Your opinion on Laptop drives for Desktop use

[fjsc3]

Hi,

I've noticed that a few forum members are using 2.5" drives on their desktop PC.

I'm considering doing that with a Toshiba drive (SATA, 40GB and 5400rpm).

Obviously, the ideal product would be an SSD, but at the moment and for at least 1 year they're off the reasonable price range.

Since noise isn't much of an issue with 2.5" drives - at least when used inside a Desktop case and suspended, I'm mostly concerned with the following:

-Compatibility: since the SATA/power connectors look the same, I can't see any reason why there should be any physical incompatibilities. In any case, I may be wrong, so can I use the normal SATA power connectors, or even the 12V connectors with a SATA power converter?

-Speed: the drive will be used for the system/Windows+program files, so although it doesn't have to be a screamer, I wouldn't want to take a huge step back in terms of speed.
Do you notice a big difference in real, everyday use?
(I know about reviews, and all that, but I don't think that hdd reviews and benchmarks directly relate to a normal user's everyday experience)

-reliability: have you experienced hdd "death" or more frequent problems than what you're used to in desktop drives?


Please share your experiences.

cheers
Ze

[Steve_Y]

-Compatibility: since the SATA/power connectors look the same, I can't see any reason why there should be any physical incompatibilities. In any case, I may be wrong, so can I use the normal SATA power connectors, or even the 12V connectors with a SATA power converter?

2.5" SATA drives use exactly the same connectors as the desktop 3.5" versions.

-Speed: the drive will be used for the system/Windows+program files, so although it doesn't have to be a screamer, I wouldn't want to take a huge step back in terms of speed.
Do you notice a big difference in real, everyday use?
(I know about reviews, and all that, but I don't think that hdd reviews and benchmarks directly relate to a normal user's everyday experience)

I used a couple of 2.5" Western Digital 40Gb 5400RPM drives in my main PC for a couple of years. Overall the desktop performance was acceptable, in normal use applications didn't feel slow because of the relatively poor HDD performance. There are plenty of people who happily use actual laptops for pretty heavy computing tasks, so using a laptop drive in your PC isn't going to cripple it.

Having said that, I did notice some pretty big differences when I switched to large 7200RPM 3.5" drives. As you'd expect, booting windows and loading large applications is a lot faster with a faster drive. Also, copying files on the boot drive, while also working in an application, has a less noticeable effect on performance with the faster drive.

I think whether laptop drive performance will be acceptable to you will depend on how you use your PC more than anything.

-reliability: have you experienced hdd "death" or more frequent problems than what you're used to in desktop drives?

Both of my 2.5" WD drives still work fine, as do several others that I use externally in USB enclosures. Of course that's not statistically significant...

[Bluefront]

I've lost track how many systems I've built with laptop drives.....a bunch. The only failure was a Hitichi I bought used at a computer show....lasted a few years though. I suppose you could tell that you're using a laptop drive playing games or something. But for other uses you'll see little difference,

Hell I run Photoshop on one....just fine. Here's a funny story. I was running a new, fast WD SATA 3.5" drive. I had cloned the "C" partition to a Laptop drive on a PATA channel. Well the regular drive completely failed (the board couldn't even see it). The computer booted the laptop drive. It probably took three days before I noticed the main drive had died. I was running off the laptop drive for quite a while without even noticing the difference in speed. What tipped me off......WinAmp couldn't find my MP3s which were on the second partition of the dead drive.

[Aris]

The only physical incompatabily will be finding hardware to mount the drive in a 3.5" drive bay. I'd recommend one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817984003

The power connector and SATA connector are identical to 3.5" HDD's.


I dont ever use 3.5" drives in any of my computers anymore. IMO its old technology on its way out the door, just like when they migrated from 5.25" HDD's down to 3.5" HDD's. I dont notice any performance hit at all in normal daily use. I play games every day, WoW, UT2k4, C&C3, and i dont notice any degridation in performance whatsoever in gameplay. The only performance hit in games is when the game has to load a large zone or map or somthing, but once its loaded its just as fast as with any other HDD. The only times you notice it at all is when large files are being loaded, which i dont do often so it doesnt bother me. If you did a lot of work with large files often, then it could mabey be a concern for you. But the thing you have to remember, is no matter how fast your HDD is, you will always notice when it kicks in. it will always be the slowest thing in your computer no matter how fast it is. What you want to do is increase your system memory so your computer goes to your HD for data as little as possible.

