16mb buffer hard drive in a laptop

[Dan Irwin]

hi,

I'm about to upgrade the hard drive in my gateway m275 (1.4 pentium m,
256mb ram) and i was looking around and i saw that there are a few
drives on the market with 16mb buffers (mainly the toshiba MK5024GA).
i was wondering, does this realy help, or is it overkill?



thanks for the help,

dan

 

[Dan Koren]

hi,

I'm about to upgrade the hard drive in my gateway m275 (1.4 pentium m,
256mb ram) and i was looking around and i saw that there are a few
drives on the market with 16mb buffers (mainly the toshiba MK5024GA).
i was wondering, does this realy help, or is it overkill?

Well it clearly depends on
the apps and workloads you
are running.

I have installed a couple
of Tosh MK5024GAY on two
notebooks, replacing 2MB
5400rpm drives, and the
difference is like night
and day.



dk

 

[Dan Irwin]

But would 7200 with an 8mb buffer do just as good?

 

[Dan Koren]

Maybe, but why bother?

The Tosh MK-5024GAY are cheaper than the
IBM/Hitachi E7K60. They are also quieter.


dk

 

[Dan Irwin]

added heat and power draw. I was also thinking would i wind up losing
more in battery power from 7200rpm drive then i would gain in added
performance.

 

[Al Dykes]

added heat and power draw. I was also thinking would i wind up losing
more in battery power from 7200rpm drive then i would gain in added
performance.

It's easy enough to check; Find the detail specs for a models you're
considering on the manufacturer's web site, and the disk you've got
now. The specs wiil show power draw for idle, startup, peak, etc.

I just looked at the numbers for these models and they are just about
equal.

Sometimes new designs can be faster _and_ draw less power.

 

[Jason Cothran]

| added heat and power draw. I was also thinking would i wind up losing
| more in battery power from 7200rpm drive then i would gain in added
| performance.
|

My 7200 uses no more battery than my 4200 did in my m6809.

 

[Sparky]

| added heat and power draw. I was also thinking would i wind up losing
| more in battery power from 7200rpm drive then i would gain in added
| performance.
|

My 7200 uses no more battery than my 4200 did in my m6809.

I've had a 60GB Hitachi in my ThinkPad for > 6 months - big bump in
performance & I've never noticed that it made any noise at all.

 

[plated metal]

Maybe, but why bother?

The Tosh MK-5024GAY are cheaper than the
IBM/Hitachi E7K60. They are also quieter.

"Quieter" is a mute point (no pun intended). Most drives start out life
pretty quiet, but get a helluva lot louder after a few months (a year
tops). If you really want a quiet drive (don't we all!) then I reckon
you have to factor in a hard drive change over every year. Oh well.

-p

 

[P.T. Breuer]

"Quieter" is a mute point (no pun intended).

You mean "moot":

moot
adj 1: open to debate [syn: {disputed}]
2: capable of being disproved [syn: {debatable}, {disputable}]
v: think about carefully; weigh; "They considered the
possibility of a strike" [syn: {consider}, {debate}, {turn
over}, {deliberate}]

So I think you must have _intended_ a pun, and failed somewhere along
the line.

Most drives start out life
pretty quiet, but get a helluva lot louder after a few months (a year

!! Well, it's likely that a failing drive will be noisy, or even that
a drive slowly swapping outmore and more bad sectors will be physically
jumping the heads from point to point more and more, which makes more
noise, but to say "most drives" do that within the lifetime of the
laptop would be out of order. I've owned something like 7 laptops over
the years (started with a 386sx50), and all of them still work, and
none of them make any more noise than they ever did that I can notice!

Now, noisy scsi barracuda drive on servers is something else ...

Peter

 

[plated metal]

Dan Koren wrote:



"Quieter" is a mute point (no pun intended).

You mean "moot":

moot
adj 1: open to debate [syn: {disputed}]
2: capable of being disproved [syn: {debatable}, {disputable}]
v: think about carefully; weigh; "They considered the
possibility of a strike" [syn: {consider}, {debate}, {turn
over}, {deliberate}]

So I think you must have _intended_ a pun, and failed somewhere along
the line.

Most drives start out life
pretty quiet, but get a helluva lot louder after a few months (a year

!! Well, it's likely that a failing drive will be noisy, or even that
a drive slowly swapping outmore and more bad sectors will be physically
jumping the heads from point to point more and more, which makes more
noise, but to say "most drives" do that within the lifetime of the
laptop would be out of order. I've owned something like 7 laptops over
the years (started with a 386sx50), and all of them still work, and
none of them make any more noise than they ever did that I can notice!

