Talk:Hard disk drive/Archive 4

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convert internal to external

I want to know how to use internal harddrive as external one??

There are many companies that make "hard drive enclosures". You install a normal internal hard drive into the enclosure, and the result is an external hard drive. A small circuit board in the enclosure that converts between the computer interface and the hard drive interface. The most common type converts between IDE and USB. Others handle Firewire, SATA, SCSI, etc. Does that answer your question? --68.0.120.35 21:35, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

"You should go to www.overclock.net , it's a forum dedicated on modding and taking the best out of your pc(my name is gravity there in case you need any advice..." ~~gravity~~

why 7200 RPM ?

Does anyone know why HDD speeds are specifically set to 7200, 5400, or 10000 RPM ? I'm on a forum (www.overclock.net) and a guy is asking this out... No one seems able to answer him... Any help ? Thanx, ~~gravity~~ —The preceding unsigned comment was added by F2002yann (talk • contribs) 16:47, 14 December 2006 (UTC).

How long will digital memory last?

In a disconnected HD? On CD/DVD's? If we wanted to store our family pictures, what is the best, most stable way?

People once stored photograph negatives long term (lifetime). Is there a digital storage media that is also very stable? What is the best way to store all the digital photography I've done? 209.112.88.123 01:51, 17 December 2006 (UTC)msz209.112.88.123 01:51, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Store it in multiple places, in multiple formats.WolfKeeper 09:59, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I suggest you NOT store on any phase change medium such as DVD RW (+, +/-), DVD R, or CD RW. I personally have had short term reliability problems with such media and technically it's not so clear as to what is the life time of the phases (even though the vendors claim long life). A large local HDD (a 50 year old RAMAC at the Computer History Museum is still readable) with remote CD R copies is one idea or if you want to go even further have mirrored local HDD's with remote CD R copies. Tom94022 18:43, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

A disconnected HDD won't help. Data recorded on magnetic media will gradually degrade over time (thermal decay). This was one motivation for switching to perpendicular recording, as PMR is more stable than LMR, but PMR isn't a magic elixir. Of course you could re-write your data periodically, but then there's the risk of mechanical failure.

With optical media, some cheap stuff is known to debond at the interface between the polycarbonate layers (like LD rot), plus the dye quality (with respect to aging) varies from maker to maker. If you want to go optical, I recommend Taiyo Yuden. From what I've read and from personal experience, it's by far the best optical media brand out there.

Multiple backups is wise, but my recommendation would be to have your most precious digital photos transferred to negatives. Several services on the web will do this for you. Just make sure you find out what the resolution of the digital-to-analog device is (it's usually 2-3 Mpx, but higher resolution setups exist). Film is a proven stable archival medium, and if cared for properly will definitely outlast any HDD, and probably will outlast optical media and prints. GMW 07:41, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

"A HDD" or "an HDD"?

I'd go with an HDD, but either way the article should be consistent, which it isn't. 80.244.74.178 (talk) 06:49, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

See A and an#Discrimination between a and an. --Van helsing (talk) 21:18, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I can argue that a is generally preferred over an because:

• Unlike in words such as hard, historic, and hotel, the second character in HDD is not a vowel.
• HDD is an initialism.
• The H in HDD is not silent.
• As per the WP section on discrimination between a and an, the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage states that users can choose the article that suits their pronunciation. As of Sep. 2008, the ratio of "a HDD" to "an HDD" on the web appears to be 528,000:130,000 or about 4:1. The users have made their choice.

--AB (talk) 10:04, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

So you're saying we should actually switch it to 'a'? Predator106 (talk) 12:15, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

A and an is unhelpful here because HDD is an initialism. It boils down to the pronunciation of the letter 'H'. Although many people pronounce H as beginning an H, this is generally regarded as incorrect (See H). If we accept the usual 'correct' pronunciation then "an HDD" is correct. CrispMuncher (talk) 17:33, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

The 'h' in HDD is not pronounced it is literally, \ˈāch\, so the rule that an is used before a silent h may be most appropriate. I am very dubious of using internet searches as a basis for this sort of decision. Finally, an HDD just sounds better than a HDD. Tom94022 (talk) 17:38, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

perpendicular recording -- when?

"Another technology used to overcome thermal effects to allow greater recording densities is perpendicular recording, which has been used in many hard drives as of 2007 [7][8][9]."

