<4Gb low noise IDE/SCSI hard disk?

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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Steve_Y
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<4Gb low noise IDE/SCSI hard disk?

Post by Steve_Y » Sun Jun 26, 2005 12:44 pm

I know this sounds like a really wierd request in these days of 250Gb hard disks, but I'm looking for a 100Mb-4Gb hard disk that doesn't make much noise. I know I'm not going to get a new drive that size, but a few recommendations should help me find one second hand.

I rescued an old Amiga 4000 that was going to be thrown away. Quite a nice machine with an 060 CPU upgrade, SCSI card, Ethernet card and upgrade graphics card. An Amiga 500 was one of my first computers so I'd really like to load up some old Amiga games and enjoy the nostalgic fun. It's in perfect condition and boots up fine, but the 1.2Gb SCSI hard disk and PSU fan make an insane amount of noise. I'm too used to my quiet PCs and Mac to live with the Amiga's noise, even just playing with it for a few minutes is giving me a headache. The PSU fan should be easy enough to fix, I'm simply going to switch it for a quiet Nexus or Panaflo and replace the PSU fan grills for extra air flow. But I don't have a clue what quiet hard disk to get for it.

From a brief bit of google research it looks like 4Gb was the maximum HDD size that the IDE supported, I'm not sure if the Emulex SCSI card has the same limitation. There isn't space in the case for any damping or a HDD silencing enclosure so I need a drive that's quiet without any modifications except some rubber grommets.

Was anyone here a silent computing fan back in the early 90s? Any brands /models of hard disk that you'd recommend? It just needs to hold a few games so anything 100Mb and over would be fine. It'd give me an idea what to search for on ebay.

Thanks in advance.

m0002a
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Post by m0002a » Sun Jun 26, 2005 12:52 pm

My recollection is that drives from that era all were much noiser than today's drives. This is especially true of the newer FDB drives.

You can sometimes find incredible bargins on WD drives in retail stores (usually with mail in rebate). Make sure it was made in 2005 (you can see the manufacture date through the plastic packaging).

Ackelind
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Post by Ackelind » Sun Jun 26, 2005 3:45 pm

Perhaps get one of the smallest 2.5 IDE drives? A 40gb one would be too much space, but it's probably the smallest you could get. It would also be about the most silent drives you can get.

frostedflakes
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Post by frostedflakes » Sun Jun 26, 2005 4:20 pm

What about a flash-based solution?

A 128MB CompactFlash and CF -> IDE adapter shouldn't set you back more than $10-20 on eBay.

The low-speed of compact flash doesn't make it very practical for modern computers, but I don't see any reason why it couldn't be used in an Amiga 4000, as transfer rates are probably comparable with the <1GB drives of ~15 years ago (heck, they may even be faster).

And I'd assume the Amiga isn't writing to the disk constantly, as is the case with an OS like Windows XP, so the limited rewritability of flash shouldn't be a big issue. If it turns out to be a problem, though, and your CF card dies in a couple years, you could just pick up a new one (they'll probably be giving away 128MB modules by then).

Good idea? Bad idea?

EDIT: Or maybe one of these? Should be much more reliable than CompactFlash. Look around on eBay and see if you can find one in a 3.5" form factor.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... eName=WD1V
Last edited by frostedflakes on Sun Jun 26, 2005 6:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Edward Ng
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Post by Edward Ng » Sun Jun 26, 2005 5:43 pm

Here's my suggestion.

-Ed

frostedflakes
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Post by frostedflakes » Sun Jun 26, 2005 5:47 pm

I doubt a 15-year old piece of hardware has either PCI or SATA...

Edward Ng
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Post by Edward Ng » Sun Jun 26, 2005 5:53 pm

My bad; since somebody suggested CF, I figured this was worth a try.

sthayashi
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Post by sthayashi » Sun Jun 26, 2005 6:52 pm

I say f*** it and see if its visible.

I'm a little young to remember the 4GB limitation issues, but with the later ones, if you used a disk that was larger than the limit, then you were just stuck with the limit.

It may seem like a complete waste of space, and you'd be right, but it would still be worth giving it a try.

wim
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Post by wim » Sun Jun 26, 2005 8:11 pm

i understand if you wanted to have a shot at this for some hobby reason, but if all you wanted to do was
load up some old Amiga games and enjoy the nostalgic fun
then i'd suggest you just run an amiga emulator on your quiet pc

VERiON
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Post by VERiON » Sun Jun 26, 2005 10:58 pm

For my HTPC startup disk I've bought 10GB used seagate, which noise characteristic is comparable to my samsung 1614N. It is very cheap on eBay or similar - so you could give it a try, you have good chance that your bios will only detect it as 4GB drive (max limit). If you want - I can check the drive symbol and if it has a jumper to set lower capacity - (like in my old IMB 40GB drive that has a jumper to set it as 30GB).

IsaacKuo
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Post by IsaacKuo » Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:32 am

I have three suggestions:

1. Find an old small notebook drive and put it in a heavily sound dampening enclosure. Here's a cheap example of how-to: PSP 2.5" enclosure

or

2. Use an IDE->Compact Flash adapter with a microdrive. You can probably find an old 340meg IBM microdrive somewhere pretty cheap. Alternatively, a new microdrive will be maybe 1-4megs in size.

A compact flash card which isn't a microdrive will have a limited lifespan due to writes. This may or may not be an issue. I've run my old Amiga for months without a single write to the hard drive (disk validation error; refused to write anything).

or

3. Use an internal Zip drive. I once got a SCSI internal model of 100meg Zip drive and it worked like a charm on my Bodega Bay Amiga 500. As far as the computer was concerned, it was an internal (nonremovable) SCSI hard drive like any other.

The nice thing about the Zip drive option is that it only spins when accessed, like a floppy drive. It doesn't need any active cooling so you can entomb it in a heavily sound damped enclosure for absolute silence.

Steve_Y
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Post by Steve_Y » Tue Jun 28, 2005 11:29 am

Thanks very much for all the advice. I’d never have considered using a CF card or a zip drive as a HDD replacement if it hadn’t been suggested here. I’ve got an old internal zip drive that’s been packed away since I first bought a CD-RW, it'll be nice to have a new use for it. Certainly less hassle than trying to track down an old hard disk that probably wouldn’t be reliable after all these years.

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