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Lead Image

I changed the image to this one (Image:hard disk platters and head.jpg) that I took specifically for WP use with the aim of providing a good illistrative image whilst I had one in pieces and it's been reverted with the explanation that it doesn't show the reflection. I am interested in more information as to why. The image does show a reflection, it clearly shows the reflection of the arm, which really is much clearer that the distorted hand reflected in the other image. Also, I would say that the new image is a much clearer representation of the disk in use with the arm on the head rather than being disassembled with a screwdriver. Furthermore it shows more components of the hard drive - it shows multiple platters, arm, head, static magnet, PCBs, head park and thus has higher enc value for an article on the complete hard disk? Your thoughts? Mfield (talk) 15:47, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that your picture is far superior. Furthermore, the reflection in the original illustration is at best irrelevant. Tom94022 (talk) 21:58, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good, I am not going mad. I am changing it back. If someone wants to revert, they can provide a better justification here. Mfield (talk) 22:03, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Physical Mounting Position

Thanks to the authors for such an informative article. There is one question, the answer to which may be obvious to everybody else, that needs stated definitively. Can a modern hard drive be mounted in any position? On an oblique angle? In extremis, suspended temporarily from its cable? The answer to this could be handled in a single sentence, though I do not really know the answer. Thanks again, WPHyundai (talk) 15:59, 15 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In general I suspect the answer is yes for modern drives, other than on the string, but you will have to read the manufacturer's specification to get a specific answer and even then it might be vague. Here is a quote from a better written specification:

"7.5.4 Drive mounting

The drive will operate in all axes (6 directions). Performance and error rate will stay within specification limits if the drive is operated in the other orientations from which it was formatted.

For reliable operation, the drive must be mounted in the system securely enough to prevent excessive motion or vibration of the drive during seek operation or spindle rotation, using appropriate screws or equivalent mounting hardware." [HGST 7k500]

Note the above says why a string is not such a good idea. Also note the above is ambiguous about between axes. The reason I think the general answer is yes is that modern drive mechanisms are generally well balanced in all axes and the servos will take out any residual static biases. Vibration and recoil would be a problem on a string. Early drives were not well balanced. Tom94022 (talk) 17:39, 15 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Browsing Slow with Larger Drives?

I recently cloned my old 10GB hard drive to a 160GB drive - it was the smallest that I could find.

I note that the faster drive runs Windows much quicker but that browser load times are now longer.

I am told that this is characteristic of moving to larger drives, though I rarely see the matter stated in this context. If this is the case, is it not better to encourage quite small, fast drives for browsing rather than giant ones? Can anybody please shed light on the matter? I thank you, WPHyundai (talk) 16:17, 15 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Makes no sense to me, perhaps yr local Internet cache just needs to be filled. Unless Windows does something silly with placement of its files, your existing 10G should only fill 1/16 of the new drive, implying more data under the arms without seeking (even if the new drive has fewer heads), a higher data rate, and a shorter stroke (access time) to existing data - all of which means things should run faster not slower. But if you have to download a lot of stuff into yr local cache it will seem slow for a while and be dependent upon yr network data rate, not your drive data rate. Tom94022 (talk) 17:48, 15 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cheap power supply unit can slowly kill a hard drive?

Here in small (8 million) Bulgaria, some low level repair specialists are spreading this rumor, based on some unofficial statistics. But none of them even explains what does it mean to supply an "unhealthy" electrical current to a hard drive? They just say that you should not buy some models of power supplies. Is it the constant voltage or its boundaries which make one model of power supply better than other? The page contains a link to a site discussing hard drive myths, but I think this site is written by a lowest level expert who considers only the case with burning a drive by too high voltage. Can anybody give a more complete explanation? Excuse me for the poor English. --Lefter 23:03, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Disk drives are hard to kill and they monitor their supply. I'm not sure what are the characteristics of a cheap power supply but one of them might be poor output regulation which, in turn, might mean the drive detects an over/under voltage condition and parks its heads but then detects everything OK and returns to normal. Drives are rated for 50,000 or more such cycles but in such a hypothetical situation a drive might "slowly" fail over time due to excessive cycles (called load/unload or start/stop cycles). But you should hear the cycle. Also there might be weird voltage during the power on as the cheap supply tries to ramp up, this in turn might cause multiple cycles. In countries where power is expensive, turning your system off when not in use may be more common and a "cheap power supply might also cause excessive cycles during the power on cycle. Again you should hear the cycle. Just guessing a hypothetical cause, I doubt if short of way overvoltage that a power supply can kill a drive. Tom94022 (talk) 18:29, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What does the sound of a drive depend on?

