[mythtv-users] Hard drive recommendation

[Joseph A. Caputo]

On Sunday 29 February 2004 21:03, Isaac Richards wrote:
> On Sunday 22 February 2004 07:59 am, Joseph A. Caputo wrote:
> > On Friday 20 February 2004 18:48, J. Donavan Stanley wrote:
> > > Chris Petersen wrote:
> > > >>Look into the Barracuda 7200.7 line...
> > > >
> > > >Speaking of which, I think there is a deal for one of these
> > > > listed at techbargains.com right now..   $130 or so for a 200G
> > > > drive.
> > >
> > > I've got the 200gb 7200.7 in my main Myth box.  It's hot, but
> > > I've never heard it running, not even during boot up.
> >
> > Yeah, I got one of these a little while back via the rebate CompUSA
> > was offering ($100 after rebates), and I was quite surprised &
> > impressed at how quiet it is.  I can never hear it running at all,
> > even when there's a lot of disk activity.
> >
> > I hear the Barracuda V is even quieter, if that's possible.
>
> Just an update on the Seagate 7200.7:  I bought a 200GB 7200.7 last
> week, and it exhibits the behavior described here:
>
> http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/view_message/20081647
>
> Basically, when the drive is idle for a a little bit, it will, all on
> its own, decide to start seeking around and reading mass amounts of
> data.
>
> It's relatively loud and very annoying, when the computer would
> otherwise be quiet.  I've worked around this by running a little
> shell script that runs 'hdparm -I /dev/hdb' every second to prevent
> the drive from ever being detected as idle, but that's not really an
> ideal solution.  I certainly would not have bought the drive if I had
> known of this in advance.

Hmmm, I don't think I'm seeing this on my 200GB 7200.7... it's quite a 
bit quieter than my old 120GB WD Caviar, but I still think I'd notice 
if it was thrashing like that... I wonder if it's because I have swap 
enabled on a partition on that drive (and it's also my boot drive)?  So 
that maybe it's never detected as idle... my HD light is always on 
(steady), even though I usually can't detect any disk activity when I'm 
not using it...

-JAC