Very silent external FireWire drive

[wasserwerk]

Yes, I know - PT9 is most exciting topic now, but I have one simple universal question.

I bought just now this one:

http://www.dsp-memory.de/v1/catalog/...ducts_id=3811&

But this drive is very loud even without disk access (idle). When this document
http://www.inxtron.com/files/article...patibility.pdf
says truth then this drive uses Hitachi HDS721010KLA330. I found one review in german magazine c't and it writes: 1.4 sone in idle and 2.5 sone at access. This are horrible values! What external realy quiet FireWire hard drive could you recommend?

I tend now to buy empty enclosure like this:

http://www.dsp-memory.de/v1/catalog/...ucts_id=10370&
http://www.dsp-memory.de/v1/catalog/...ucts_id=10830&

and separately a silent hard disc.

Second question - must it be realy a 7200 rpm hard disk - as recommended by Avid? There are many 2.5" hard discs at 5400 rpm which are comparable fast to 3.5" @ 7200 rpm (transfer rate and access time) and these are quieter. Can I use such 2.5" @5400 rpm for tracking in PT?

[The Dougfather]

In my experience i have always purchased Hitachi for replacement internal and external caddies because they are the quietest.

They seem to get noisier as the capacity increases?

7200 is very important for optimum track count and performance.

[albee1952]

7200 rpm is the minimum if you want any level of good performance. I washed my hands of Hitachi drives along time ago when they made the IBM drives that were dying in droves. I work on internals only and leave the firewire drives for backup and transfers(laptop and iMac users don't get that option-except that OWC is now modding iMacs).

[Richard901]

If you have access to a PC/Bootcamp you should be able to change the AAM (Automatic Acoustic management) setting on the drive.

HDDScan is a free program which will do this:
http://hddscan.com/

Also, this article:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...stic,2084.html

Richard

[wasserwerk]

Originally Posted by albee1952

7200 rpm is the minimum if you want any level of good performance.

One again - what ist that magic feature of usual 7200 rpm HDD vs. one 2.5" with 5400 rpm with the same transfer rate as many of 7200 HDDs and seek time of ca. 12 ms? There are some 3.5"/7200 HDD with clearly poorer performance. Or with another words - some of todays 2.5"/5400 drives are faster then 3.5"/7200 HDDs decade ago, which ware used for hard disc recording. Why should one not use 2.5"/5400 for home recodrding? What is the usual case? 10 tracks? 20 tracks? This must be sufficient enough! Or I'm thinking a big mistake?

[wasserwerk]

Too bad, no answer. So let me give some examples:

2.5" Hitachi HTE545050B9A300 Travelstar 5K500.B2
466 GB, 5400 rpm, cache 7208 kB
seek ca. 14 ms
read (min/mean/max) [MB/s]: 39,7/62,3/82,4
write (min/mean/max) [MB/s]: 39,7/62,2/82,5
noise level (idle/quiet/fast) [sone]: 0,5/0,6/0,6

another example:
2.5" Fujitsu MJA2500BH G2
466 GB, 5400 rpm, cache 8192
seek 12,7 (fast)/16,2(quiet) ms
read (min/mean/max) [MB/s]: 42,4/65,6/84,8
write (min/mean/max) [MB/s]: 42,3/65,5/84,5
noise level (idle/quiet/fast) [sone]: 1,1/1,1/1,2

(source: c't 9/2010)

So, both HDDs with 5400 rpm (the first Hitachi very quiet) with transfer rates like some 3.5"/7200 and not significantly worse seek times, e.g. Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C HDS721032CLA362 with 13 ms seek time and 40/65/75 MB/s transfer rate.

So why not one drive like first example above for audio tracks when we have almost same performance with 2.5"/5400 as (many but not every) 3.5"/7200?

Note the limit of FireWire: FW400 = 50 MB/s, FW800 = 100 MB/s! This means all users of MBOX Pro and Digi003 are damned to FW400 and only 50 MB/s. Almost all current 2.5" HDDs are faster than 50 MB/s.

[wasserwerk]

PT9 produced so much traffic that my question is gone down.
Is here someone who record on external 2.5" 5400 rpm FW drive and had no problems?