Point taken on the "mute" point! I had forgotten all about the "moot"
spelling.

The "noisy" drive development doesn't correlate with failure. That is,
I've had quite a few that have gotten noise after a few months, as I
described, but have not failed (and one in particular has worked
flawlessly, though noisily, for the last four years). I suspect it's a
bearing problem (plenty of scope for anothe pun there, but I'm staying
well clear). (Compare case fans in desktops which have a well known
tendency to get noisier and it's generally the bearings.)

 

[David Chien]

tops). If you really want a quiet drive (don't we all!) then I reckon

you have to factor in a hard drive change over every year. Oh well.

or simply drop in a flash hard drive drive. These 2.5" flash drives
have 100% no moving parts, and are 100% silent in operation. You can
buy them cheap off www.ebay.com (eg. 800MB for ~$40) and they turn any
laptop into a silent notebook (assuming CPU fan doesn't make sounds, if
there is one). Longer battery life, too.

 

[J. Clarke]

or simply drop in a flash hard drive drive. These 2.5" flash drives
have 100% no moving parts, and are 100% silent in operation. You can
buy them cheap off www.ebay.com (eg. 800MB for ~$40) and they turn any
laptop into a silent notebook (assuming CPU fan doesn't make sounds, if
there is one). Longer battery life, too.

Now lemme see you install any current version of Windows on an 800 meg drive
and have enough left over to do anything useful.

 

[Howard Chu]

or simply drop in a flash hard drive drive. These 2.5" flash drives
have 100% no moving parts, and are 100% silent in operation. You can
buy them cheap off www.ebay.com (eg. 800MB for ~$40) and they turn any
laptop into a silent notebook (assuming CPU fan doesn't make sounds, if
there is one). Longer battery life, too.

Yes, but flash drives are slow, 5MB/sec transfer rates for the standard
devices:
http://www.simpletech.com/webspeed/industrial/briefs/R1191.pdf

7-9MB/sec for the "high speed" variant.

Also, they're low capacity; the highest is only 8GB. That's plenty for a
Linux install, but barely enough for a Windows install. 800MB is ridiculous.

 

[P.T. Breuer]

or simply drop in a flash hard drive drive. These 2.5" flash drives
have 100% no moving parts, and are 100% silent in operation. You can

However, they won't operate for long. They have very limited number of
write cycles.

buy them cheap off www.ebay.com (eg. 800MB for ~$40) and they turn any
laptop into a silent notebook (assuming CPU fan doesn't make sounds, if

Unfortunately, also a dead deadbook, very shortly, if you expect the
flash drive to hold up.

Peter

 

[Paul Rubin]

or simply drop in a flash hard drive drive. These 2.5" flash
drives have 100% no moving parts, and are 100% silent in operation.
You can buy them cheap off www.ebay.com (eg. 800MB for ~$40) and they
turn any laptop into a silent notebook (assuming CPU fan doesn't make
sounds, if there is one). Longer battery life, too.

You definitely can't buy an 800mb flash drive for $40. 80mb, maybe.

Also, flash drives are MUCH MUCH SLOWER than hard drives for writing.
They have no seek delay, and the read speed is reasonably fast, but
the write speed is very slow.

 

[Eric Gisin]

However, they won't operate for long. They have very limited number of
write cycles.

Nonsense. Flash hard drives are designed for harsh environments, and have ECC
and sector remapping just like hard drives. They can use other tricks like
rotating frequently written sectors.

Unfortunately, also a dead deadbook, very shortly, if you expect the
flash drive to hold up.

Flash memory cards have no smarts, yet I don't see them dropping like flies.

 

[P.T. Breuer]

Nonsense. Flash hard drives are designed for harsh environments, and have ECC
and sector remapping just like hard drives. They can use other tricks like

Then they'll need it.

rotating frequently written sectors.

That is a good idea. The max write cycle on flash memory is only a few
hundred times. Spreading that load over the whole disk instead of a
single sector would dramatically help.

Flash memory cards have no smarts, yet I don't see them dropping like flies.

Yes you do, because yes they do.

Peter

 

[Dan Irwin]

Dumb question:does the buffer buffer within the hard drive and the
rest of the comp or the hard drive and itself (aka is it like the
[ever growing] cpu cache or RAM of a computer)?

 

[J. Clarke]

Then they'll need it.


That is a good idea. The max write cycle on flash memory is only a few
hundred times.

Anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 for current devices.