2TB Hard Drive

[Konig]

Originally Posted by jgscott987

A 'green' drive might be 50% more efficient, saving you a whopping $2 per year. If these green drives turn out to have a shorter life span, I'd say that's not very green at all.

That's a good point, making the decision much easier. I was reading on the forums at storage review that, based on the recent price cuts, platter sizes could go up soon from 500GB to the next logical step of 640GB. I don't know if I can wait long, tho.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by SHS

More Heat yes that ture and as for more moving part that no it dosen't matter if 4 platters or 1 platters it still only 2 moving parts

That depends on your point of view. While there may not be additional parts which could break due to wear and tear (discounting bad sectors), there are additional moving parts in the form of the platters. In turn, these are what cause additional noise.

[SHS]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

That depends on your point of view. While there may not be additional parts which could break due to wear and tear (discounting bad sectors), there are additional moving parts in the form of the platters. In turn, these are what cause additional noise.

WRONG the platters are Direct to the Motor Spindle and other part that move is the Actuator Arm so there for there are only two moving parts

[sandor]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

I have 4 of the AV-GP drives and not only will I never buy them again, but I'll never buy ANY green drive again. They simply don't warrant a price premium. Does the AV-GP work? Sure. Any better than the regular GP series? Not as far as I can tell. Am I saving electricity? Not in any measurable (i.e. monetary) fashion. Bottom line: I'll be going with dual platter, 7200 rpm drives in the future. They're faster, quieter, and cooler.

Price premium? the only reason i got the EADS "green" drives was that they were the **cheapest** 2 TB drives on Newegg at the time. It seems like the other manufacturers have started to meet the WD Green price point though.

WD seems to have three tiers - Green Blue Black - priced in that order from cheapest to most expensive.

[Djc208]

My understanding of the WD Green drives is not that they spin down on their own, but that they can vary their spin speed dynamically. For instance when idle they will spin down to 5400 RPM, then will spin up to a higher speed if required to read or write data.

Also states they will park the heads in order to reduce drag on the drive platters, and shut down the read/write electronics, when idle in order to save electricity.

So you can still set them not to spin down when idle, they will however still go into an "idle" mode where they spin slower and park the heads.

The savings may not be huge but every little bit helps.

They do raise one other point in their favor. With lower energy requirements and their variable speed algorithms they state the drives have a lower startup load to allow more drives to spin up at boot without any power issues. Probably not a huge issue in the home for most but still, can help you save money on your power supply if you design it well.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by SHS

WRONG the platters are Direct to the Motor Spindle and other part that move is the Actuator Arm so there for there are only two moving parts

By that logic, the tires on my car don't move either, since they're attached to the axle. I also suppose the only two things that move in an engine would be the valve which releases the gas and the piston. Glad there are only two moving parts in the ICE or else it'd be a really complex device.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by sandor

Price premium? the only reason i got the EADS "green" drives was that they were the **cheapest** 2 TB drives on Newegg at the time. It seems like the other manufacturers have started to meet the WD Green price point though.

WD seems to have three tiers - Green Blue Black - priced in that order from cheapest to most expensive.

When the GP line first came out, they did have a price premium. WD was the first to market with a "green" drive, so they were able to command a larger price. So, to that end, you're right... nowadays, price is not a barrier with these drives.

[SHS]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

By that logic, the tires on my car don't move either, since they're attached to the axle. I also suppose the only two things that move in an engine would be the valve which releases the gas and the piston. Glad there are only two moving parts in the ICE or else it'd be a really complex device.

In your case with the tire that kind like a Direct drive mechanism there and axle shaft then Rim and a Tire mount to the rim and rim is bolt to the axle.
Direct drive mechanism is one that takes the power coming from a motor without any reductions (from the belt, chain, etc, and especially, gearboxes).
Their are lots of different types of moving parts. Crankshaft, connecting rods, pistons, intake valves, exhaust valves, camshaft, lifters, pushrods, rocker arms, oil pump, fuel pump, timing chain, distrubitor and distrubitor parts, and it also Crankshaft pulley, altenator, water pump, powersteering pump, fan, thermostate, carberator and parts. All together their are over 200+ moving parts in a engine.
And that dosen't count what in a Automatic or Manual transmission nor Drive Line and Differential common know as an Axle which can be Chain or Soild or IRS/IFS.

