[mythtv-users] Dec 2008 - State of the Art - Hard Drive Recommendations?

[f-myth-users at media.mit.edu]

    > Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:18:34 -0500
    > From: "Michael T. Dean" <mtdean at thirdcontact.com>

    > All 3 of my 1.5TB HDD's I got from newegg were shipped with enough 
    > bubble wrap wrapped and taped around it that I couldn't even see the 
    > drive underneath.  Also, 2 of them--the most-recent 2--were packed with 
    > enough styrofoam peanuts or paper that the drive didn't move inside the 

That sure sounds encouraging.  Were these coming from the CA
warehouse, NJ, or somewhere else?  (You live in FL, do you not?
I dunno if Newegg has warehouses near there.)

    > box.  I'd guess the most-recent 2 were better packaged because of all 
    > the people complaining about the packaging.

I hope so.  The reviews seem to come & go about shipping quality.
I wonder if it's a warehouse thing or a how-busy-we-are thing.

But if the two reports here so far are any indicatation (N=2!  that's
statistically significant! :), then there may be a whole lotta sample
bias at Newegg.  I'll spend the evening totalling up non-firmware-related
gripes and compare to the 1T's from various vendors.

    > Also, when you note:
    > http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/desktop/Barracuda%207200.11/100507013e.pdf
    > -----
    > All shock specifications assume that the drive is mounted securely with 
    > the input shock applied at the drive mounting screws. Shock may be 

...which has -nothing- to do with what happens when it's shocked in
transit, since it's not screwed into an external frame.  Many of those
shocks will be to the top metal plate---the one that says "don't push here!"

    > applied in the X, Y or Z axis.
    > ...
    > The nonoperating shock level that the drive can experience without 
    > incurring physical damage or degradation in performance when 
    > subsequently put into operation is 300 Gs based on a nonrepetitive 

In other words, "you get to drop it -once- only".

    > half-sine shock pulse of 2 msec duration.
    > -----
    > Today's drives aren't your grandfather's HDD's--you know, the ones that 
    > couldn't ever be moved.  Thank the boom in the laptop market for the 
    > increased shock resistance.

Nonetheless---dropping a component 1m to a concrete floor can shock it
300G, which is why many boy-they-look-tough things like individual
transistor nevertheless say "fragile".  And a 1m drop is pretty likely
for many delivery services if they aren't being careful, so the
padding is essential.  (I still remember the 20-year-old story about
the time we saw someone push a monitor box off the back of his truck
directly to the ground near our loading dock, and how the person who
saw it ran down and insisted that the shipper open the box right then
and there before he drove away.  Yup, giant crack and imploded CRT...
or another of our employees whose father worked for USPS where they
had a sport of trying to -bounce- the packages marked fragile against
each other in midair so that each landed in the appropriately-labelled
bin...  *sigh* :)

[Certainly when I have things delivered to my house, I can -hear- a
tremendous -thump- if the UPS guy thinks it's "just a box" and throws
it the last meter or so to its destination.]

    > So, just get Tom's Hardware (or whomever) to do some real-world tests to 
    > see how well today's HDD's tolerate shock under various conditions (bare 
    > and bubble wrapped drives dropped onto various surfaces from various 
    > heights with various areas--side, bottom, corner--making first contact 
    > as well as drives in boxes, with various packaging methods).  I'd read 
    > the article.

So would I.

(But it might be sorta -expensive- to research... :)