For me, a slight performance hit on loading large files is heavily outweighed by the fact that now my HDD's make no noise whatsoever, require less power, and i never have to worry about them overheating.

2.5" drives have the same fail rate as any other rotating metal disk device. Its the same technology, just smaller. If anything it might be slightly more reliable than 3.5" drives just because they produce less heat and wont fry themselves when they have no cooling or when enclosed in dampened enclosures.

[cmthomson]

2.5" drives have the same fail rate as any other rotating metal disk device. Its the same technology, just smaller. If anything it might be slightly more reliable than 3.5" drives just because they produce less heat and wont fry themselves when they have no cooling or when enclosed in dampened enclosures.

2.5" drives are highly reliable with two very important caveats: they must be allowed to spin down at least daily, and the number of head-park operations must be limited. These two restrictions do not apply to 3.5" drives. (Server-class 2.5" drives such as the Savvio can be run 7/24).

If you run your computer with the disks spinning 24/7 with a logging operation every 30-60 seconds, you can expect your disks to fail in 1-2 years.

[Aris]

about the only time that would occure is in a server. for most personal computing applications your HD only spins up to load somthing into memory, and then spins down. which is why you'd use a "server class" hd for a "server"

[Thomas]

Very interesting and usefull info, thanks.

I plan on trying 2,5" HDD soon...

I also do video editing. If it appears to be a problem on 2,5", I'll add in a Hitachi 3,5".

These have the options to be set to power down OR spin down to lower RPM's, when not accessed for about 10 minutes. Since I dont do videoediting that often, I'll only have the 3,5" noise the 10 first minutes after a boot. And when I once in a while do video editing.

[fjsc3]

Thanks for your replies so far. Very informative.

About performance and uses for the PC, I don't play games, do some occasional Photoshop editing, but most of the time the computer is used for programming, scientific publishing and computer simulations (for my applications I'm able to keep everything in RAM all the time, with very small outup files written to disk at the end), usually with iTunes running in the background (with the WAV files stored on a larger, dedicated 3.5" disk).

The main applications are taxing for the CPU and RAM, but not at all for the hdd. Having said that, it would be bad if regular applications took a much longer time to load than on 3.5" drives.

That's my main concern with performance.

2.5" drives are highly reliable with two very important caveats: they must be allowed to spin down at least daily, and the number of head-park operations must be limited. These two restrictions do not apply to 3.5" drives. (Server-class 2.5" drives such as the Savvio can be run 7/24).

If you run your computer with the disks spinning 24/7 with a logging operation every 30-60 seconds, you can expect your disks to fail in 1-2 years.

No, I don't use the desktop PC 24/7. Not normally at least.
Occasionally if I'm running a very long calculation, the computer may need to be on for a few days non-stop. This is very rare.

Regarding the spin-down and head-park operations, don't laptop hdds have firmware that forces a spin-down after a limited time at idle, regardless of the OS?
If so, then this would only be an issue for someone using these drives in database/file servers which are always being prompted for files, no?

[cmthomson]

Regarding the spin-down and head-park operations, don't laptop hdds have firmware that forces a spin-down after a limited time at idle, regardless of the OS?

Yes they do. That is what will wear them out if they are in a system that tries to use them continuously.

If so, then this would only be an issue for someone using these drives in database/file servers which are always being prompted for files, no?

Or in a network appliance such as a firewall, mail server, or web host.

[fjsc3]

Regarding the spin-down and head-park operations, don't laptop hdds have firmware that forces a spin-down after a limited time at idle, regardless of the OS?

Yes they do. That is what will wear them out if they are in a system that tries to use them continuously.

You raise a good point.

One way to determine whether this is a problem in a particular system or not, would be to have some software which could log all disk read/write operations.

Is anyone aware of such a program, or even if windows has some tool for that purpose?

regards

[Tephras]

DiskMon

[Felger Carbon]

One way to determine whether this is a problem in a particular system or not, would be to have some software which could log all disk read/write operations.

If what you want to do is keep track of spin-ups separately from power-on cycles, you don't need a software application. Your hard disk keeps track of power-on cycles, and also spin-ups, in its SMART data. In hexadecimal, of course, but you speak hexadecimal... don't you?

[jojo4u]

Btw, I like 2,5" hdd since they have only 1 W idle power consumption and don't need air flow when suspended. About performance: Storagereview.com should have tests and digit-life.com as well. (3,5" and 2,5")

[Aris]

Btw, I like 2,5" hdd since they have only 1 W idle power consumption and don't need air flow when suspended. About performance: Storagereview.com should have tests and digit-life.com as well. (3,5" and 2,5")

performance charts for HDD's are BS IMO. they mean nothing. you can fudge the graphs all day long so one bar is twice as long as the other, it still wont tell you how your experience will differ, if at all.