I know that some drives provide acoustic management options to slow the speed of the heads and reduce noise. But I have a drive with acoustic management disabled and another which does not support acoustic management (according to the program Hard Disk Sentinel v2.10). They both produce a little louder/sharper noises when I use Windows 2000 or XP, than when I use Windows 98 SE. The sounds are even sharper when I run Ubuntu or SUSE Linux. I am used to listen to the sound of my drives and I am sure this is not caused by fragmentation, opening different documents or something of the kind. Is it caused by more optimized/faster or bad for the drive/worser system software? I am worried that NT based Windows-es and Linux can shorten the life of the head actuators! My older 30 GB drive got its sound little changed after one reinstallation of Windows 2000 (during the installations it used to make the sharpest noises) and started seeking somehow slower. I know this can be caused by the disk surface which can have weak/problematic sectors. Scandisk found two neighbouring bad sectors over 1 GB from the end of the drive. Hard Disk Sentinel currently reports that there are 74 automatically reallocated sectors. But I bought a new drive (Seagate 160 GB), exactly a year ago, and installed Linux on it as a second OS. During the time I used the Linux, the Seek Error Rate SMART value was 61 (below the average limit of 63, according to SpeedFan 4.32 online analysis). I have heard that new Seagates have low Seek Error Rate values. But when I stopped using Linux and worked only with Windows XP, the Seek Error Rate value started slowly increasing and is now 71. To be short: Are Linux and NT based Windows unhealthier for hard drives than Windows 98 SE? Is there a way to tune Windows XP or Linux so that the hard drive produces "softer" noises as with Windows 98 SE? Lefter 18:30, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

See High frequency of load/unload cycles on some hard disks may shorten lifetime for one example of how a Linux OS can systematically change noise (and failure rate). It would make sense that excessive start/stop (or load/unload) cycles caused by poor choices in sleep mode parameters would cause noise and degrade a drive. Once such problems are eliminated, I doubt if there is anything about Linux or NT based Windows that is "unhealthy" for HDDs. If there are systematic noise differences between OSs, I suspect they have to do with caching and paging policies (more and/or longer seeks) but there is nothing unhealthy about seeking, per se; start/stop, on the other hand, is stressful. Tom94022 (talk) 18:54, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank's a lot for the expert answer! It's just that when my drives are set to always on, and I use Windows 2000/XP, they sound like "playing the same melody with a different (but similar) instrument". This difference is systematic. Even when the OSes are booting. Of course, there are differences in the "melody", when the OSes are doing something in the background. But when I open a not cached file (after the drive has been idle for some time), the seeking sounds the same but louder and "sharper"!? May be Windows 98 uses old/not optimized drivers, which cause pauses between seeks? Can this simulate the effects of enabled acoustic management on the drive? I found a program - Sysinternals Disk Monitor. While the red LED on the computer is completely off, this program reports lots of reads and writes on Windows XP (which I cannot hear). I suppose this is the answer - slower drivers/OS kernels cause pauses between seeks and make a drive more silent. Also why the SMART value "Seek Error Rate" increased from 61 to 71, when I stopped using the Linux? --Lefter 18:37, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

New Study Finds U.S. Consumers Continue to Amass Valuable Troves of Digital Content

http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/en/menuitem.368c8bfe833dee8056fb11f0aac4f0a0/index.jsp?epi-content=GENERIC&folderPath=%2Fhgst%2Faboutus%2Fpress%2Finternal_news%2F&docName=20080709_study.html&beanID=804390503&viewID=content --Kozuch (talk) 10:56, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

3.5-inch full-height?

I've got a few old manuals from the late 1980s and early 1990s describing 3.5-inch full-height (or near full height - 1.66") hard drives. Worthy of a mention? Rilak (talk) 09:05, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

IMHO, not worth mentioning, but if you have the time and a scanner, you ought to consider donating copies to Bitsavers. Email aek at bitsavers dot org if you can help Tom94022 (talk) 18:04, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I mean the form factor, not the induvidual hard drive models themselves. As for me donating the manuals, considering that I got them from Manx, the search engine for old computer manuals, I think everyone has access to them already. I think the table in this article, which is missing these form factors, is misleading - it gives the impression that all 3.5-inch hard drives are half-height and that is simply not true. Rilak (talk) 06:21, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is this in reference to Hard_disk_drive#Form_factors? If you are trying to point out a distinction between 1.625" and 1.66" I wouldn't bother. My recollection, without any research is the "standard" HH vertical dimension was 1.625" nominal and there was a tolerance, so 1.66 would likely fall into that range or at most be a minor variant.

