"Green" Drives.

[Deleted]

I wonder if the claims for improved video are supportible ? If so, could this also translate to higher quality audio as well ?

See link for HDD Specifications and claims.

www.shoppingsquare.com.au/p_3830_1_TB_WD_Caviar_GP_SATA_Hard_Disk_Drive

[robertkd]

Oct 29, 2008 9:47:32 GMT @sandyk said:

I wonder if the claims for improved video are supportible ? If so, could this also translate to higher quality audio as well ?

See link for HDD Specifications and claims.

www.shoppingsquare.com.au/p_38

30_1_TB_WD_Caviar_GP_SATA_Hard_Disk_Drive

"improved" well that is more to do with latency and through put after all it's only a storage bucket so audio video data all the same to a hdd, as for greenness all they have to do is use less power somewhere, strangely enough that's exactly what they claim!

Krickey

[Deleted]

Krickey

Robert
I thought they may have been referring to things like "The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations." and "IntelliSeek - Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration. View demo >"

Just as typical CD players have "jitter" , which translates to lower quality audio,than when played from a HDD, why can't HDDs also exhibit a much smaller degree of timing jitter, which may be in evidence with the playback of video frequencies ?

Unfortunately, the link did work immediately after posting, but no longer does. Below, is the info, but without the piccies.





1 TB WD Caviar� GP SATA Hard Disk Drive ( Code: HDD-WD-1TB-SATA )

WESTERN DIGITAL WD10EACS CAVIAR GP - 1000GB/7200RPM/SATAII/3.5" HDD
GreenPower Hard Disk Drive

Reduced power consumption - WD has reduced power consumption by up to 40 percent compared to competitors� drives with the combination of WD's IntelliSeek�, IntelliPark�, and IntelliPower� technologies.
Helps enable eco-friendly PCs - WD Caviar GP drives yield average drive power savings of 4-5 watts over competitors� drives making it possible for our energy-conscious customers to build systems with higher capacities and the right balance of system performance, ensured reliability, and energy conservation. This power savings equates to reducing CO2 emission by up to 13.8 kilograms per drive per year - the equivalent of taking a car off the road for 3 days each year*. By using environmentally-conscious PCs with our WD Caviar GP drives on board, large organizations with many desktop computers can minimize their carbon footprint and save real money on electricity costs.
*Assumes that a car produces 1.60 CO2 pounds per Kwatt/hours/year. Calculation of automobile emissions depends on the car's g/km emission levels and km/year of driving.
Cool and Quiet - GreenPower technology yields lower operating temperatures for increased reliability and low acoustics for ultra-quiet PCs and external drives.
Perfect for external drives - External drive manufacturers can eliminate the need for a fan in a high-capacity product with a WD Caviar GP drive, the coolest and quietest in its class. External drives with WD Caviar GP drives on board can save up to $14.00 per year in electricity costs. See our power savings chart for details.
IntelliPower - A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance. Additionally, GreenPower drives consume less current during startup allowing lower peak loads on systems as they are booted.
IntelliSeek - Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration. View demo >
IntelliPark - Delivers lower power consumption by automatically unloading the heads during idle to reduce aerodynamic drag.
Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) - Employs PMR technology to achieve even greater areal density.
StableTrac� - The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations. (750 GB and 1 TB only)



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As hard drive capacities increase, the power required to run those drives increases as well. WD Caviar GP makes it possible for energy-conscious customers to build systems with higher capacities and the right balance of system performance, ensured reliability, and energy conservation.

