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5930 Posts
1) Do you have a report on that? Google (note: this is obviously for server workloads not consumer) posted a report on consumer hard disk failure causes and they found usage and temperature had no real correlation with hard disk failure besides the obvious: very young (under 6 months) and very old drives (5+ years) are more likely to die out. Its easy to find, its like the only credible hard disk failure report on the internet.
2) Who cares. Suspend the drive if you're that annoyed about it. Yes, it is safe if you do it right.
3) Who cares. This isn't a laptop. As long as your hard disk isn't literally melting, temperature very likely doesn't matter.
4) Who cares you're not moving it. If you are moving it, desktops will have proper mounting options anyway.
5) Then decouple it from the desktop if you can "hear" it. If you're not a silence nut then who even cares? Its not really an audible grinding noise if you case has proper hard drive dampening.
Is this a desktop or a laptop? Half of those things are completely pointless for a desktop. Its as if you're trying to convince yourself that this is a good decision. Seriously, Chase Jarvis, a man who has so much money that he uses Apple Xserves as his main server, will have a slower I/O workflow than you if you do buy a bunch of 240GB SSDs for storage drives.
Edit:
For christ's sake for all the problems tape drives have, we still use them.
Mechanical drives are better than SSDs for storage. They are cheaper and do just as good of a job. No one is going to say that SSDs are bad for boot drives or for workloads that need very fast read/write speeds like recording 4k content.
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Maybe I phrased that badly, I'm not sure whether the failure rates are higher due to intensive usage. What I meant was plainly that the lifespan is shorter in mechanical drives. For example, Storelab did some gigantic test on this and the lifespan in the 4000 disks were between two and a half year and four years (also due to a couple failing early/defect from the start).
I've had critical sector errors on all my disks older than 4 years, I don't understand why you defend hard drives so much.
It's a bit more difficult to make a direct comparison to SSDs due to even the first generation hasn't started failing or grown old from normal usage, but my 2 year old vertex 2 apparently has around 9 years left with the same amount of usage/power-on time. While it isn't a number to be fully trusted, around 10 years in average for an extremely cheaply manufactured SSD is a lot better than any hard drive.
Your "who cares?" retorts are just ridiculous. "Unless you're doing this, unless you're doing that you can still use a mechanical hard drive". Yeah of course I can, but I was listing why SSDs were superior, not just looking at the average clueless PC gamer, but for different niches. For example, when SSDs become normative the chassis manufacturers can skip front bay slots/hard drive cages altogether, making even normal atx size chassis much smaller. And people who move the computer a lot will obviously care about rather having SSDs. Switching between shitty rubber solutions and hard screws every time you want to move it doesn't seem like a nice idea. And yeah, the grinding is and will be clearly audible, especially due to me using a relatively open case for ventilation.
And yet again, mechanical hard drives doesn't do as good job at storage, due to access times. I mean, I'm not talking about using the SSD as a backup unit, I'm talking about normally frequently accessed music library, games, movies, pictures and programs. A 120gb OS drive can't handle all that.
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The average "clueless gamer" buys whatever has the best marketing hype anyways. Niche uses are exactly that. NICHE.
If you WANT to do something, there's no harm in doing it, it's your money. What's silly is when you try to justify it to other people based on things that aren't all that relevant to 99% of users. Also, what frequently takes noticeable amounts of time is loading the software that those files are played from.
If you put, say, adobe reader on an SSD, and then store PDFs on an HDD, you'll still load PDFs pretty much instantly, because the longer load times were from the software, not the file. Unless it's an abnormally large PDF, an SSD isn't going to make a noticeable difference in load time.
I can make any set of benchmarks look like massive or tiny differences, but when the average seek time for a good HDD is less than the time an individual frame displays while gaming on a 60hz display, you're not going to convince me that it's worth paying 10x+ more for using an SSD for storage in a desktop.
