Noisey 2.5 HDD (210Mb)

[Hyperspeed]

If you're using a 2.5" drive then you'll be in a desktop case which has vents in the top. This lets through the high frequency noise of the drive and is pretty unbearable.

I've tried Quantum, Hitachi and IBM and they're all very whiney.

(Note: Quantum Daytona Go-Drive is not Amiga compatible).

Seagate seem to be the quietest drives but are also the hottest. I sold my Seagate Barracuda 3.5" because I was worried about the severe heat it gave off.

Trouble with using sound absorbing material is that it'll block the natural airflow and might overheat your Amiga.

The best route nowadays is to get a Simpletech or Silicontech 2.5" ATA flash disk. This looks very much like a 2.5" laptop drive and has the screw holes in the side for fitting into an A1200/A600 cradle. However there is no motor inside, just a bunch of chips.

I've seen them in 448MB, 540MB, 800MB, 1GB and more sizes. I also saw a site with SCSI-1 versions.

They're half the height, noiseless, heatless, long lasting, impact resistant and have ultra-fast seek times.

[Hyperspeed]

Well I'm talking about the older Seagate drives of around the 2GB-4GB size. Maybe the newer ones have evolved technologically.

I was once told the ping-pong ball style noise is due to the bearings failing. The drive can still operate in a limited capacity so you should backup right away.

An old IDE Quantum Fireball in a friend's PC died this way and I'm convinced it died due to being mounted vertically.

To me, if a disk is spinning vertically it is lob-sided and one half of the platter is always working against gravity, and thus the bearings.

It's just an opinion though and may not be the prime cause of death. Maybe that's just Windows and virtual memory!

:-D

As for the solid state drives, they're not as fast as hard disks in terms of data transfer. I think they were like 3MB/S but that's still ASynch-SCSI-1 speed and should more than satisfy the 2MB/S A1200 IDE interface.

Where they do excell would be in seek operations as there are no moving parts.

The literature says they are military spec so I doubt they are prone to the same sort of write limitations as Compact Flash - particularly as these are primarily for booting critical code off (as opposed to storing JPG pictures).

Being military spec they will also satisfy the highest criteria as set out by DoomMaster.

[Hyperspeed]

15-20MB/S? WOOF!

I did see a Simpletech or Silicontech drive with 2GB of space but that was $2,000.

I always did prefer the days when games came on cartridge, disk/disc based mediums never had that full-on instant feeling.

It'd be nice to experience a solid state feel in a computer!

You'd be able to listen to MP3s in peace. I've often wondered if pets can be distressed about hard disks too... they hear ultrasound don't they!

[Hyperspeed]

Well like I said, I don't think the Simpletech/SiliconTech drives have writing limitations.

The benefits of an ATA Flash Drive over a hard disk are:

1. Low power consumption - great for projects like laptops, CD32/SX32, Client servers or in-car systems.

2. Next to instant boot times, directory listings ultra fast and no need to defrag!

3. Can withstand extreme heat and impact so you needn't worry at all about a sensitive little disk warping or the bearings aging. Particularly in enclosed spaces with no cooling.

4. Completely silent, not even a hum. No whining motor and clickity heads.

5. Extremely low profile, about 5mm thick

6. Unlike 2.5"/1.8" they come in SCSI varieties which means low CPU overhead, chains of up to 7 of them. A solid state mini-RAID would be pretty cool!

:-)

EDIT: HUH? My first edit didn't appear...

Anyway, I was gonne add that having a 60GB 1.8" drive would mean you could hold Aminet and every Amiga game ever made in the palm of your hand. Pretty tempting even for an anti-harddisk preacher.

:-D

[Hyperspeed]

I'd help but I didn't know what to do myself!

You could try buying sound-absorbing mats and compensating for airflow with a heatpipe from an overclockers shop.

You could also fit a 3.5" drive internally with a splitter from the floppy drive power and a 2.5"-3.5" IDE adaptor. 3.5" will probably have a less ear-piercing whine than 2.5".

Alternatively there are apps on Aminet that can switch off the drive motor when not in use but that can cause problems for a Boot partition. Your best bet there would be to have the drive copied into RAD: and then the motor shut off.

Be careful when you insulate that heat is controlled and you don't start a fire when the machine is left unattended. It might be cheaper to get one of the other drives suggested on this thread as opposed to suffering with the 210MB drive.

Piru: Why would fragmentation be such a problem for a small drive with 100x faster seek speeds than a platter based solution? Some of them are SCSI and would be DMA with a SCSI-IV kit. I suppose even ATA would be faster since you don't have to wait for the head to align with the correct track, delayed by the rotation of the disc and blocks strewn at varying radius.

They do say a boot partition should be placed in the first few MB of a hard disk because that's where it's faster. This would be more consistent on solid state since there is nothing spinning in circles, it's all there in a central hub of circuitry!

Just out of curiosity though, the data on the outer edge of a platter spins fastest so does the RDB start on the circumference or the spindle?

[Hyperspeed]

I think waiting until the very end might be a bad idea unless you keep it just for games.

Also, remember when you dispose of drives to Full Format them a few times to stop people retrieving your data. Better still, dismantle and blowtorch 'em!

:-D

[Hyperspeed]

The Quantum Daytona 'Go-Drive' range doesn't like the A1200 IDE interface. When I had my Blizzard 1230-IV it would stop it from booting.

For some bizarre reason disabling the CPU cache would allow it to boot but the '030 would get very hot and crash.

I have no idea what the link between the two could be, but a couple of companies reported this problem.

It's also worth considering SCSI drives, you might be able to rig a 3.5" SCSI drive into your desktop case with the floppy-splitter power lead and an accelerator SCSI card.

If you don't want to open the case again you could try those old A600/A1200 PCMCIA hard disks in matching cases. They're pretty rare now though.

[Hyperspeed]

by tokyoracer:
talking of boot options. im having problems acsessing helter skelter. Keeps coming up with software error and does funny things. 1ce it did eventually work then it stoped again. any ideas?

What's "helter skelter"?

Is this a game or do you have a funfair ride simulator built into your early startup menu?

:-D