Performance Specifications
Transfer Rates
Buffer To Host (Serial ATA) 3 Gb/s (Max)
Transfer Rate (Buffer To Disk) 1,156 Mb/s


Physical Specifications
Formatted Capacity 1,000,204 MB
Capacity 1 TB
Interface SATA 3 Gb/s
User Sectors Per Drive 1,953,525,168


Physical Dimensions
English
Height 1.028 Inches (Max)
Length 5.787 Inches (Max)
Width 4.00 Inches (+/- 0.010 inch)
Weight 1.61 Pounds

Metric
Height 26.1 mm (Max)
Length 147 mm (Max)
Width 101.6 mm
Weight 0.73 kg


Environmental Specifications
Shock
Operating Shock (Read) 65G, 2 ms
Non-operating Shock 250G, 2 ms

Acoustics
Idle Mode 25 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 0 27 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 3 25 dBA (average)

Vibration
Operating
Linear 20-300 Hz, .75G (0 to peak)
Random 10-300 Hz, 0.008 g² / Hz

Non-operating
Low Frequency 5-20 Hz, 0.195 inches (double amplitude)
High Frequency 20-500 Hz, 4.0G (0 to peak)


Electrical Specifications
Current Requirements
Power Dissipation
Read/Write 7.50 Watts
Idle 4.0 Watts
Standby 0.97 Watts
Sleep 0.97 Watts

[robertkd]

Oct 29, 2008 11:30:17 GMT @sandyk said:

Krickey

Robert
I thought they may have been referring to things like "The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations."

not seeing that as an issue, any system jitter is re-clocked out in the interface, besides that 's what RAM buffers are for.

incidentally the link works fine must be that MS I.E. software your using ;D, check the WD site info, be a nice toy with maybe 5 of those raided for some serious through put

www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=388&language=en

[Deleted]

any system jitter is re-clocked out in the interface,

Robert
Do all the rising and falling edges of the FAR less than perfectly shaped 1s and 0s from the HDD, also get reshaped,and retimed to close tolerances too, before being reclocked out ? i.e. Would the waveform from these new models be "cleaner" than normal HDDs ?
Alex

[robertkd]

WTF it's a hard drive with a SATA 3Gb/s interface? supposedly 1Gb/s though put (peak!) what malformed 1's and 0's 1 in 10^15 bit error read, if your software can't look after that with check sum and parity at a system level mmmm

anyway whats a malformed 1 or 0 look like a .5

[allenf]

x2, there's a huge amount of low level error correction + hardware buffering going on.

Maybe because it's a terabyte instead of say 250GB one can encode one's video collection at a higher bit rate; ie better quality ;D

[Deleted]

WTF it's a hard drive with a SATA 3Gb/s interface? supposedly 1Gb/s though put (peak!) what malformed 1's and 0's 1 in 10^15 bit error read, if your software can't look after that with check sum and parity at a system level mmmmanyway whats a malformed 1 or 0 look like a .5

With such a perfect error correction system, why does everybody , at some time or other end up with BSODs , system restarts, program errors etc. ? And don't blame it all on the writers of the software !
I took the claims as meaning higher quality playback of video streams from the HDD, as I feel sure most consumers would.
My original posted question was "I wonder if the claims for improved video are supportible ? "

SandyK

[canjunkie]

Actually Alex, most BSOD's are caused by OS and/or software. Windows is, after all, a fix, on top of a patch, with a few bodges here and there, a tweak in that subroutine with a few complete kludges thrown in for good measure. Its quite an achievement that it works at all

With development code running at millions of characters it can't be helped that it all falls over sometimes - although it still does far too often IMHO.

Apple did the brave thing and dumped their System 'N' code for a Unix based OS for 'OSX'. Unix is industrial strength code and it shows. Just wish the OSX route wasn't so expensive

[robertkd]

Alex I wasn't sure if you were having a lend of me on the "drive properties" canjunkie is correct most bsod's are software issue's unhanded exceptions or software trying access memory that is not allocated to the application maybe a bad pointer to memory and such.

as for OS X, well we just crash differently but in the traditional UNIX way the program simply gets banished when it misbehaves.