Noise and heat just plain shouldn't be issues with an HDD. If you're worried about noise, you'll do better buying a case that's designed for acoustics than you will spending up on an HDD. Check SPCR, they cover all kinds of tricks for getting HDDs quiet. If heat doesn't kill HDDs in high performance laptops, odds are you're not going to melt one in a mid tower unless you're completely stupid and deserve it.
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Smart response question:
So I have a 128GB crucial M4, and I've installed pretty much all of the "fast" things I need on it and have 35 gb left. I'm about to install a 1tb older 5400 rpm drive (once the damn mounting bracket arrives) and I was wondering if it is worth partitioning 10-20 gb of the ssd for use with smart response on the mechanical drive, since it isn't the fastest. Will this make any noticeable difference, or does the fact that my OS and games are on the SSD preclude much benefit?
Performance-wise, the only thing I think it may help is photo editing, which I do a decent amount of, and obviously the photos would be on the mechanical drive.
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On April 08 2012 23:13 alQahira wrote:
Smart response question:
So I have a 128GB crucial M4, and I've installed pretty much all of the "fast" things I need on it and have 35 gb left. I'm about to install a 1tb older 5400 rpm drive (once the damn mounting bracket arrives) and I was wondering if it is worth partitioning 10-20 gb of the ssd for use with smart response on the mechanical drive, since it isn't the fastest. Will this make any noticeable difference, or does the fact that my OS and games are on the SSD preclude much benefit?
Performance-wise, the only thing I think it may help is photo editing, which I do a decent amount of, and obviously the photos would be on the mechanical drive.
I'd personally just upgrade to a 32MB cache 7200 RPM and keep the SSD space for new games or productivity software down the road.
But that's just me. I hate 5400 RPM drives.
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5930 Posts
On April 08 2012 23:13 alQahira wrote:
Smart response question:
So I have a 128GB crucial M4, and I've installed pretty much all of the "fast" things I need on it and have 35 gb left. I'm about to install a 1tb older 5400 rpm drive (once the damn mounting bracket arrives) and I was wondering if it is worth partitioning 10-20 gb of the ssd for use with smart response on the mechanical drive, since it isn't the fastest. Will this make any noticeable difference, or does the fact that my OS and games are on the SSD preclude much benefit?
Performance-wise, the only thing I think it may help is photo editing, which I do a decent amount of, and obviously the photos would be on the mechanical drive.
How smart response works is that it works exactly like a cache. Initial loads of programs and files will be slow because they haven't been put into the cache; frequent loads of files will be quick because Intel's software has dumped the accessed files into the cache you have allocated. The size of your cache describes how many files you can dump in your cache before the software starts removing the most infrequently used data.
So its actually not that useful if you've already got an SSD...smart response might be useful for Steam since you can dump your game of the month in the allocated portion and automatically eject it when you've had enough with it. I don't think it will actually help that much when it comes to photoediting since you generally process a batch, through Adobe Lightroom + Photoshop, then forget about it. At least, that's how I do most of my basic editing work.
On April 08 2012 22:59 Shauni wrote:
And yet again, mechanical hard drives doesn't do as good job at storage, due to access times. I mean, I'm not talking about using the SSD as a backup unit, I'm talking about normally frequently accessed music library, games, movies, pictures and programs. A 120gb OS drive can't handle all that.
You have to literally be OCD about access speeds to get an SSD for movies, music, and general pictures - this is the point I am getting at and I refuse to believe anyone is that OCD about it. We aren't talking about loading Photoshop dozens of seconds faster, we're talking literally one second (in many cases, milliseconds since its the processor/RAM still has to do the work).
A single 120GB OS drive can hold your most frequently accessed programs and OS easily enough. Perhaps a 240GB if you really want to dump your whole Steam folder in there. If you're a prosumer photographer or videographer, then perhaps consider a larger SSD/secondary SSD because you actually have RAW files large enough to justify the size.