[aka21stCentury]

Macsales (OWC) sold an all aluminum (heat sink) Oxford911 enclosure. Near silent operation. Model # PHR-100AF 1394a (400) Best Buy has the older PATA (new name for ATA 133) 500 gig Western Digital. No fan in enclosure, this drive is extremely quite and very fast. In fact it beats out many with 32 mBs of cache in seek times. I think it is 16 mBs. Yes you need 7,200 rpm. The only bummer with a tiger mac (no experience with newer OS) Oxford911's don't sleep. So dismount and turn off when not using. Also turn off journaling in Disk Utilities, select partition hold option key down, then journaling is no longer grayed out. Turn it off. My suggestion is to not spread partitions out. Just one large partition -- journaling off. As I had mixed journaling on and off on same drive and lost my unjournaled partition after dismounting it, leaving the other partitions mounted. PITA! Awesome Norton 6 fixed in on a powerbook system 9.1 firewire target mode. The newer enclosures are plastic with fans. You want to avoid that tiny loud fan I take it? B&H has some newer all aluminum enclosures. Just don't buy an Iomega or any other drive from Best Buy other than that model. Old stock. Old firmware. That drive rocks. Model # above is an IDE cable setup. So only this PATA WD available through Best Buy. Legacy drive but awesome performance. SAS drives plug in without cables 2.5 " but you'll probably have a fan in the newer enclosure. I think my contact at Seagate said 4 will fit in the size of a normal drive slot. These SAS drives are SCSI and fast... setup for servers. You just need the right enclosure/oxford chipset with a large diameter fan. Slow rotating fan.

[wasserwerk]

Thanks for your answer and hints!

Yes, I read many good stories about OWC drives but I live in Germany and I don't want buy in USA but here localy. I found similar enclosures here and I plan to buy this one:

http://www.dsp-memory.de/v1/catalog/...ucts_id=10370&

It uses an Oxford 934DSB.


I have now convince me and buy a 7200 rpm hard drive. My favorite is:

http://www.dsp-memory.de/v1/catalog/...s_id=10003846&

It should be very silent hard drive in idle and not so loud at head access.

At first try I bought this complete drive:

http://www.dsp-memory.de/v1/catalog/...ducts_id=3811&

but i was very loud in idle and I sent it back.

[aka21stCentury]

That model may not be approved. Have you checked the Oxford chipset list? Maybe for 9 but for the older PTs which you may need for compatibility purposes... i.e. taking the drive to a studio still using 7.4 on a Macintosh.

Things all mixed up with 9. USB-2 only for Windows, previously only chipsets without USB-2, 1394a or b only (Oxfords) for 7.4 and earlier.

Have you gone online to B&H post production section? I am listening to this plastic peice of crap from OWC at the moment w/ newer Oxford chipset 9xx 1394b and USB-2 with fan and the Hitachi drive mentioned above, and the older aluminum heat sink style enclosure I mentioned above without the fan is hands down in a class all by itself. Nearly silent. Plus it looks awesome.

Also -- very important. SuperDuper is a cloning tool for Macintosh -- rated the most accurate. Free version will clone but will not do incremental backups. They have found very few firewire drives will boot macs. This older OWC Oxford911 listed in my previous post boots a Mac via 1394a. I found this to be extremely handy to have an exact clone that will boot the machine via firewire. However the new Intel Macs supposedly boot with USB-2. It just depends do you have older PPC Macs like many of us still kicking around?

I cannot handle noise, especially working at night (hard drives especially) or small fast fans. Check out the eSATA Dulce duo at B&H ... at least there is room for a larger fan. I can't actually see what size the fan is but at least go to their NYC website and check out www.bhphotovideo.com Dulce Systems Pro Duo-eSATA in the post production section. There are instructions on the web for adding a resistor to slow the fan if it bothers you. Are you working on a laptop? This setup would be ideal if you had an express card slot available.

9 does not list eSATA as an option but this must be a clerical error. They list SATA and SAS (HP only) and for Windows machines USB-2 only (ext. audio drives). The noisy OWC unit I am complaining about at the moment is firewire 800 and USB-2 Oxford 9xx. No Firewire 400 as in the unit you posted. So I am questioning the logic. One firewire buss, just as in SCSI the entire bus drops to lowest common denominator. 1394a.

Lightstream is what 30 feet of fiber or at least that was optical firewire when it was first announced in 2000. eSATA cables at least far enough to get a bit out of earshot and two drives ideal then only one fan. If 1394a use the longer cables from www.granite.com with dual ferrite beads on either ends. Don't skimp and use enclosed Chinese cables. RoHS compliant dual ferrites, or purchase separate ferrite beads (not as effective) and clamp them on either end. Dampen all USB and Firewire cables, as both are hubs as in ethernet. Internally they are hubs. You may be able to get the drive far enough away to work at night on a laptop stand.

The newer Seagate vs 12s are only 16 mBs where the Hitachi is 32 mBs cache and louder. I mentioned that older OWC rig because there is no fan, no plastic, and that WD PATA 500 g drive is known to be an extremely fast drive, but it tends to run a bit hot but the enclosure is shock mounted and the aluminum acts as the heat sink. Works well. You're in Germany and heat shouldn't be a problem. You can still buy the drives, but I would search that model number to see if you can still find that enclosure somewhere. It was cheap like $39 USD. Even comes with a blue/red LED window for read/write and an all aluminum stand.