whats the quietest 15k rpm drive?
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whats the quietest 15k rpm drive?
Im looking for a quiet yet 15k rpm drive... money is not any object
Wait for the new Savvio 15k, they should be something resembling not horrifically loud if the Savvio 10k.1 is any indication. Also the transfer rates probably won't be near other 15k drives unless Seagate made some huge improvements, but the access speeds will likely blow everything else out of the water. For a working drive the access speed will normally be more important, unless you're working with huge sound and/or video files.
I don't know about current 3.5" offerings, check out Storage Review's database, they've tested idle noise for quite some time now.
I don't know about current 3.5" offerings, check out Storage Review's database, they've tested idle noise for quite some time now.
try a smaller partition on a slower drive
Why not just short-stroke a slower-spinning drive? If you take a 500 GB 7200 RPM drive and short-stroke it to, say 125 GB, you'll get fantastic latency performance. If you want to go further, buy a bigger drive and use an even smaller partition size. As an added bonus, you'll end up using only the fastest (transfer rate-wise) part of the drive.
Considering the Savvio 10k.1, according to storage review, has faster access times than any other 10k drive out there, and current 3.5" 15k drives are in the 5.5 to 6.0ms real world range... you're not going to come close. It should also be noted that the 10k.1 Savvio comes in the top 10 of tested drives in idle noise. That puts it at the top of the pack of 7200 RPM drives.
I don't know about seeks, and if the noise signature is annoying... but damn, these things are promising. I'm waiting for reviews first, but I'm definitely wanting to pick up a 15k version, or if it looks to be too loud, a 10k.2. I'm really hoping a good suspension will put them in the same range as the quieter Samsungs.
A guy can hope, eh?
The only real downside is relatively slow sequential transfers, near the bottom of the pack of 7200 RPM drives. They do redeem themselves with higher than average minimum transfer rates, though, and I'm sure Seagate will improve this aspect with the second generation. But honestly, access times are a lot more important for desktop use, making these the perfect OS drive. If they're as quiet as they seem to be on top of that... wow.
I don't know about seeks, and if the noise signature is annoying... but damn, these things are promising. I'm waiting for reviews first, but I'm definitely wanting to pick up a 15k version, or if it looks to be too loud, a 10k.2. I'm really hoping a good suspension will put them in the same range as the quieter Samsungs.
A guy can hope, eh?
The only real downside is relatively slow sequential transfers, near the bottom of the pack of 7200 RPM drives. They do redeem themselves with higher than average minimum transfer rates, though, and I'm sure Seagate will improve this aspect with the second generation. But honestly, access times are a lot more important for desktop use, making these the perfect OS drive. If they're as quiet as they seem to be on top of that... wow.
"But honestly, access times are a lot more important for desktop use, making these the perfect OS drive."
How about cache? Caching can significantly reduce number of seeks, thus making random access time less meaningful. There are desktop HDDs that have more cache memory than Savvio has. Also, desktop HDDs are optimized for desktop environment (read-ahead and write caching) but server HDDs are most likely optimized for write caching (as read-ahead is completely useless for completely random access).
How about cache? Caching can significantly reduce number of seeks, thus making random access time less meaningful. There are desktop HDDs that have more cache memory than Savvio has. Also, desktop HDDs are optimized for desktop environment (read-ahead and write caching) but server HDDs are most likely optimized for write caching (as read-ahead is completely useless for completely random access).
Re: try a smaller partition on a slower drive
How would someone go about doing this?rhelmer wrote:Why not just short-stroke a slower-spinning drive? If you take a 500 GB 7200 RPM drive and short-stroke it to, say 125 GB, you'll get fantastic latency performance.
By creating a small partition at the outer edge of the platter (beginning sectors) you get better performance. The downside is you cut the capacity of your drive very significantly. If you partition the extra space and and use it at the same time as the other partition you'll have severe performance reduction.
re: smaller partition
I disagree... if you take a 500 GB drive with 14 ms average latency and create a partition that sits on only the outer 1/5th of the platter, I think you'll be right in that ballpark, if not better.Considering the Savvio 10k.1, according to storage review, has faster access times than any other 10k drive out there, and current 3.5" 15k drives are in the 5.5 to 6.0ms real world range... you're not going to come close.
let's not go overboard on seek time
seek time is important, yes, but here's something to ponder
I have two drives attached to my computer right now
drive (A) has a seek time of 0.7 ms
drive (B) has a seek time of 8.5ms
But I'm not using drive (A) as my operating drive because there's some data missing.........
drive (A) has a seek time of 0.7ms and average transfer rate of *7.5mb/sec*
drive (B) has a seek time of 8.5ms and average transfer rate of *85mb/sec*
yeah, Drive (A) is a USB memory stick, and I have run operating systems off compact flash cards and USB sticks and while they work....they are no where near as fast as a hard drive.
The low seek time of Seagate's 15K Savvio is like 2.9ms, which is fantastic for any hard drive, but even at 15K I'm not sure that the transfer rates will be that much more than 10K drives - when the original Seagate Savvio was compared to 3.5 inch 10K rpm drives in a single user environmet the result from storage review was:
"The situation does not improve with the other DriveMarks. Whether High-End, Bootup, or Gaming, the Savvio lags behind the competition by huge margins. It remains painfully obvious that the Savvio is not intended for use in non-server scenarios."
will a 15K Savvio beat out a 10K raptor in the dekstop environment? it shouldn't and it's not supposed to.......not because it isn't a great drive, it's because the savvio is designed for a very specific purpose....for example handling hundreds and hundreds of database queries (which are only requesting very small pieces of data) it really excells - but booting up an OS will probably be a bad day for it.