ALL hard drives are slow. some are just not as slow as others. its like making a performance graph between a snail and a turtle. who really cares which is faster, they both suck.

The trick is to compensate with memory so your hard drive isnt accessed as often, so your "perception" of slower hard drive speed is lessened if not negated all together. Like i said, i can tell no perceptial difference between a fast 3.5" 7200rpm drive and a "slow" 2.5" 5400rpm drive.

I swear the same marketing people working over at the hard drive benchmark websites are the same marketing people that tell you you need a 1,000w PSU for your gamming rig.

[fjsc3]

Both Felger Carbon's and Tephras' suggestions are useful to assess different aspects of hdd usage patterns (physical in SMART and software in DiskMon).

About jojo4u and Aris' comments regarding performance, that was one of the main reasons for posting this question. I.e. I know all about the performance graphs and all that, but they usually tell a different story from "real life" usage.

To give you an idea, between 2000 and 2006 I used exclusively 10k and 15k scsi drives, and even though I tried every imaginable way to silence them they were still noisy. Not outrageously noisy, but noisy nonetheless.

Then I tried some regular 7200rpm SATA drives, and for general, everyday use there wasn't as much difference as some people would have you believe - especially the Raptor enthusiast crowd.

Don't get me wrong, these drives do have their advantages.
I can vouch for their reliability. Never had one die on me, and at that time I was running them 24/7 for long periods - months sometimes. On the other hand, following that, out of my first 4 SATA drives, 2 died within 1 year...
Also, for database and simultaneous requests the difference is tremendous.
But that's not what I define as "everyday use", which is why I'm now thinking of taking yet another "step down" and moving down to 2.5" drives.

I'll give this a go and buy two 40GB 2.5" hdds. One as the system drive and the other as a spare drive, to address the possible reliability issues, just in case...

[fjsc3]

Just a quick update: I went ahead and installed a 2.5" SATA hdd.

Been using the system for over 1 week now, and can't say that I notice a tangible difference, except for the reduced noise.

Since the hdd is suspended, and the rest of the system is either passively cooled (graphics card) or extremely quiet (the Noctua NH-U12 on minimum rpm is quiet as a mouse) I can finally say that my PC is quiet.

It's inaudible from where I'm standing - about 2 meters away from it. And all that without making any serious performance compromises.

Many thanks to everybody for your time and input.

cheers

[jackylman]

What kind of disks did you end up settling on?

I've been running my desktop off of a WD Scorpio PATA (40 GB, 1 platter) for over 2 years now and I couldn't be happier with its noise/performance. I also back its contents up to a 40 GB WD Scorpio SATA drive on occasion.

I also have a Samsung 321KJ which I use for dabbling in Linux. This drive changed my opinion on the "2.5 drives are better" theory because it ended up being quieter (at idle) than the aforementioned SATA Scorpio. Its seeks weren't very obtrusive either.

Conclusion: Use Samsung 321KJ's and rest them on foam. If that's not good enough, you'll have to pick a quiet notebook drive and hope you get a good sample for it to be worth the conversion.

[Aris]

I also have a Samsung 321KJ which I use for dabbling in Linux. This drive changed my opinion on the "2.5 drives are better" theory because it ended up being quieter (at idle) than the aforementioned SATA Scorpio. Its seeks weren't very obtrusive either.

Not all 2.5's are going to be quieter than all 3.5's. A quality 3.5" drive can be quieter than a loud poor quality 2.5" drive.

So you still have to do your research and figure out which 2.5" drives are quiet. But when you do, then yes 2.5" drives are better than 3.5" drives. Their only downside is higher cost per GB, and less total space capable, but if those factors dont concern you then theres no reason to choose a 3.5" drive over a 2.5" drive if your looking for a quiet drive.

From what ive seen, the single platter samsung 2.5" drives are about as quiet as your gunna get until you switch to SDD.

[fjsc3]

What kind of disks did you end up settling on?

The one currently installed is a 40GB Toshiba - don't remember the exact model though.

If like myself you suspend your drives, use insulating materials to mitigate case resonance and keep the case 1 or 2m away from you, then it's very unlikely that you'll be able to hear a recent 2.5" hdd working inside the case.