If this is is reference to the table in Hard_disk_drive#Capacity_and_access speed then I would footnote the maximum number of disks, probably 8 to 10, much like footnote 21 for the 5¼" HH. Tom94022 (talk) 16:37, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm... it now seems that there is some misunderstanding here... All the manuals I have from DEC seem to refer to this "half-height" (1.66"+) as full height and 1.0" as half-height. I actually didn't see the section you pointed me to as well... Rilak (talk) 06:21, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Both links work on my machine.

Section 3. Form Factors has bullet for 3.5" which states the 1.63" dimension.

Section 2. Capacity and access speed has a table at the bottom that gives the current maximum capacity and number of disks by form factor.

DEC is not what I would call an authority on HDD nomenclature, they marched to their own tune. Originally HH was used in the 5¼" form factor for 1.625" height disk drives, floppy and HDD, it was precisely ½ of the 3.25" full height drives. The early 3½" FDD and HDD were mainly 1.625" high, some people called them HH using the 5¼ terminology and meaning 1.625" and some called them Full Height (FH) or Standard Height. I think most of the OEMs eventually adopted HH = 1.625" as the common usage and Slim Line for 12.5 mm or 1". Again I wouldn't mention it in 3. Form Factors and I doubt if any DEC product would set an upper limit for disks in Section 2. Capacity and access speed so at this point my recommendation is to drop it. Tom94022 (talk) 06:42, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nah, I meant that for some reason (probaly from staring at the computer screen too much + playing too many games) I didn't notice the section you pointed me to in the article that mentions that there was once 3.5-inch 1.6"-height hard drives. I also didn't intend to add an entry for DEC, but one for the 3.5-inch 1.6"-height form-factor, which I did not see was mentioned in a sort of hard to see sentence in a section I didn't notice. Rilak (talk) 07:22, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, there have been many z height variants in 3½-inch and below; IMHO, too many to bother increasing the size of the table in section 2. Capacity and access speed to accommodate all of them. But I would footnote the maximum number of platters in a 3.5" 1.63" z height much like footnote 21 for the 5¼" HH. I seem to recall it being about 10 and when I have the time, I'll do some research to see what I can find. Tom94022 (talk) 19:28, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Drive Motor

perhaps the article should mention what kind of motor (AC/DC, Unipolar, Disktype etc) is used in HD ? HH 15:09 (CEST) 30 July 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.254.95.134 (talk) 13:08, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Form factor, etc. table

Although current 2.5" drives probably top out at 3 platters (I don't keep track), a couple past 2.5" drives that have 4 platters are the IBM Travelstar 3XP (17 mm height), and Travelstar 32GH (12.5 mm height).

See: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/dlga/dlgades.htm / http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/products/Travelstar_32GH (Page 3 of the datasheet.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.231.232.26 (talk) 07:18, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

output in hard disk

Block quote

Faster drive, air drag?

The article states: "Drives running at 10,000 or 15,000 rpm use smaller platters because of air drag and therefore generally have lower capacity than the highest capacity desktop drives."

This claim isn't cited in the article. But I'm not an expert by any means so I'm wondering if anyone could clarify the factual accuracy of this claim. My initial impression is that the inertia of the platter, and not air drag, is why faster drives have smaller platters and thus lower capacity.

It's been a while since I flipped through my physics books, so I could be off. Can anyone verify this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.65.221.154 (talk) 19:51, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

15K rpm HDDs, 10K rpm HDDs, and desktop (5400 rpm)HDDs all use the same size disks: 3.5" in diameter. The size of the motor changes to increase rotational speed. Mobile HDDs (laptops) use 2.5" disks, iPods and GPS use 1.8" disks, and for a while there was a 1" diamter disk for the IBM/Hitachi Micordrive. --Hollisterbulldawg (talk) 20:19, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wait - the article says the 10K and 15K rpm HDDs use smaller platters due to air drag. Are you saying their platters are the same size, and only the motors are bigger? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.65.221.154 (talk) 21:15, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to be something important missing here...

How do hard drives work?

So far the only place the article seems to touch on this is under "integrity". What are platters, what are they made of, how is data represented on them, whats a read/write head, how does it read and write data on and off the platters, etc etc etc. 76.15.173.124 (talk)

Yeah, I think this is a problem with the article. I read the "Integrity" section and then became curious about exactly how they worked but couldn't find anything. Seems to be quite an important thing to mention. --137.195.250.2 (talk) 06:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Hardware information"

I don't believe anything in this edit is worth keeping. It's trivial information, unsourced, and seems to focus on negatives. It would appear obvious that plenty of previously-common configurations are no longer produced, much as with any other type of old PC hardware. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 00:26, 10 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"2.5" laptop drive ATA connector

I don't see anything saying or describing ATA laptop connector. It is different that 3.5" hard disk connector because it is also used to provide power. That is why I believe it should be also added to the page.