WD5000AADS: where in the world is Caviar Sandiego?

swivelguy2 · Post by **swivelguy2** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 9:57 am

Short stroking means only using part of the drive. A hard drive's first partition is always at its outer edge, which is the fastest part of the disk. By short stroking, you avoid using the slower inner parts of the disk, which have the lowest throughput. Only using the outer part of the disk also means that the maximum distance the heads will need to travel is reduced. This reduces seek time and may also reduce seek noise.

The simplest way to short stroke your disk is when formatting it before installing an operating system. Simply create partitions that don't fully use the disk. Leaving the remainder unformatted is optional, but preferred, because Windows may occasionally send the heads to an empty partition just to check that it's still empty or something.

The only disadvantage to short stroking in this way is a reduction in available disk space. If you decide later that you in fact need the space, you can create additional partitions in the unformatted space without affecting your existing partitions.

Using dedicated partitions for your swap file and operating system near the start of the disk can provide part of the benefit of short-stroking without an actual loss in capacity. I have been doing this for years.

JVM · Post by **JVM** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 10:07 am

swivelguy2 wrote:Short stroking means only using part of the drive. A hard drive's first partition is always at its outer edge, which is the fastest part of the disk. By short stroking, you avoid using the slower inner parts of the disk, which have the lowest throughput. Only using the outer part of the disk also means that the maximum distance the heads will need to travel is reduced. This reduces seek time and may also reduce seek noise.

The simplest way to short stroke your disk is when formatting it before installing an operating system. Simply create partitions that don't fully use the disk. Leaving the remainder unformatted is optional, but preferred, because Windows may occasionally send the heads to an empty partition just to check that it's still empty or something.

The only disadvantage to short stroking in this way is a reduction in available disk space. If you decide later that you in fact need the space, you can create additional partitions in the unformatted space without affecting your existing partitions.

Using dedicated partitions for your swap file and operating system near the start of the disk can provide part of the benefit of short-stroking without an actual loss in capacity. I have been doing this for years.

What if the OS is installed on the disk?

swivelguy2 · Post by **swivelguy2** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 10:23 am

You'd have to reformat and erase the disk completely in order to change your partition setup.

JVM · Post by **JVM** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 10:57 am

JVM wrote:
swivelguy2 wrote:Short stroking means only using part of the drive. A hard drive's first partition is always at its outer edge, which is the fastest part of the disk. By short stroking, you avoid using the slower inner parts of the disk, which have the lowest throughput. Only using the outer part of the disk also means that the maximum distance the heads will need to travel is reduced. This reduces seek time and may also reduce seek noise.

The simplest way to short stroke your disk is when formatting it before installing an operating system. Simply create partitions that don't fully use the disk. Leaving the remainder unformatted is optional, but preferred, because Windows may occasionally send the heads to an empty partition just to check that it's still empty or something.

The only disadvantage to short stroking in this way is a reduction in available disk space. If you decide later that you in fact need the space, you can create additional partitions in the unformatted space without affecting your existing partitions.

Using dedicated partitions for your swap file and operating system near the start of the disk can provide part of the benefit of short-stroking without an actual loss in capacity. I have been doing this for years.
What if the OS is installed on the disk?

With the fastest partition at the end, how do you leave the beginning empty? I have always used one partition so I don't know if that fastest part you speak of is in the first partition or not.

swivelguy2 · Post by **swivelguy2** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 11:18 am

JVM wrote:With the fastest partition at the end, how do you leave the beginning empty? I have always used one partition so I don't know if that fastest part you speak of is in the first partition or not.

The fastest part of the disk is the "beginning." If you start with a new, unformatted disk (or delete all the partitions on an existing disk), then the first partition you create will be placed at the beginning of the disk, in the fastest location. The second partition that you create will begin immediately following the first partition, in the next fastest available space.