Since you're talking about rubber hard drive mounting solutions and a chassis filled with holes, I guess I'm sorry you got a bad computer chassis for quiet computing...? If you want a very, very quiet computer, get a system designed for it before complaining about system noise.
I'm still a neurotic when it comes to quiet computing. I've concluded that if your desktop is essentially quieter than the noise floor of your house (a good quiet system is), then when even bother going full passive with zero moving parts? Run fans at 500RPM and you don't really hear them unless you try to hear it; suspending/sandwiching the hard disks, which is safe since there are good quality aftermarket products that do it for you, will kill seek and idle noise because the dominant source of noise is a result of structural acoustics and not airbourne acoustics.
You kill the main source of hard drive acoustics as well as learn to not to care about opening that torrented movie one second faster, and you'll find that SSDs offer nothing different from hard disks for your mass media needs.
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Hey everyone. I posted this + Show Spoiler +Hey guys im in need of a new computer and have a friend whos gonna build it for me. Heres all the info, your help is much appreciated! What is your budget? $1000-1200 What is your resolution? 1920x1080 23" What are you using it for? Gaming. Want to be able to play sc2 and bf3 at max graphics no lag. What is your upgrade cycle? 3-4 years When do you plan on building it? Right now. Link me the parts and ill buy em Do you plan on overclocking? Nope Do you need an Operating System? Yes Do you plan to add a second GPU for SLI or Crossfire? No Where are you buying your parts from? Australia http://pccasegear.com/
CPU Intel Core i5 2500 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo), Quad Core, Intel HD2000 Graphics at 850MHz (1100MHz Turbo), 6MB L3 Cache
HD SATA3, 7200RPM. The Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GB
RAM G.Skill Ripjaws X F3-10666CL9D-8GBXL (2x4GB) DDR3
Optical LG GH24NS90 24x SATA DVD-RW Drive OEM
Case CoolerMaster Elite 430 Black with window
Cooling CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler
PSU Antec 550W Strictly Power Supply, 120mm fan with Active PFC, Dual +12V rails, 2x PCI-E, 5x SATA
GPU Powercolor Radeon HD6870 1GB
Motherboard ASRock H61M-ITX Motherboard, Intel H61, LGA 1155, 2x DDR3, HDMI, DVI, D-Sub, 7.1CH HD Audio, Gigabit LAN, SATA2, USB3.0, Mini ITX form factor
Windows 7 64 bit
Monitor ASUS VE247H 23.6in Widescreen LED Monitor
If i could get some advice on the build/parts that would be awesome. Completely new to this so dont really know if this'll work or is good. Thanks in advance!
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On April 09 2012 00:43 Jaramir wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Hey everyone. I posted this + Show Spoiler +Hey guys im in need of a new computer and have a friend whos gonna build it for me. Heres all the info, your help is much appreciated! What is your budget? $1000-1200 What is your resolution? 1920x1080 23" What are you using it for? Gaming. Want to be able to play sc2 and bf3 at max graphics no lag. What is your upgrade cycle? 3-4 years When do you plan on building it? Right now. Link me the parts and ill buy em Do you plan on overclocking? Nope Do you need an Operating System? Yes Do you plan to add a second GPU for SLI or Crossfire? No Where are you buying your parts from? Australia http://pccasegear.com/ a few pages back and thought id have a crack at picking out the parts. Heres what I came up with. CPU Intel Core i5 2500 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo), Quad Core, Intel HD2000 Graphics at 850MHz (1100MHz Turbo), 6MB L3 CacheHD SATA3, 7200RPM. The Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GBRAM G.Skill Ripjaws X F3-10666CL9D-8GBXL (2x4GB) DDR3Optical LG GH24NS90 24x SATA DVD-RW Drive OEMCase CoolerMaster Elite 430 Black with windowCooling CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO CPU CoolerPSU Antec 550W Strictly Power Supply, 120mm fan with Active PFC, Dual +12V rails, 2x PCI-E, 5x SATAGPU Powercolor Radeon HD6870 1GBMotherboard ASRock H61M-ITX Motherboard, Intel H61, LGA 1155, 2x DDR3, HDMI, DVI, D-Sub, 7.1CH HD Audio, Gigabit LAN, SATA2, USB3.0, Mini ITX form factorWindows 7 64 bitMonitor ASUS VE247H 23.6in Widescreen LED MonitorIf i could get some advice on the build/parts that would be awesome. Completely new to this so dont really know if this'll work or is good. Thanks in advance!