Then a few paragraphs later:

"As of 2006, some disk drives use perpendicular recording technology to increase recording density and throughput.[15]"

So is it 2006 or 2007? This self-contradiction should be corrected. T-bonham (talk) 12:28, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

No year is definitive. Like a lot of high-tech products, drives are developed in stages -- demonstration units, prototypes, pre-production models, and production models. Often the technology itself also goes in stages, where the early versions are feeble or even impractical. Any reference we could use for the exact date of any specific technology usually ends up with just conflicting marketing claims. In this case, the statements "some" drives in 2006 and "many" drives in 2007 is about the best we can do. --A D Monroe III (talk) 15:21, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

There is no inconsistency between the two sentences but the second one appears to have disappeared. Perpendicular recording was first successfully shipped to market in 2005 by Toshiba. Others followed in 2006 and 2007. There were many earlier attempts to commercialize perpendicular recording going as far back as IBM in the late 1950's but nothing really happened until Toshiba circa mid 2005. Tom94022 (talk) 16:06, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

This resource might help, by the way are most hard drive naming indicated by their drive density? (Please read the source, before answering, it is a very short source) [1] --Ramu50 (talk) 22:48, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I read the source, it doesn't seem to have much to do with this topic. I'm not sure what u mean by "hard drive naming" and "drive density." Many drives today include a measure of their capacity in the particular model number and at a given form factor there can be a rough correlation to areal density of the medium. Hope this helps Tom94022 (talk) 01:17, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

please unprotect page

why is this page protected? anyway, i recommend the following columns to this table in the middle of the article:

Standard Name	Width	Largest capacity to date (2007)	Platters (Max)
5.25"	5.75"
3.5"	4"	1TB	5
2.5"	2.75"	160GB	2
1.8" (PCMCIA)	54 millimeters
1.8" (ATA-7 LIF)	2.12"

Check the History tab on the article. There was a persistent vandal recently, thus the article was protected. I do think information on platters and capacity belongs in the article, but I'm not sure whether the "Physical Dimensions" table is right for it. Whether this means the table should be renamed, or another table is needed, or some other solution is best, is something I'll need to think about, or defer to wiser minds. Also worth bearing mind is that this information is not "static", but describes something of an ongoing development. Not sure what the implications of that are, to be honest. It's not like changes come every day, but it's definitely info that's subject to change. Paul.w.bennett 16:41, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Should this article be titled "Hard disk drive"

A hard disk is a component of a hard disk drive, and such disks are not in today's embodiments user removable.

A floppy disk is the medium of a floppy disk drive and such disks are generally user removable

An optical disk cartridge is the medium of an optical disk drive and such cartridges are generally user removable.

A tape cartridge is the medium of a tape drive and such cartridges are generally user removable.

So why is this article entitled hard disk? More important, who is going to revert me if I go thru the effort to make this terminology consistent. Tom94022 23:49, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea of changing the article to "hard disk drive". Unless you want to change it to "hard file" ;-) I would say the convention for optical media is to use the term "disc". Unless you work for a certain HDD vendor, to be unnamed, then it also applies to magnetic media. :-D GMW 07:44, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

if you want to make it consistent, please also rewrite all instances of "hard drive". _All_ drives are hard; it's the medium inside that sometimes isn't. Hint: A "floppy-disk drive" is a drive for floppy disks. A "floppy disk-drive" is something you send in for repair. Geira (talk) 22:11, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

DoJ

"2005: Seagate and Maxtor announce their intent to merge. US DoJ approval was given for Maxtor to be acquired by Seagate for US$1.9 billion,[7] and the merger closed in mid-2006."

I was just wondering, could anyone explain the relevence of the DoJ being involved in the merge between two hard drive manufacurers?

Binarysaint 12:25, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

DoJ reviews large mergers for possible violations of the antitrust laws. See http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/public/guidelines/hmg.htm --agr 14:00, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

temperture for harddrive

what is a safe temp for a harddrive? is 103degrees frienheit to hot --Falcon866 15:15, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Check out the specifications for your specific HDD. The spec always lists the allowable environmental operating conditions of the drive, including temperature. Most HDDs go up to 55 or 60 degrees Celsius, which corresponds to 131 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. 103 deg F is typical. GMW 16:20, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Is This Possible?

I know someone who'se hard drive got dropped, and he says that the head went through the disk. But I thought that there wasnt much space inside the casing, so how could the head actually have bounced around enough to gain enough speed to actually puncture right through the disk? Was he exxagerating, or should this type of incident be listed under a section titled "Disadvantages of Hard Drives"? Thanks. Ilikefood 16:56, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to see a picture; IMHO, it is not possible, for many reasons not just speed. It is possible for shock to cause the head to "ding" a disk leading to a "bad" spot which may or may not be recoverable. Many mobile drives have drop detecting (accelerometers) circuits that move the head to a safe position before the impact preventing such damage. Bottom line is the shock spec on drives exceeds that of many other components, like LCD's, cases, etc., so that i would NOT list this as a disadvantage. Tom94022 17:25, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Some drives use plated glass platters. I suppose one might find a platter that had the plating completely removed from some part of the platter surface, and one might naïvely describe that as "going through the disk". But other than that, I can't see it either.