I've looked at all the benchmarks, and the 150GB Raptor is the one to get, I just don't see the 15K Savvio changing that situation.
originally I almost bought the 10k savvio for my boot drive untill I did a few tests and read some articles (including seagate's information about the Savvio)
I just ordered a new 320 GB drive and I trying to bench out the effect of "shorting" the drive to see how that really impacts performance
I have two drives attached to my computer right now
drive (A) has a seek time of 0.7 ms
drive (B) has a seek time of 8.5ms
But I'm not using drive (A) as my operating drive because there's some data missing.........
drive (A) has a seek time of 0.7ms and average transfer rate of *7.5mb/sec*
drive (B) has a seek time of 8.5ms and average transfer rate of *85mb/sec*
yeah, Drive (A) is a USB memory stick, and I have run operating systems off compact flash cards and USB sticks and while they work....they are no where near as fast as a hard drive.
The low seek time of Seagate's 15K Savvio is like 2.9ms, which is fantastic for any hard drive, but even at 15K I'm not sure that the transfer rates will be that much more than 10K drives - when the original Seagate Savvio was compared to 3.5 inch 10K rpm drives in a single user environmet the result from storage review was:
"The situation does not improve with the other DriveMarks. Whether High-End, Bootup, or Gaming, the Savvio lags behind the competition by huge margins. It remains painfully obvious that the Savvio is not intended for use in non-server scenarios."
will a 15K Savvio beat out a 10K raptor in the dekstop environment? it shouldn't and it's not supposed to.......not because it isn't a great drive, it's because the savvio is designed for a very specific purpose....for example handling hundreds and hundreds of database queries (which are only requesting very small pieces of data) it really excells - but booting up an OS will probably be a bad day for it.
I've looked at all the benchmarks, and the 150GB Raptor is the one to get, I just don't see the 15K Savvio changing that situation.
originally I almost bought the 10k savvio for my boot drive untill I did a few tests and read some articles (including seagate's information about the Savvio)
I just ordered a new 320 GB drive and I trying to bench out the effect of "shorting" the drive to see how that really impacts performance
Hi, while I believe some of the 15K drives may not be too bad for idle noise their seek noise is likely to be loud. When looking at the "short stroked" drive scenario it's important to remember rotational latency. That is the time it takes the platter to revolve to place the data under the head. In ms it's 60,000/drive rpm, for 7K2 drive it's 8.33ms, for 10K it's 6ms and for 15K it's 4ms, the average rotational latency is half a rotation. So a 7K2 drive has an average of 4.17ms to add to it's seek time, even if it's very short stroked and the seek time is only 1ms the average access time will still be over 5ms.
Unfortunately with HDDs the physical specs of seek time and transfer rate, which can be measured easily, do not really tell you how it will perform. The amount of cache and the "black magic" in the firmware that gets the best (or not) out of it has a huge impact on real world performance.
SCSI drives tend to have their firmware tuned for server work and ATA/SATA drives will be tuned for desktop use, this is why in desktop use SATA drives can out perform SCSI drives despite being mechanically inferior. There is lots of info on the whole complicated subject over on www.storagereview.com.
To get back on topic I would ask the OP what they are using the drive(s) for? Server use only comes from a server, a heavily loaded/multi-tasking desktop machine is still a desktop load. For desktop load Western Digital Raptors are the way to go, just get the newer ones with 16MB cache. In desktop use they are the fastest drives, even beating 15K SCSI drives. I believe they're surprisingly quiet at idle although seeks can be a bit loud. If it's too loud they can be put in enclosures, eg Scythe quiet drive and with some airflow not over-heat. If you really need a SCSI drive then I'm afraid I can't really help other than to say modern FDB drives don't have the horrible whine/squeal of older ball bearing drives and maybe fairly quiet but they won't be SilentPC quiet.
Seb
Unfortunately with HDDs the physical specs of seek time and transfer rate, which can be measured easily, do not really tell you how it will perform. The amount of cache and the "black magic" in the firmware that gets the best (or not) out of it has a huge impact on real world performance.
SCSI drives tend to have their firmware tuned for server work and ATA/SATA drives will be tuned for desktop use, this is why in desktop use SATA drives can out perform SCSI drives despite being mechanically inferior. There is lots of info on the whole complicated subject over on www.storagereview.com.
To get back on topic I would ask the OP what they are using the drive(s) for? Server use only comes from a server, a heavily loaded/multi-tasking desktop machine is still a desktop load. For desktop load Western Digital Raptors are the way to go, just get the newer ones with 16MB cache. In desktop use they are the fastest drives, even beating 15K SCSI drives. I believe they're surprisingly quiet at idle although seeks can be a bit loud. If it's too loud they can be put in enclosures, eg Scythe quiet drive and with some airflow not over-heat. If you really need a SCSI drive then I'm afraid I can't really help other than to say modern FDB drives don't have the horrible whine/squeal of older ball bearing drives and maybe fairly quiet but they won't be SilentPC quiet.
Seb