If you're not getting an ITX case than you do not want an ITX motherboard. Get a mATX or ATX sized board such as the Asrock H61M-VS or a similar board that is better for less: http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=18337
Get the Antec Neo Eco 520C for the same price, it's better: http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=16290
Get rid of the Hyper 212 EVO since you aren't overclocking.
The rest is okay.
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If the noise from a decent 5400 rpm drive is truly too much, get a NAS and stick it somewhere else.
However, if you're really using SSDs and only SSDs to store media data, that works from a reliability / flash endurance point of view since you're not going to be constantly overwriting the data that's on the SSDs, even with torrents. Ignoring write amplification for the moment, if you fill up an SSD with data, that means you've written to most of the flash on it 1 time, out of the roughly 3000-10000 writes most blocks can take. I'd only be concerned if you were using a small SSD to cache every single write that goes to a large RAID array of mechanical drives, which you're using to store the entire contents of the Internet that you're continuously downloading.
Most SSDs stop being functional for reasons other than flash endurance, so I wouldn't count on 10 years or whatever anybody wants to quote. Both Caviar Blacks and Intel SSDs, and maybe a few others, have 5 year warranties, anyway. Regardless, average longevity could be better. There's not exactly perfect data on this issue.
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On April 09 2012 00:27 Womwomwom wrote:
Since you're talking about rubber hard drive mounting solutions and a chassis filled with holes, I guess I'm sorry you got a bad computer chassis for quiet computing...? If you want a very, very quiet computer, get a system designed for it before complaining about system noise.
Like I said before, I'm building in the ps07b, it's relatively silent but I don't think it has much sound dampening material. I don't see the point of it, since if you're running a passive or near passive you want good airflow and there is no real 'noise' to dampen. If the only issue is the hard drive then why not skip them for a more favorable drive?
I don't know what Jinglehell got wrong, but I didn't recommend it to you guys, you were the ones with skeptic looks when I mentioned torrent and SSD in the same sentence. "SSD not just used for OS drive?! Blasphemy!".
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Wait, what am I supposed to have gotten wrong? The fact that if you do it properly the performance gain is negligible? Or the fact that you can do what you want with your money, but you won't persuade us to ignore the realities of the situation?
I'm the last person to give a shit if you decide to spend money for small gains, I'm just telling you that you can avoid the spending and still get solid gains.
I say this a lot, but if you don't want to hear anything besides "You're a genius!", don't ask for opinions.