[Skirge01]

This will be my last post on this subject, since you apparently live in your own little world, which you seem to bend to whatever reality you want. You seem to use the same mentality that Adam Savage did when he said, "I reject your reality and substitute my own."

Is a platter physically molded to the spindle? (Answer is no.)
Is a car's tire physically molded to the axle? (Answer is no.)
If I remove the platter from the spindle, will the platter still move? (Answer is no.)
Will the spindle? (Answer is yes.)
If I remove the car's tire from the axle, will the tire still move? (Answer is no.)
Will the axle? (Answer is yes.)
Therefore, either the platter in a hard drive moves or the wheels of a car do not. You can't have it both ways.

I enjoy a good debate, but not when there's no actual logic coming from the opposing team.

[Fuzzy]

I agree that more platters doens't mean any more wear and tear. wear and tear is not on the platters themselves, but on the pivot points... 4 platters or one, it doens't matter, there's still only a two pivot points, at the top, and at the bottom.

[Djc208]

I think the better vehicle analogy would be a dual tire setup like on a big truck. The two wheels on each side are bolted to one axle, they are seperarate pieces but all three rotate together, so you haven't really added any new failure points to the assembly.

The analogy breaks down however because a tire and axle assembly sees outside dynamic loads which can induce their own forces and damage, where the HD platters are sealed and in a fairly static environment. But if you considered this assembly running on a dyno or suspended in air you could bolt 12 tires to the axle and the only difference you've created is the increased torsional loading in the axle assembly. As long as the assembly is designed for that loading then there's no real additional risk from more tires or more platters. Ultimately you still only have the same wear points if there's one tire attached to the axle or 12.

The caviat there is designed for that additional loading. Engineering requirements could dictate that the design change as you add those additional wheels (more or larger bearings, bigger motor, etc.). If that's not the case then naturally the larger/heavier system will not hold up as well.

[Rezolution]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

I have 6 of these (2TB WD20EADS) in my SageTV server and use them for Blu-ray movie storage AND recorded SageTV shows - no problems at all with either and I don't notice any issues with recording or slow startup.

Helen,

I have a few questions about your (2TB WD20EADS) drives if you don't mind answering.

=============================================
What file system are the drives formatted with?

What size clusters do you use on the drives?

Do you have the drive set to "Optimize for quick removal" or "Optimize for performance"?
=============================================

I'm asking because I've been getting "Halted Recordings" and TONS of "Even 51 (An error was detected on device xxx during a paging operation" in my Event Viewer/System logs.

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by Rezolution

Helen,

I have a few questions about your (2TB WD20EADS) drives if you don't mind answering.

=============================================
What file system are the drives formatted with?

What size clusters do you use on the drives?

Do you have the drive set to "Optimize for quick removal" or "Optimize for performance"?
=============================================

I'm asking because I've been getting "Halted Recordings" and TONS of "Even 51 (An error was detected on device xxx during a paging operation" in my Event Viewer/System logs.

Mine are internal with write caching enabled (the equivalent of optomized for performance), NTFS, 64k clusters.

[Rezolution]

Thanks for the quick response. One last question (I promise).

How do you have the power management settings for your drives set up? Do you have it set to spin them down after a fixed number of minutes?

I just turned off write caching and turned off power management on the drives and the event 51 errors are gone. Except I'm not sure which of the two settings it was that fixed it

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by Rezolution

Thanks for the quick response. One last question (I promise).

How do you have the power management settings for your drives set up? Do you have it set to spin them down after a fixed number of minutes?

I just turned off write caching and turned off power management on the drives and the event 51 errors are gone. Except I'm not sure which of the two settings it was that fixed it

Turn off hard drives is set to never. When I first set up the WD20EADS drive I tested it as the only recording drive. With 4 OTA ATSC HiDef recordings being made I was able to watch (at the same time) the recordings in progress on 3 HD200 extenders without any hesitation at all, and no glitches in the recordings.

[Rezolution]

I should have just tried turning off the power management before i started messing with the write cache settings. I'm currently recording 3 OTA standard def and two silicon dust high def with no event 51 errors and no halting. Looking back at my logs, I should have realized it must have been the power management settings because all the event 51s were occurring on the hour or on the half hour, basically when the recordings were starting...

I don't notice any difference though with the drives set for "Optimize for quick removal" so I think I'm just going to leave everything as is. I get 12.1 MB/sec read write on the externals regardless of the setting.