[DM-MUG] Internal Hard Drives shopping

[AB]

Matthew's right. I completely forgot about that stuff. The quietness is a factor if you want it to be. And he's right about firmware. For most consumer needs and my own experience, the firmware isn't usually a big deal unless physical damage occurs to the drive requiring the drive itself needing repair. Like if you're upgrading your computer and the cat does its cat thing while you're answering the phone for a minute. An example would be if the connector pins got bent broken, or some such and the mother/logic/bridgeboard/PCB (green parts) needed to be replaced in order to use and access the stored data.  I had this happen last year to a Maxtor (Which by the way Seagate owns Maxtor) which was my back up drive and had to cut my losses because I could not find any places which worked directly on hard drives, and many sources told me if I worked on it myself differences in the hard drive's logic board firmware of the old and the new hard drive logic board
 could cause problems or even risk data loss. In the end I couldn't even find the same model of hard drive with the same firmware, so it was a moot point. 


--- On Thu, 1/29/09, Matthew Nuzum <newz at bearfruit.org> wrote:

> From: Matthew Nuzum <newz at bearfruit.org>
> Subject: Re: [DM-MUG] Internal Hard Drives shopping
> To: "Des Moines Mac Users Group" <dmmug at dmmug.org>
> Date: Thursday, January 29, 2009, 3:10 PM
> On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 2:54 PM, Victoria L. Herring
> <VLH at herringlaw.com> wrote:
> > I sent back the Seagates and am now looking at Hitachi
> 1TB drives [Desk,
> > Ultra, etc Star].  On pricegrabber.com I found four,
> all 1TB, 3 of which had
> > 4* reviews so I'd probably at least start there.
> All  three are ATA-300,
> > 7200RPM, 32mb buffer..they each have different part
> numbers.
> >
> > How the heck does one, when these specs are all the
> same, decide whether 3
> > seemingly equivalent drives, all with 4* ratings, are
> different?  And why
> > the price differential?
> >
> > The Ultrastar is more expensive but it says it is for
> enterprise use and has
> > a 5 year warranty
> 
> There are two things that are not easily measured by stats.
> I'm sorry
> that I haven't used the Hitatchi drives in a while so
> I'm not up on
> which models to pick, but here are the two things
> you're missing:
> 
> MTBF: This is a rating showing how many hours of user the
> drive is
> expected to work before failing. Mean Time Between Failure.
> Enterprise
> drives are meant for servers and workstations that need to
> be
> resilient and be in constant use 24 hours a day 7 days a
> week. They
> have more durable components and have more metal in them
> (which allows
> them to spread heat out).
> 
> Firmware: It's possible that this website where you are
> shopping has
> made a good buy and can offer three drives which normally
> would have a
> price difference for the same price. Often times there is a
> consumer
> drive meant to be sold inexpensively and then a performance
> model
> which may differ only in the firmware. One notable feature
> you often
> get in the performance line is "NCQ" which can
> make a dramatic
> difference in speed by optimizing the order in which data
> is written
> the drive.  If you're into computer science NCQ is a
> fascinating
> subject. Often times the inexpensive or "personal/home
> use" drives are
> optimized for quiet operation instead of maximum
> performance. Because
> the parts are the same and only the firmware differs
> it's not too
> surprising to find the drives for the same price. It
> actually kind of
> irritates me when there's an "artificial
> markup" in these situations.
> 
> -- 
> Matthew Nuzum
> newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin, identi.ca and
> twitter
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