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On April 09 2012 00:52 skyR wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2012 00:43 Jaramir wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Hey everyone. I posted this + Show Spoiler +Hey guys im in need of a new computer and have a friend whos gonna build it for me. Heres all the info, your help is much appreciated! What is your budget? $1000-1200 What is your resolution? 1920x1080 23" What are you using it for? Gaming. Want to be able to play sc2 and bf3 at max graphics no lag. What is your upgrade cycle? 3-4 years When do you plan on building it? Right now. Link me the parts and ill buy em Do you plan on overclocking? Nope Do you need an Operating System? Yes Do you plan to add a second GPU for SLI or Crossfire? No Where are you buying your parts from? Australia http://pccasegear.com/ a few pages back and thought id have a crack at picking out the parts. Heres what I came up with. CPU Intel Core i5 2500 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo), Quad Core, Intel HD2000 Graphics at 850MHz (1100MHz Turbo), 6MB L3 CacheHD SATA3, 7200RPM. The Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GBRAM G.Skill Ripjaws X F3-10666CL9D-8GBXL (2x4GB) DDR3Optical LG GH24NS90 24x SATA DVD-RW Drive OEMCase CoolerMaster Elite 430 Black with windowCooling CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO CPU CoolerPSU Antec 550W Strictly Power Supply, 120mm fan with Active PFC, Dual +12V rails, 2x PCI-E, 5x SATAGPU Powercolor Radeon HD6870 1GBMotherboard ASRock H61M-ITX Motherboard, Intel H61, LGA 1155, 2x DDR3, HDMI, DVI, D-Sub, 7.1CH HD Audio, Gigabit LAN, SATA2, USB3.0, Mini ITX form factorWindows 7 64 bitMonitor ASUS VE247H 23.6in Widescreen LED MonitorIf i could get some advice on the build/parts that would be awesome. Completely new to this so dont really know if this'll work or is good. Thanks in advance! + Show Spoiler +
Thanks. That psu you linked doesn't come with a power cord and I dont have one, and neither does pccasegear. Should I buy one seperately somewhere or is there a good psu that has one included.
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On April 09 2012 02:06 Jaramir wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2012 00:52 skyR wrote:On April 09 2012 00:43 Jaramir wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Hey everyone. I posted this + Show Spoiler +Hey guys im in need of a new computer and have a friend whos gonna build it for me. Heres all the info, your help is much appreciated! What is your budget? $1000-1200 What is your resolution? 1920x1080 23" What are you using it for? Gaming. Want to be able to play sc2 and bf3 at max graphics no lag. What is your upgrade cycle? 3-4 years When do you plan on building it? Right now. Link me the parts and ill buy em Do you plan on overclocking? Nope Do you need an Operating System? Yes Do you plan to add a second GPU for SLI or Crossfire? No Where are you buying your parts from? Australia http://pccasegear.com/ a few pages back and thought id have a crack at picking out the parts. Heres what I came up with. CPU Intel Core i5 2500 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo), Quad Core, Intel HD2000 Graphics at 850MHz (1100MHz Turbo), 6MB L3 CacheHD SATA3, 7200RPM. The Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GBRAM G.Skill Ripjaws X F3-10666CL9D-8GBXL (2x4GB) DDR3Optical LG GH24NS90 24x SATA DVD-RW Drive OEMCase CoolerMaster Elite 430 Black with windowCooling CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO CPU CoolerPSU Antec 550W Strictly Power Supply, 120mm fan with Active PFC, Dual +12V rails, 2x PCI-E, 5x SATAGPU Powercolor Radeon HD6870 1GBMotherboard ASRock H61M-ITX Motherboard, Intel H61, LGA 1155, 2x DDR3, HDMI, DVI, D-Sub, 7.1CH HD Audio, Gigabit LAN, SATA2, USB3.0, Mini ITX form factorWindows 7 64 bitMonitor ASUS VE247H 23.6in Widescreen LED MonitorIf i could get some advice on the build/parts that would be awesome. Completely new to this so dont really know if this'll work or is good. Thanks in advance! + Show Spoiler + Thanks. That psu you linked doesn't come with a power cord and I dont have one, and neither does pccasegear. Should I buy one seperately somewhere or is there a good psu that has one included.
Every computer store should have power cables since they're swimming in computers: http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=3595
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I wish the US used those plugs, actually. Much sturdier than the pieces of shit we use. The angles makes it a lot harder to bend and snap them if something catches a cable.
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On April 09 2012 01:59 Shauni wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2012 00:27 Womwomwom wrote:
Since you're talking about rubber hard drive mounting solutions and a chassis filled with holes, I guess I'm sorry you got a bad computer chassis for quiet computing...? If you want a very, very quiet computer, get a system designed for it before complaining about system noise.
