborate one as there's multiple German sites affected.

Data to wide scale availability remains a big question. 750GB might hit market sooner.

Some notes from the datasheet:
- SATA only. This means the biggest Samsung with PATA interface will remain 400GB (old T133 series). This is a bugger as we'd like cool and quiet drives in PVRs too, and PVRs don't necessary work with SATA HDDs. (Then again, if you can't decouple it, going for relatively cool 5-platter Hitachi might not be such a bad idea after all.)
- "FOD (Flying on Demand) enhancing Read/Write
performance and product reliability" might be synonymous to load/unload technology used in all Hitachis and newest AAxx WDs.
- "RAID Edition" in addition to standard edition: higher MTBF (i.e lower infant mortality due to longer factory testing) and "Optional Rotational Vibration Sensor". WTF? Optional?
- Some CE features (streaming) and power saving. I wonder if they are in all HDDs since there's no separate model numbers for CE and Raid Edition. I also wonder if there'd be APM support. Hitachi has it but WD doesn't (even on AAxx).

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CORRECTION: Flying on Demand is equivalent to Thermal Fly-Height Control of Hitachi drives, not Load/Unload Technology.

How it works is described here (as part of describing features in T133): http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/news/HardDiskDrive_20060801_0000277170.htm

[Goldmember]