Atlant 17:34, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

It is impossible that "dropping" a hard drive would generate enough acceleration for the head to penetrate the platter, unless maybe we are talking about a fall of hundreds of feet. The platters are extremely rigid and very strong (either aluminum or a ceramic). It is possible for a head crash to scratch the media which is sputtered onto the platter, but no way the head "went through" the disc. - O^O 18:27, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe someone can add to "capacity" section information about 2.5" hard drives (I guess 120Gb is the largest available now, but not sure), please ?

"Exponential"

It's unusual, and encouraging, to see someone use the word "exponential" correctly: usually it just means something like "fast," but the user has never heard of an exponential function. The graph makes it clear that someone has a clue!

Donreed

Write precompensation

This section may be unsuitable, but please do not simply remove - possibly move to its own article. - Zephyris _Talk 17:29, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Is this a religious issue with you or are speaking with some knowledge of disk drive technology? The article is too long by most standards and write precompensation is minor one of many technical details of disk drives not covered in the article. IMHO, it doesn't even rise to the level of inclusion in Wikipedia at all, but if u want to move it to a separate page please do so. But you might then consider covering all other hard disk drive technologies. BTW, the PC's CMOS setting is not used by any modern HDD. I'll hear your response, before I delete the section Tom94022 20:15, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I must say I have some very strong religious views on hard disk drives :) I do understand that it may be an irrelevant detail for the purposes of this article - its both an obscure and superseded technology - but it should merit inclusion as most things do; there probably is a page on hard disk drive religions! Ill move it to its own article.

Wow, my first edit debate! Feels refreshing - I should move out of the obscure world of biochemistry articles... - Zephyris _Talk 10:56, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Precomp is most certainly used on modern HDDs. As Tom94022 said, though, the CMOS setting is no longer used.

Referring to the precomp entry, modern precomp does not involve increased write current. The timing of transitions on short magnets is shifted in order to counteract non-linear transition shift (NLTS). In longitudinal recording, this is largely due to the demagnetization field from previously written data (initial magnetization). GMW 16:11, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Google failure study

Google has a paper detailing error rates from a farm of 100,000 drives. Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population

Would it be a suitable link? I found this comment interesting:

Our analysis identifies several parameters from the drive’s self monitoring facility (SMART) that correlate highly with failures. Despite this high correlation, we conclude that models based on SMART parameters alone are unlikely to be useful for predicting individual drive failures. Surprisingly, we found that temperature and activity levels were much less correlated with drive failures than previously reported.

How should I incorporate it into the article? DanBeale 15:08, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Dan this is a great find and should be incorporated into the article. I would suggest the section Integrity be renamed Reliability and you make a major rewrite to summarize this article Tom94022 20:05, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Data Rate

"SCSI originally had just one speed, 5 MHz (for a maximum data rate of 5 megabytes per second)" In the article... I am no expert, But wondering if that would be 5 megabits per second since 5 mhz would be 5 million cycles per second, meaning a maximum of 5 million bits per second, making maximum of 5 megabits per second. Maybe I am wrong, just thought I would put my 2 cents.

My guess is that this talk is unrelated to the Google article above, so I made it a separate talk session. The SCSI-1 bus was 8 bits wide so each transition transferred one byte. I think the transaction rate was more complex than just a maximum of 5 MHz but if that was the maximum then the rate is 5,000,000 bytes/sec. Tom94022 20:05, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Sound

What causes the "creaking" sound you often hear when a hard drive is reading/writing? Is it the sound of the heads moving?

Most probably. On a Quantum Bigfoot (2GB model) you can actually watch the head moving (without the drive dying) under the transparent foil. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.253.2.232 (talk) 15:27, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Sort of. On a modern drive, what you actually hear is the position signal changing as the heads approach a track, by way of the voice coil motor. The arm itself makes almost no noise unless the drive is damaged or the bearings holding up the arm are worn out (very rare; usually the spindle goes first). -lee (talk) 19:19, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Change to capacity measurements section