Like I said before, I'm building in the ps07b, it's relatively silent but I don't think it has much sound dampening material. I don't see the point of it, since if you're running a passive or near passive you want good airflow and there is no real 'noise' to dampen. If the only issue is the hard drive then why not skip them for a more favorable drive? I don't know what Jinglehell got wrong, but I didn't recommend it to you guys, you were the ones with skeptic looks when I mentioned torrent and SSD in the same sentence. "SSD not just used for OS drive?! Blasphemy!".
My first response was due to a misunderstanding: I thought the torrents would be to an SSD and then copied to a mechanical drive, which doesn't make sense.
Depending on the amount of data you're looking at, I still think going flash for all data is not terribly a great idea unless you're sitting on a pile of cash, but let's not get into mischaracterizations. It's fine if you want to do that, as I covered above.
I think asking about flash durability for this application is a much dumber question from a technical point of view, than what people have been asking you, to be honest. However, this thread is about answering questions, so obviously I'm not going to hold ignorance against people who need answers.
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>< wow I totally overlooked that. Ok ive made the changes. cheers.
and your power cords look weird...
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On April 09 2012 02:20 Myrmidon wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 09 2012 01:59 Shauni wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2012 00:27 Womwomwom wrote:
Since you're talking about rubber hard drive mounting solutions and a chassis filled with holes, I guess I'm sorry you got a bad computer chassis for quiet computing...? If you want a very, very quiet computer, get a system designed for it before complaining about system noise.
Like I said before, I'm building in the ps07b, it's relatively silent but I don't think it has much sound dampening material. I don't see the point of it, since if you're running a passive or near passive you want good airflow and there is no real 'noise' to dampen. If the only issue is the hard drive then why not skip them for a more favorable drive? I don't know what Jinglehell got wrong, but I didn't recommend it to you guys, you were the ones with skeptic looks when I mentioned torrent and SSD in the same sentence. "SSD not just used for OS drive?! Blasphemy!". My first response was due to a misunderstanding: I thought the torrents would be to an SSD and then copied to a mechanical drive, which doesn't make sense. Depending on the amount of data you're looking at, I still think going flash for all data is not terribly a great idea unless you're sitting on a pile of cash, but let's not get into mischaracterizations. It's fine if you want to do that, as I covered above. I think asking about flash durability for this application is a much dumber question from a technical point of view, than what people have been asking you, to be honest. However, this thread is about answering questions, so obviously I'm not going to hold ignorance against people who need answers.
No matter how you look at it, it makes no sense.
I'd love to have 100 600GB SSDs for torrenting too but I rather spend my money else where first.
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On April 09 2012 02:05 JingleHell wrote:
Wait, what am I supposed to have gotten wrong? The fact that if you do it properly the performance gain is negligible? Or the fact that you can do what you want with your money, but you won't persuade us to ignore the realities of the situation?
I'm the last person to give a shit if you decide to spend money for small gains, I'm just telling you that you can avoid the spending and still get solid gains.
I say this a lot, but if you don't want to hear anything besides "You're a genius!", don't ask for opinions.
I don't mind criticism, and you misinterpret me again. I just brought up a question about the write cycles on SSD, and suddenly it's outrageous that I'm considering storing things on an SSD. I didn't even bring up a mechanical drive as an alternative and my question had nothing to do with SSD vs HDD initially, I was only forced to defend my own SSD usage based on your inquiries, so when you say things like "What's silly is when you try to justify it to other people" and "I say this a lot, but if you don't want to hear anything besides "You're a genius!", don't ask for opinions." I feel that it is very unfair. Either way, let us drop this now and not clutter up the computer build thread with pointless semantics.
The only reason to get a hard drive is like you say, price and storage capacity. The memory modules will fall steadily in price while increasing the storage, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that mechanical drives will soon be phased out. I just don't see the point of buying mechanical drives if you're building a new computer, if you have some extra money to spend today that is. That's like inserting a floppy drive in it just to be retro.
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Mechanical drives aren't being phased out anytime soon... unless you consider soon to be like 50+ years.
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EPT
