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Subject: Drive rating/comparison.

Drive rating/comparison.

From: <zeno_at_warpmail.net>
Date: Sun, 06 Apr 2003 17:22:02 -0800

I have been interested in upgrading to a larger drive,
however, I have found the spec. sheets to be insufficient in comparing
the real-world performance of the drives for this application.
possibly a database could be created with which to compare drives
different people have tried using some quick tests such as:
- recording with standardized settings, no input to compare electrical
noise.
- with mic enabled to compare acoustic noise.
- some test to compare succeptability to shock.
- possibly real transfer rates...

I personally am bothered by the noise of the machine. Playing quiet music
late at night, the electrical interference when the drive spins up is
annoying, the frequency of spinup/down is distracting, and as we all
know, the builtin mic is close to useless. So I am interested in the
drive that can make the best compromise for these purposes (but others
may want to make different comparisons).

Having made this suggestion, I must say that being able to employ the
builtin cache on any drive would override all these considerations as the
majority of songs would be playable without spinning up, and recordings
of substantial durration would be possible without spinning up, making it
usable as a note-taker that would be usable with voice recognition sw:
spin down disk -> press rec -> record possibly 30min speach with 16mb
buffer, low bitrate, possibly with time-machine record option. I have no
idea how to begin investigation into this matter. any suggestions?

The problem, I gather is that the cache data is generally not
read/writable when the disk is spun down? is this universally true? Also
is is possible that some drives have acoustic management features that
involve varying the rotational speed of the platters, so that they might
spin only slightly faster than neccesary to supply needed data, possibly
reducing, and rendering less-eratic the noise of the drive.
my machine uses toshiba 20gb drive.
-- 
  
  zeno_at_warpmail.net
Received on 2003-04-07

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