~misfit~ wrote on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:32:18 +1300:
> Somewhere on teh intarwebs Mark Shapiro wrote:
>>> I understood that Macs use the same hard disc drives that every one
>>> else uses.
>>
>> I have found that Mac laptops have drives that are
>> more protected with rubber or shock-absorbing mounts,
>> and better power supplies, and the OS is not constantly
>> writing to the disk.
>
> Also they're better designed than your aveage $300 laptop with attention to
> HDD temperature.
>
> The biggest killer of HDDs (after shock) is high temperatures. A lot of
> cheap laptops are poorly designed in that their HDDs often exceed the HDD
> manufacturers specified maximum temperature (60 deg C for most Seagate
> drives FI).

Hi Shaun! Where did you hear this from? This is something I would
automatically believe without question. Although my personal experience
coupled with Google's study shows cool hard drives fails far more. For
example, out of 20 drives, I have had 3 of them that failed. And they
were all highly cooled down drives (80°-100°F range). My hot drives
(120°F plus) have never failed me yet.

"Surprisingly, Google's study found no correlation between drive failure
and elevated heat and activity levels. The largest percentage of
failures occurred on drives operating within a mild 77-to-88-degree
range. However, desktop PCs typically operate at temperatures well over
the maximum of 125 degrees (52°C) reported in the Google study, so the
findings do not support running hard drives without adequate airflow to
cool them."

http://www.pcworld.com/article/13116..._frequent.html

>> Maybe 7 will be less drive-grinding. Maybe I just won't
>> buy a Dell again.
>
> If you spend more you get more. Also there's a neat little application that
> I wouldn't do without on *any* machine I own called Hard Disk Sentinel. It
> runs in the background and monitors your HDD temperature and SMART status.
> It can sound an alarm if the temperature goes over a pre-set point or if the
> disk is failing etc.

Actually "Google's study relied in part on SMART (Self-Monitoring And
Reporting Technology) data from drives that have this feature. But so
many drives failed without any SMART warnings that Google concluded the
feature was not helpful in predicting real-world failure patterns."

And "Corporate buyers might rethink purchasing plans in light of
Carnegie Mellon's finding that fiber-channel and SCSI drives appear no
more reliable than the cheaper SATA variety. But IDC analyst David
Reinsel says fiber-channel and SCSI drives are still worthwhile when
performance matters."

So this suggests that expensive drives don't last longer than cheaper
drives.

P.S. I saw your earlier posts and I'll get to them in the next day or
so. This one I had time for though. ;-)

--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 702G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Xandros Linux (build 2007-10-19 13:03)

Update, I bought a copy of XP SP3 CD with licence off Ebay for $70,
including the hostage part of a computer as per the MIcrosoft Licence.
I'm gonna get a new iMac with 2 or 4 processors and a 27-inch screen,
using Parallels, to run both XP SP3 and OSX 10.6.x at the same time,
side by side on the same monitor. To back up, I just drag the disk
image of XP to another drive. That's my solution and I think it's
awsome. That will get me away from the laptop hard drive
issue.

Somewhere on teh intarwebs BillW50 wrote:
> ~misfit~ wrote on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:32:18 +1300:
>> Somewhere on teh intarwebs Mark Shapiro wrote:
>>>> I understood that Macs use the same hard disc drives that every one
>>>> else uses.
>>>
>>> I have found that Mac laptops have drives that are
>>> more protected with rubber or shock-absorbing mounts,
>>> and better power supplies, and the OS is not constantly
>>> writing to the disk.
>>
>> Also they're better designed than your aveage $300 laptop with
>> attention to HDD temperature.
>>
>> The biggest killer of HDDs (after shock) is high temperatures. A lot
>> of cheap laptops are poorly designed in that their HDDs often exceed
>> the HDD manufacturers specified maximum temperature (60 deg C for
>> most Seagate drives FI).
>
> Hi Shaun! Where did you hear this from?

I got this from Seagate's NZ agent. Their laptop drives are specced to 60
deg C and their desktop drives to 50 deg C (operating temp). Their SMART has
a self-preserving record of the highest temp reached and, if it is above
that figure then any warranty is invalid. The min and max temps for the
various HDDs are available at the drive manufacturers websites, on the spec
sheets.

> This is something I would
> automatically believe without question. Although my personal
> experience coupled with Google's study shows cool hard drives fails
> far more. For example, out of 20 drives, I have had 3 of them that
> failed. And they were all highly cooled down drives (80°-100°F
> range). My hot drives (120°F plus) have never failed me yet.
>
> "Surprisingly, Google's study found no correlation between drive
> failure and elevated heat and activity levels. The largest percentage
> of failures occurred on drives operating within a mild 77-to-88-degree
> range. However, desktop PCs typically operate at temperatures well
> over the maximum of 125 degrees (52°C) reported in the Google study,
> so the findings do not support running hard drives without adequate
> airflow to cool them."
>
> http://www.pcworld.com/article/13116..._frequent.html
>
>>> Maybe 7 will be less drive-grinding. Maybe I just won't
>>> buy a Dell again.
>>
>> If you spend more you get more. Also there's a neat little
>> application that I wouldn't do without on *any* machine I own called
>> Hard Disk Sentinel. It runs in the background and monitors your HDD
>> temperature and SMART status. It can sound an alarm if the
>> temperature goes over a pre-set point or if the disk is failing etc.
>
> Actually "Google's study relied in part on SMART (Self-Monitoring And
> Reporting Technology) data from drives that have this feature. But so
> many drives failed without any SMART warnings that Google concluded
> the feature was not helpful in predicting real-world failure
> patterns."

