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

[Andrew Barbaccia]

On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 3:10 PM, <f-myth-users at media.mit.edu> wrote:

>    > 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... :)
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