I made some changes to the "Capacity measurements" section expanding on the difference between base 10 and base 2 measurement systems. Tom94022 undid my changes two hours later claiming my additions were POV, historically misleading and factually incorrect. Could Tom94022 or somebody else give a clearer reason why my changes deserved to be removed? I think the previous (and current) section is POV, historically misleading and factually incorrect. That is why I changed it. Tom94022 simply undid my changes instead of trying to improve upon them.The Goat 21:02, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't speak for Tom, however, I have to ask . . . What makes you think that the base10 choice had anything to do with manufacturers advertising larger disk drives? Do you have a reference? ~a (user • talk • contribs) 21:36, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

No, there aren't any references, since the "hard drive manufacturer size inflation conspiracy" is bogus. Hard drives have been measured in decimal units since they were invented. See Talk:Binary_prefix#History for a closely related discussion. — Omegatron 21:57, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't make my self clearer. The "conspiracy" statement was IMHO POV. I can point to at least 3 early important computers that did NOT have main storage sized in binary related amounts so there is no reason to ever use k or K as other than 1,000 in these early computers. The Stretch documents from the late 1950's do NOT use k or K in a binary sense. The PDP8 did come with main storage measured in 4,096 words of 12 bits, but the 1966 Users manual refers to this in decimal numbers and never uses k or K to refer to main storage. Interestingly the manual does use K as 1,000 when, e.g. referring to a drum as 65K words. The IBM S/360 mainframe product literature did NOT use k K or M in a binary sense for main storage. Amdahl did use K clearly marked as =1024 in his seminal mid-1960's article on the s/360 but else where in the same article he used K as 1,000 without marking - no confusion. The 8" Floppy disk of the 1970's was accurately characterized in decimal units and prefixes by IBM and most OEM's. DEC may have misapplied the SI prefixes but I can't be sure. So to somehow say this occurred in the 50's and 60's is IMHO factually and historically incorrect as demonstrated by these several citations. Personally, I don't think it became a public problem until much later, perhaps as late as the Apple Macintosh. MSDOS is pretty clean, for the most part spelling out storage capacity, main or disk, in decimal units without prefixes. I couldn't come up with anything better than what was already there so I reverted it. If I had to say something, it could only be that the beginnings of the public misuse of the SI units is not clear but it appears to be after the Intel chip, and after floppy disks.Tom94022 22:55, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Reading these responses and the thread in Talk:Binary_prefix#History I see two groups arguing about two related but slightly separate things. One groups says, "HDD's have always been base 10." The other says, "computer bytes prefixes are historically powers of two." These are not diametrically opposed facts. HDD can be manufactured to base 10 capacities and byte measurment prefixes and be powers of two at the same time. The sticky point is when HDD manufactures stopped advertisings 5 million bytes and started using 5 megabytes instead. Like it or not SI does not have magical power over the electronics/computer industry. They don't get to define Greek and Latin word prefixes for units of measure not included is SI. It is confusing but the computer industry adopted the same prefixes with different definitions. This was not a mistake. This was not a misuse of SI units. I admit without a federal supeana there is no evidence to support a conspiracy argument behind the current choice in HDD advertising lingo.The Goat 12:25, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Like it or not, every publisher has an obligation to define his terms when he uses standard terms in a non standard way. For example, in the U.S. I can publish a temperature as 15 degrees without having to say Celsius, but if I meant Kelvin then I should so annotate. There is no disagreement that kilo, k and K meant 1,000 long before it was used in a binary sense with regard to computer main storage. The disagreement is only about when it became common to use SI prefixes in a binary sense with regard to computer main storage; that is when were [ 1) products specified using binary SI prefixes, or 2) advertised as such] AND 3) the associated operating systems reported binary SI prefixes AND 4) there was no disclaimer, (e.g., K=1024 as in the Amdahl article). The earliest such system I can clearly identify is Apple Macintosh; MSDOS and Apple DOS are relatively clean and to the best of my recollection so was CPM. IBM MVS and DOS were clean. I don't know about UNIX or DEC OS's but I suspect they were clean. So in the absent any facts, postings establishing an early date for the onset of the mis-use of SI prefixes are speculative and inappropriate.Tom94022 15:21, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, SI didn't invent the prefixes they are Greek and Latin. SI can only define the prefixes for SI units. The unit the byte is not governed by SI. So there is no such thing as "mis-use of SI prefixes" when they are used with the byte. The standard use of prefixes when used to modify the unit the byte is the base 2 way. The fact that some early articles included a legend (not disclaimer) highlighting K=1024 doesn't sway the argument one way or the other. People often include extra information so that a unit of measurement is clearly understood. Short/long/metric ton is a good example. When writing an article I would always clarify I am referencing gross tons. That doesn't mean my definition of ton is mis-used or wrong in anyway. If a OS (such as MSDOS) reports sizes as thousands, millions or billions of bytes then it has nothing to do with prefixes. It is just reporting a number of bytes. Not a number of kilobytes, megabytes or gigabytes as those units are never used. i.e. output from the dir command shows I have "14,717,014,016 bytes free". Where is the prefix? Any given OS' implementation isn't really important anyway. What is important is the convention used by the everyday members of the particular industry. I don't think anybody can make a argument against the computer industry's widespread convention being kilobyte=1024 bytes. Of coarse it is possible to find many examples that contradict the industry convention. Like a byte use to not always be eight bits and so on and so forth.The Goat 18:56, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