Robert

[Deleted]

Well I must be an exception then, because the majority of the crashes with my machines do appear to be related to memory issues. In the majority of occasions removing a stick of memory at a time has proved the problem into an individual stick of memory. On virtually every occasion over the years where the problem has persisted it has turned out to be a "faulty''stick of memory. This was discussed with Leo on the 18th of this month when I was chasing BSODs, and intermittent rebooting, most often during video rendering. Once again, the problem was rectified by replacing the RAM.( 2 sticks of 1GB DDR2 800.)
On this occasion I decided to pay more for a higher quality RAM, in this case HyperX 2 x 1GB 800.
Alex

P.S. Have you ever seen screen grabs of the output waveforms of typical HDDs with their ragged waveforms and large spikes ?
After seeing some of those , I was amazed that the systems are as reliable as they are ! Admittedly, SATA has dramatically improved the situation compared to I.D.E.

[robertkd]

Alex,

hardware issues like RAM and such may well give bsod's the failure mechanism may be as simple as data maybe pointers to data structures used for either the OS or an application get corrupted for what ever reason means that the chances it will cause a GPF certainly increase. Getting good hardware should go a long way to getting a stable platform these days, sometimes the combination of chip set and RAM, Video &etc can be as finicky as the combination of components for good audio! then you have the added complexity of combination's of software and OS on top of that

Robert

[tg]

Alex,
while your issues were caused by faulty RAM, I have seen nearly as many intermittent crashes caused by overheated hard discs, and certainly some brands do seem to run cooler than others (even at the same RPM).
I have also had high quality, premium, high performance RAM fail when being run only to spec - ie not overclocked - no names no pack drill.
WRT drive temperatures, I tend to ensure that machines I build have decent fans positioned to cool the drives and run a little system tray utility called dtemp, most modern drives can report their temperature and this utility will display the temperature of each drive so capable in the system tray, the display can be set to turn from black to red at a nominated temperature. Some drives seem to run happily @ 50C but many start to give quirky errors when over 45C, particularly for any extended time.
It is quite informative to watch the change in temperature when you run defragmentation on the drive and it is working flat out.
It is good to use temperature controlled fans so they don't distract too much except when necessary.
Just my take.

[Deleted]

HiTony
As a subscriber to a couple of the local PC magazines , I am aware of the issues that you mention, but I thank you for drawing them to my attention. I regularly clean dust off all ventilation areas and fans, as well as the CPU heatsink. I use an additional temp controlled 80mm fan at the rear, as well as having installed a fan at the front of the HDDs. Internal ventilation is not restricted due to the use of SATA HDDs.
In addition, I use the Intel Desktop Utilities Hardware Monitor, where I have set lower thresholds. Incidentally my MB temperature is currently 43C, and the Processor Thermal margin is 44C. This is with the PC on continuously since around 6.45am. Unfortunately, the Intel utility does not display HDD temperatures. Tomorrow looks like being a good test though, with temps of 36C forecast in the city.
P.S. Will you be auditioning Green Solo SRG ?

Regards
Alex

[robertkd]

Oct 30, 2008 7:26:22 GMT @sandyk said:

P.S. Will you be auditioning Green Solo SRG ?

Regards
Alex

is this an option here??

Robert

[sometrolls2]

The encoding, playback software, video card, cable and monitor will be way more important than a marginal change in HDD or RAM. How many people have top of the range pro monitors to begin with?

[Deleted]

Oct 30, 2008 16:31:26 GMT sometrolls2 said:

The encoding, playback software, video card, cable and monitor will be way more important than a marginal change in HDD or RAM. How many people have top of the range pro monitors to begin with?

Although I do hope to have a Samsung 24" 2493HM TFT Wide Format Monitor - Gloss Black, Max. Resolution 1920 x 1200, 5ms Response Time, HDMI/Digital/Analog Interface LCD MONITOR
delivered later today or tomorrow!
SandyK

[Deleted]

Robert
If Green Solo NRG becomes available for auditioning Downunder ,just ask Mike or Graham, to be included on the list of reviewers. I believe that the offer is usually limited to members with >100 posts. With Novo, the Australian review unit was from Graham's Support Group .

