I have a few questions on that M system, Sony, and samsung: Well, I'm not sure where Sony's coming from on this, but I'll shoot for the rest. 1) Samsung is clearly the leader on R&D, how come they can't even come up w/ that 128 GB solid state drive that M sys have? Because they're not the leader in...

I'll take two. And a RAID controller - not for speed, but for capacity. And I hope it has a big battery. And I hope I have a spare US$x00 to drop, because such an option - like the existing one - won't be cheap. Still, a move in the right direction!

I use cheap/old motherboards and haven't had luck with measuring hard drive temperatures. Wow. You do use old components. I think every motherboard I have - save for the one in my DOS machine - can poll SMART information. How long have you been running this setup, and how many hours per day does it...

That's fantastic. A couple of questions, not limited to the enclosure: How high are your drive temps? I know notebook drives are meant to run hot, but specifically what temps are you getting? How quiet is this? I mean, is this absolutely no sound, period? What kind of performance do you get from you...

I'm cheap, so I homebrew them. That's great. I've got questions, but I'll ask them over in the other thread. Awesome value-for-money, though! I see the speed of iRAM being most useful for software developers and graphic designers--the former for fast compile times and the latter for fast image mani...

I mean inaudible from the distance of put-your-ear-right-up-against-it. That's great. Where can I find something about that? I'm not certain I'm willing to step down to a 2.5 inch drive - it's that performance/silence balance - but I'd certainly be interested to benefit from your experience. You kn...

Well, those just look great. It seems like Thermalright is really honing their "enormous heatpipe heatsink" design; that top image isn't significantly different from their giant CPU coolers...and I think I kind of want one. That external beast, though...I've been wondering for a while now why more c...

I don't think "0db" means what you think it means. It doesn't mean silent, if that's what you're thinking. Then I need you to be more specific: what is your definition, in this context, of silence? Inaudible? From what distance? "Silent" is a term that gets used pretty loosely, and I personally hav...

The converse is that I do have the option of driving a car with airbags, but don't, because the performance loss isn't worth the safety increase - to me, personally. That's, again, why it's nice to have options. Are you saying: 1. you can specify whether or not to have airbags on a specific model? ...

For desktop computing, they don't really offer anything over normal 2.5" drives. When properly enclosed, quiet 2.5" drives are already silent. 0db? That must be a fascinating enclosure. Certainly more exciting than low-capacity iRAM drives. Doesn't do me much good to have a super-fast drive I can't...

Well, for whatever it's worth, I certainly wouldn't buy one without seeing a review on SPCR or another, similarly-minded site with a solid reputation. They look like good coolers, but, you know, I look like a good guy, too, and I wouldn't buy me without a review. Also...gods, how to say this best? F...

That's not what they're marketed for, and not really anything to get excited about in terms of silent desktop computing. Not yet, and possibly not ever. I'm...not certain I understand. Do they make noise? Then I think that's probably something to get excited about. Increase their performance a bit ...

Certainly, dropping the camera is likely to break the camera itself, and thus a pretty poor idea! But if the camera is to be dropped, I would prefer not to lose the data that's on it, irrespective of what might happen to the device itself. You can always buy another camera; your images, however, ma...

yeah, you could probably drop a camera from far enough up to break its CF card Regardless of what media is inside a camera, dropping it is threat enough to the myriad small delicate moving parts of the camera itself. Certainly, dropping the camera is likely to break the camera itself, and thus a pr...

It's interesting to me that the compact flash cards are also rated at 2000G, I really can't imagine them suffering any kind of damage from a 10 foot drop. I strongly suspect that a CF card, by itself, couldn't ever fall far enough to be damaged. Now, if you throw them into walls like shuriken, you ...

Or a practical example if you have trouble understanding that: Microdrives are plenty fast enough for playing MP3's. Why would manufacturers spend more? $10 (guestimate bulk price difference) times 1000000 MP3-players is a lot of money. For the amateur "point and click" photographer microdrives are...

Using the PriceGrabber search feature below, I get the following best prices for : $159 SanDisk 4GB Ultra II CF Card $133 SanDisk 4GB CompactFlash Card $110 Hitachi 4GB Microdrive Card Ah, my fondness for PriceWatch becomes my undoing. Still, a US$23 difference doesn't seem dramatic to me, particul...

You seemed mystified by the continued existence of microdrives, and I stated correctly that they compare well with CF cards in speed and capacity. I'm sorry, but I don't think I understand what you mean by "compare well." CF cards are faster than microdrives, and come in larger capacities. Yes, you...

I've always been dubious of clampless optical drives run vertically, but I've had to use them for various reasons over the years, and have never had a single problem, either reading or writing, DVDs or CDs. They may /feel/ loose, and sometimes clampless drives will be difficult to get disks into, bu...

Ja. Same here. A 7800 would be faster, but it's almost inevitable that it's going to cost more and make more noise. I don't need the extra few FPS, and my priority is silence over performance. [Although I like a little of both.] For me, the 7600GT is in the price/performance sweet spot. I'm still /n...

there is like no point in running anything besides a 7800 GT if you want to game. Well, it /does/ depend on what games you want to play, and at what resolution, and with how much eye candy. I'm perfectly satisfied with a 7600GT, personally, and have gotten by for a while now with my much-hated 9700...

What is the largest microdrive, currently? And what is its speed? Are you including CompactFlash as "consumer level flash memory?" You could start with the Microdrive Wikipedia entry . Maybe you could, too. You know, since it outright says, "Microdrives are not as fast as the high-end CompactFlash ...

Micro-drives are pretty fast and have good capacities compared to solid state compact flash cards. The extra capacity can be quite important for high megapixel raw pictures. Consumer level flash memory is really slow. What is the largest microdrive, currently? And what is its speed? Are you includi...

It always made me curious why more people don't use suspend-to-RAM with their laptops. Perhaps they're too used to the turn-it-off-before-you-move-it desktop way of thinking? I don't know why more people don't use it with their desktops! Until recently - when something made my motherboard come over...

I get the impression that flash capacity and performance still don't match rotating drives here. Haven't really compared specifics though. I know flash is faster than microdrives - that's kind of inevitable - but I suspect the cost-capacity ratio probably isn't very good around the 10gb area. The s...

Agreed. Although for some reason, rotating micro-drives are still popular at the moment. And for the life of me, I don't understand why. They're slower, use more power, and are much more delicate than flash devices. Can the cost-per-capacity really be that different for the two, still? Microdrives ...

As long as we're talking about the future of HDDs, that also touches on the future of computing in general. The way operating systems work has a large bearing on that, as some of the more technically-oriented posts in this thread pointed out. So please, drop the marketing side of the discussion. I'...

I don't know whether it's optimistic or pessimistic to believe this point. Hard drives seemd to be at a ceiling recently, and got past it using perpendicular recording technology. That's a nice jump, but it may mark another ceiling - what trick can they use next to get higher capacities? There come...

Also, if this thread is in the "Silent Storage" heading, then methinks it is getting off-topic a bit? If you want to follow the OS discussion, it can be split into the appropriate form. Missed that edit. Oh, yes, please, could we discuss this elsewhere? Better yet, could we totally not discuss it a...

It all has to do with market economics. That's what I'm saying . Today's market has little to do with why Microsoft's OS is the most ubiquitous desktop OS today. Nor does usability. I shouldn't have snipped this bit: please notice I didn't say anything about "today's market." I'm speaking broadly o...