We agree MSDOS did not contribute to the establishment of the binary SI units because it didn't use prefixes. Again the question is not whether there is a "standard" but when did the computer industry generally adopt such a standard. The only evidence, presented so far is that it didn't happen in the 1950's or 1960's as u originally asserted. If you have any evidence, I'd like to see it.Tom94022 21:37, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

So let me submit that it is very much in question whether there is any kind of "standard" that assigns the meaning 1024 to the prefix "k". I, personally, do not know a single person who has ever thought that a megabyte is "exactly one million byte", but I also don't know anybody who even knows the number of bytes in a MB. You, the reader of this text, cannot name how many bytes are in a MB, so why claim that this number is some kind of "standard"? As far as I know, everybody has always used the prefixes "kilo-" or "mega-" in the computer context as "about a thousand (or a million or whatever)". That is, if I go and ask random people how many bytes are in a gigabyte, the most common answer (after "I don't know" and "a lot" and such) is going to be "about a billion bytes". Or maybe "about a thousand megabytes". With emphasis on the "about". A megabyte is that odd number of bytes that has to do with the way computers count stuff that is close to a million. Good enough for anybody I've ever talked to. Claiming that the number 1024*1024 (which you'd need a calculator to figure out because you can't even name it from the top of your head) has ever been some kind of "standard" would require either a standards body adopting it (nope, SI says megabyte=10^6byte) or some large majority of industry insiders using it in this precise way (nope, they say megabyte="about a million byte") or the majority of folks on the street understanding it that way (nope, if they can name a number to the prefix "mega" at all, they'll say "million"). How is something a "standard" if nobody actually thinks this is exactly the meaning of that prefix?Iron Condor (talk) 23:30, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Instead of wasting time with futile personal battles, we should be finding all the evidence we can and collecting it in a single location; probably Talk:Binary prefix#History. In other words, start making a timeline of actual sizes and the words used at the time to describe them. First example entry: Moved to Talk:Binary prefix#Timeline. — Omegatron 21:49, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually that's what I've been doing here and in the Binary Prefix page; so far I have identified the RAMAC 305, IBM 1620, IBM Stretch papers, the PDP8 and all IBM/360 as not using Binary Prefixes. I will now add to our list the S/370 announcement:Tom94022 23:16, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Manufacturing

Could there be a manufacturing section, or another article? (Like CD manufacturing) Yuletide 16:46, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I am suggesting that the disk spinning rate of 2007 be changed from an average of 5400 rpm to 7200 rpm. LAPTOP HDDs have a 5400 rpm, but 99% of SATA or IDE HDDs on desktop computers use 7200 RPM drives. Either way, enterprises usually use a SCSI interface on their servers, which go @ ~10,000-15,000 rpm.

Just a thought from an computer consultant. 74.132.138.151 01:47, 12 April 2007 (UTC)Admiralthrawn999 (was looking something up, and didn't sign on)

Yes, if none will oppose, I'll do that change (just something from a computer consultant/technician)--Doktor Who 22:44, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} request for edit and change

request for edit and change the 30 GB size in the seagate hard disk image label into the correct 40 GB size; if you look at the big image carefully you can read in the upper right corner 40 instead of 30 ... and... i have got one on my table right now ;-) i have corrected it in the image, but the main article is protected

Appears to have been done. Harryboyles 12:30, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Error in Capacity section?

"The first 3.5" HDD marketed as able to store 1TB is the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000. The drive contains five platters at approximately 200 GB each, providing 935.5GB of usable space." Shouldn't this say 935.5 GiB? It is in fact a 1 trillion byte drive. I'm making the change. --711groove 13:29, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

you have it the wrong way around

its actually a 1 TiB drive, 935.5GB. its correct the way it is -- BBnet3000 23:19, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

What you just wrote makes no sense. 1×2⁴⁰ bytes != 935.5×10⁹ bytes or 935.5×2³⁰ bytes. 711grove is correct. -- mattb 23:48, 22 May 2007 (UTC)