[mythtv-users] Hard drive recommendation

[Isaac Richards]

On Sunday 22 February 2004 07:59 am, Joseph A. Caputo wrote:
> On Friday 20 February 2004 18:48, J. Donavan Stanley wrote:
> > Chris Petersen wrote:
> > >>Look into the Barracuda 7200.7 line...
> > >
> > >Speaking of which, I think there is a deal for one of these listed at
> > >techbargains.com right now..   $130 or so for a 200G drive.
> >
> > I've got the 200gb 7200.7 in my main Myth box.  It's hot, but I've never
> > heard it running, not even during boot up.
>
> Yeah, I got one of these a little while back via the rebate CompUSA was
> offering ($100 after rebates), and I was quite surprised & impressed at how
> quiet it is.  I can never hear it running at all, even when there's a lot
> of disk activity.
>
> I hear the Barracuda V is even quieter, if that's possible.

Just an update on the Seagate 7200.7:  I bought a 200GB 7200.7 last week, and 
it exhibits the behavior described here:

http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/view_message/20081647

Basically, when the drive is idle for a a little bit, it will, all on its own, 
decide to start seeking around and reading mass amounts of data.

It's relatively loud and very annoying, when the computer would otherwise be 
quiet.  I've worked around this by running a little shell script that runs 
'hdparm -I /dev/hdb' every second to prevent the drive from ever being 
detected as idle, but that's not really an ideal solution.  I certainly would 
not have bought the drive if I had known of this in advance.

Isaac