Alex

[Spirit]

Oct 30, 2008 20:23:53 GMT @sandyk said:

Although I do hope to have a Samsung 24" 2493HM TFT Wide Format Monitor - Gloss Black, Max. Resolution 1920 x 1200, 5ms Response Time, HDMI/Digital/Analog Interface LCD MONITOR
delivered later today or tomorrow!
SandyK

I can only assume sometrolls meant a 'more' pro monitor...
The 2493 is 24" and all, but the panel is only a TN = horrid colour shift etc etc. It's fast, so good for games, but colour uniformity / consistency is pretty bad. (relative to a pva or ips panel).

[Deleted]

spirit
This particular model got an excellent review in 2 local PC magazines,(when the price was much higher) and was ranked above the 24" Dell 2408 WFP in one of them, which previously was the no.1 choice in the local magazines. No, it isn't a pro model, but it is a better than average example of it's type.
I wonder how many members would be able to justify the expense of a "more" pro monitor ?
Alex

[sometrolls2]

An example brand would be Viewsonic, they do a pro range( VPXXX) which for years sold at 2-3 times the price of the same sized cheapo TFT. Those sort of screens are probably less than 1% of the total TFT market.

And how many hardcore computer users bother to go for the shielded short-length mains cable that they might in their audio use? On the overclocking websites I've visited the answer would be none, those crazies think £200 on a pair of headphones is nuts but cool their PCs with phase cooling systems.

The serious tech heads will within the year have a solid state drive plus some bulk HDD storage, and that will out perform a slightly nicer spinner anyday.

[Deleted]

The serious tech heads will within the year have a solid state drive plus some bulk HDD storage, and that will out perform a slightly nicer spinner anyday.

sometrolls2
I hope your prediction is correct. They seem to be taking a while to become available in sizes suitable for much more than just a typical bloated OS, let alone video storage. And as as for availability and the prices ....

And how many hardcore computer users bother to go for the shielded short-length mains cable that they might in their audio use?

Seems kind of superfluous to me, when you take into consideration the huge amount of internally generated RF, and other crap from the SMPS and fans etc.. Perhaps there should be a lot more attention paid to the fitting of ferrite sleeves around cables , and even internal screened ducting for feeding some of the cables through ?

[Spirit]

Oct 30, 2008 23:23:33 GMT @sandyk said:

spirit
This particular model got an excellent review in 2 local PC magazines,(when the price was much higher) and was ranked above the 24" Dell 2408 WFP in one of them, which previously was the no.1 choice in the local magazines. No, it isn't a pro model, but it is a better than average example of it's type.
I wonder how many members would be able to justify the expense of a "more" pro monitor ?
Alex

Sorry... didn't mean to sound condescending...
As far as TN panelled monitors go, that one is a cracker (I'm planning to get its little brother, the 2443 - uses the same panel I believe).

[mate of mine has recently bought an NEC 2490WUXI = H-IPS panel which is very nice, but also $1450 vs the $470 or so I imagine you'll pay for the 2493?]

[Deleted]

spirit
AU$498 including delivery.
Alex

[sometrolls2]

Seems kind of superfluous to me, when you take into consideration the huge amount of internally generated RF, and other crap from the SMPS and fans etc.. Perhaps there should be a lot more attention paid to the fitting of ferrite sleeves around cables , and even internal screened ducting for feeding some of the cables through ?

My point was that it is a change that is easy to make that they ignore, and would be especially easy to do on the monitor itself. The whole internal RF and EMI issues seem to be barely addressed in the normal consumer market; OCZ used to do molex power cables that are shielded and filtered which marginally improved graphic card overclocking, and that was about all you could get. Normal pro quality audio PCs had nothing great beyond high spec chips, RAM, drives and the soundcard. Maybe the very high end professional gear is built with custom PSUs, cables and shielded enclosures within the cases. The pros could trigger external boxes via the computer but isolate the music/video from the computer.

Here a 64GB solid state drive can be had for £150, so I reckon next year £200 will buy a 128GB drive that is faster in all operations. Hardcore users can then buy HDDs for terabytes of storage if needed.