If for some reason you wanted to leave a portion in the beginning or middle of the disk unformatted, you would do that by creating multiple partitions, then deleting earlier partitions. The later partitions remain where they were created, in slower parts of the disk. There's no reason I can think of that you would want to do this, however.

We've gottan a little off-topic for this thread, and I don't see a dedicated short-stroking thread, so if you have any further questions, let's make one.

Lt_Dan · Post by **Lt_Dan** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 2:22 pm

interesting topic, i have a question about the 750GB- http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=608

in contrast to the 750gb that was reviewed here- http://www.silentpcreview.com/article786-page1.html

is there a speed difference? it's 2-3 platters?

(actually, what's the difference between the blue and the green?) why does the green take less power?

thanks.
dan

line · Post by **line** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 4:12 pm

Blue is 7200rpm, Green is (so far) 5400rpm and unloads the read/write heads to further reduce power use at idle. I'm not sure about the platter density in the 750GB AADS.

Lt_Dan · Post by **Lt_Dan** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 9:01 am

also, why is the blue ranked higher in the spcr charts?

would a 3 platter green (750) be quieter then a 2 platter blue (640)?

(couldn't find the density, another topic suggested it was 3*333mb or 3*250)

Chis · Post by **Chis** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:08 pm

I don't know about the WD5000AADS, but the newest WD5000AAKS Caviar Blue are now single platter drives, and VERY fast!

... Argh, sorry, I can't post links. It's at Yertech's / Yersys blogspot page.

Drat, I still have one of the first gen WD5000AAKS drives...

Matija · Post by **Matija** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 12:14 am

I think you can edit the message to insert a link, but here you go anyway: http://yertech.blogspot.com/

Shamgar · Post by **Shamgar** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 12:40 am

Chis wrote:I don't know about the WD5000AADS, but the newest WD5000AAKS Caviar Blue are now single platter drives, and VERY fast!

On a related note, I cannot find WD6400AAKS Blue locally anymore. It appears to be discontinued, which is strange. WD5000AAKS Blue and WD5000AADS is still available, with Blue in lesser quantities. This situation might differ in your locality.

mattthemuppet · Post by **mattthemuppet** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 6:54 am

Matija wrote:I think you can edit the message to insert a link, but here you go anyway: http://yertech.blogspot.com/

here you go. looks pretty sweet

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 12:36 pm

Dreams come true, after all

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 12:40 pm

A mini-review from an italian friend on PCSilenzioso.it, the italian site for our quest for silence: http://www.pcsilenzioso.it/forum/showth ... post132528

It seems Samsung EcogreenF2 is more silent under idle, but the AADS have a better noise in reading/writing than Ecogreen F2.

xcetera · Post by **xcetera** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 8:08 pm

Just received my WD5001AALS-00L3B2 from the Egg. Will be building new computer; i7 920, DX58SO, 6gb DDR3 1333, P182SE, HX620 and benchmark.

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Thu Nov 19, 2009 3:56 am

So xcetera, what about your new drive?

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 2:03 pm

A quoting from Yersys Technology Blog: "Now here's something you don't see everyday. I found a Japanese site that tested a brand new single platter WD5000AADS drive, then opened the drive up completely, taking out the platter and determining the RPM, which was found to be 4995RPM. Interesting."

So, not a 5400rpm, but a 5000rpm one

http://translate.google.ca/translate?u= ... n&ie=UTF-8

I REALLY need a SPCR review/investigation

Kaizer · Post by **Kaizer** » Sun Mar 07, 2010 10:33 pm

Just installed this drive in my parent's new computer. 8600X3 on Fanless Ninja Rev B + Gigabyte 785G + Sonata 2 + Sparkle 400W w/120mm fan + 2 x Yate loon 120mm fans (<1000rpm). The AADS idles better than my old Samsung SP2014N but the seeks have a more pronounced clicking sound. I can't do any additional testing as of this time as I am away from my parent's city.

WD5000AADS: where in the world is Caviar Sandiego?

[i]WD7500AACS\WD7500AADS[/i]