[mythtv-users] Bad News for me...a warning to all

[Nick Dyer]

On Fri, Apr 23, 2004 at 12:08:48PM -0600, Brandon Beattie wrote:
> The drives are by far the nosiest thing, and I've yet to find a good
> case that muffles drives well.  My future plan is to get a server/disk
> box to stuff in my storage room and run 100 or 1000MB around my house
> and just have frontends accessing it.  (Oh, my old powersupply was 350W,

For quietening drives you might try using hdparm -M to set the
acoustical management profile. For example:

# hdparm -I /dev/hda
ATA device, with non-removable media
        Model Number:       Maxtor 6Y080P0
[...]
        Recommended acoustic management value: 192, current value: 128
[...]

This makes the drive virtually silent, but it does have a performance
hit. I'm not sure how what the support is like with different
manufacturers.

This is a mythtv machine built into a Shuttle SN41G2 box which does run
fairly warm (athcool makes a helpful 10 degree difference in CPU
temperature). I am obsessive about monitoring drive temperatures on it
using smartctl.

The important thing with hard drives is air flow across them -
preferably point a fan right at them if you have data you care about.
Our 0.6TB mp3/video server has its 4 WDC drives nicely cooled at 28-32
degrees indicated under SMART and I don't expect any problems there. The
problem I've seen commonly is with cheap Maxtors if they are in a case
in which the air is stagnant - they run at about 60 degrees and will
typically only last 12-18 months before failing.

Be careful with smartctl, though - I have seen some strange crashes on
promise IDE controllers with running it whilst there is heavy DMA
access.

Nick