A quick check shows one place selling a 25 lb bag of lead shot for $13.89, so that's 56 cents per pound. The scuba weight pouch works out to $2.37 per pound (I'm assuming the price was in British pounds since it was a UK domain EDIT - oops, that might have been in euros), but it already comes inside a bag which might be usable. Regardless, that's still cheap, so dive shops are probably a good source for those who live in places that don't have hunting or sport shooting supplies easily available.
One thing I noticed in the scuba weight belt description is that the shot is ungraphited, so some shot is evidently coated with it. It's been ages since I was target shooting, so I don't know if the stuff used for shotgun shells is graphite coated or not. I do remember that it would leave a dark residue on your hands, but that could have been from either lead or graphite. Since graphite can conduct electricity, it could be bad to have it as a dust floating around inside your computer case, so caveat emptor.
Another type of shot available is made from bismuth, which also has a high density. It's less toxic than lead, but with a lower thermal conductivity and higher speed of sound (less damping).
A real great source of information on the properties of the elements and their compounds can be found at www.webelements.com.
http://www.webelements.com/webelements/ ... ero/Pb.gif
What is the quietest 5400rpm HDD?
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WarpedPlatter
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I use a Maxtor 5400 80GB drive in a DataPort tray for backup of two machines. (Each machine has its own DataPort slot.) It hums a bit but is barely noticeable in a quiet room. I suspect that if I suspended it and placed it at the bottom of the case near the rear of the case that it would come close to the BIV in noise level. The main reason that I chose a 5400 drive for this application is lower heat production. It works fine, with no heat problems and reliable (if not overly speedy) performance. No complaints at all.
All that is true for OLD modles of 5400 drives. The Samsung Spinpoint 5400 series (V60 and V80) is somewhat cheaper, almost as fast (actually they do have less CPU utilization) and less noise. And they do come in large sizes.POLIST8 wrote:Good reasons like...............
Less Value (Based on the drop in price of 7200RMP Drives)
More Noise (Based on the new FDB that Seagate and Maxtor have implemented)
Less Space (Except of the huge external Maxtor Drives)
I am not familiar with Maxtor's 5400 drives but I suppose their newer models have the same properties.
One comparison: http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchm ... 4&devCnt=2
Please ignore the sound power measurement, Storagereveiw dont know how to do that properly anyway. As you can see the 7200.7 rulez in the benchmarks but in real applications there is not much difference.
The only big advantages 7200 drives have is that it does come with 8 mb cache and SATA. 8mb cache gives a application boost that you cant get with 5400 drives. But on the other side you have a price leap then. 8mb cache drives are more expensive. An interesting note is that if there were 5400 drives with 8mb cache the performace gap would decrease even more.
See if any company figures that one out.Another one: WD has released their Raptor, a 10000 rpm IDE SATA drive. *shudder* So in a year we might have this same discussion but with 5400 and 7200 replaced with 7200 and 10000.
I completely agree. Especially since many hard drive manufacturers are currently producing notebook drives at 4200rpm and 5400rpm that have 8MB of cache. In fact, Toshiba makes several 5400rpm notebook drives with 16MB of cache! All of these are fluid bearing drives too, very quiet...Yomat wrote:...8mb cache gives a application boost that you cant get with 5400 drives... An interesting note is that if there were 5400 drives with 8mb cache the performace gap would decrease even more.