Yeah, I'm *very* familiar with Google's red herring report in which they
state a lot of generalities but no real facts. It's been endlessly debated
in a few hardware groups that I frequent since it was first published. The
general consensus amongst people with extensive real-world experience with
hardware is that the report offers no insight into HDD usage and failure
rates whatsoever. It could have been written by a politician's speech
writer.

The very fact that Google say they relied on SMART with srives that have
that feature shows the validity of the report. AFAIK pretty much *all*
drives manufactured since the end of last century and most made for a couple
years before that have SMART.

I like to use HDS to check to see if there are any 'event' occurring with my
drives, if there have been any sectors re-mapped or if the drive is having
to keep trying to read data more often than it should. I also like to know
what temperature my drives are at. The only drive failures I've had, or been
involved with as unpaid PC builder / PC support to my friends (other than
infant mortality) in the last decade have been from drives running too hot.

> And "Corporate buyers might rethink purchasing plans in light of
> Carnegie Mellon's finding that fiber-channel and SCSI drives appear no
> more reliable than the cheaper SATA variety. But IDC analyst David
> Reinsel says fiber-channel and SCSI drives are still worthwhile when
> performance matters."
>
> So this suggests that expensive drives don't last longer than cheaper
> drives.

I only suggested that expensive drives might be better in light of the
drives having built-in anti-shock protection are more expensive than those
without.

> P.S. I saw your earlier posts and I'll get to them in the next day or
> so. This one I had time for though. ;-)

OK, Cheers,
--
Shaun.

"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's
warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchet, 'Jingo'.

I guess I should have started this thread why do
modern hard drives fail faster than older ones.
One of my Mac laptops, 4 years old - the hard
drive died.
I guess the higher density makes things more fragile.

~misfit~ wrote on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:12:29 +1300:
> Somewhere on teh intarwebs BillW50 wrote:
>> ~misfit~ wrote on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:32:18 +1300:
>>> Somewhere on teh intarwebs Mark Shapiro wrote:
>>>>> I understood that Macs use the same hard disc drives that every one
>>>>> else uses.
>>>> I have found that Mac laptops have drives that are
>>>> more protected with rubber or shock-absorbing mounts,
>>>> and better power supplies, and the OS is not constantly
>>>> writing to the disk.
>>> Also they're better designed than your aveage $300 laptop with
>>> attention to HDD temperature.
>>>
>>> The biggest killer of HDDs (after shock) is high temperatures. A lot
>>> of cheap laptops are poorly designed in that their HDDs often exceed
>>> the HDD manufacturers specified maximum temperature (60 deg C for
>>> most Seagate drives FI).
>> Hi Shaun! Where did you hear this from?
>
> I got this from Seagate's NZ agent. Their laptop drives are specced to 60
> deg C and their desktop drives to 50 deg C (operating temp). Their SMART has
> a self-preserving record of the highest temp reached and, if it is above
> that figure then any warranty is invalid. The min and max temps for the
> various HDDs are available at the drive manufacturers websites, on the spec
> sheets.

Seagate has a long history (starting in the 80's) of making excuses why
they won't honor the warranty. Many users and companies have been
screwed royally by Seagate. So this hidden feature is just another
excuse to pass out bad lots of hard drives to unexpecting customers and
companies.

So I see a big problem here. Most customers are not going to have a clue
what this reads when they send the drive back to Seagate. Now that
Seagate has it, they can make it read anything they want too. And turn
around and claim that *you* mistreated it.

Sorry, I have seen how Seagate operates for over 20 years now. And it is
true that some of their drives are indeed very good. But they have
proved lousy when it comes to warranty.

>> This is something I would
>> automatically believe without question. Although my personal
>> experience coupled with Google's study shows cool hard drives fails
>> far more. For example, out of 20 drives, I have had 3 of them that
>> failed. And they were all highly cooled down drives (80°-100°F
>> range). My hot drives (120°F plus) have never failed me yet.
>>
>> "Surprisingly, Google's study found no correlation between drive
>> failure and elevated heat and activity levels. The largest percentage
>> of failures occurred on drives operating within a mild 77-to-88-degree
>> range. However, desktop PCs typically operate at temperatures well
>> over the maximum of 125 degrees (52°C) reported in the Google study,
>> so the findings do not support running hard drives without adequate
>> airflow to cool them."
>>
>> http://www.pcworld.com/article/13116..._frequent.html
>>
>>>> Maybe 7 will be less drive-grinding. Maybe I just won't
>>>> buy a Dell again.
>>> If you spend more you get more. Also there's a neat little
>>> application that I wouldn't do without on *any* machine I own called
>>> Hard Disk Sentinel. It runs in the background and monitors your HDD
>>> temperature and SMART status. It can sound an alarm if the
>>> temperature goes over a pre-set point or if the disk is failing etc.
>> Actually "Google's study relied in part on SMART (Self-Monitoring And
>> Reporting Technology) data from drives that have this feature. But so
>> many drives failed without any SMART warnings that Google concluded
>> the feature was not helpful in predicting real-world failure
>> patterns."
>
> Yeah, I'm *very* familiar with Google's red herring report in which they
> state a lot of generalities but no real facts. It's been endlessly debated
> in a few hardware groups that I frequent since it was first published. The
> general consensus amongst people with extensive real-world experience with
> hardware is that the report offers no insight into HDD usage and failure
> rates whatsoever. It could have been written by a politician's speech
> writer.
>
> The very fact that Google say they relied on SMART with srives that have
> that feature shows the validity of the report. AFAIK pretty much *all*
> drives manufactured since the end of last century and most made for a couple
> years before that have SMART.
>
> I like to use HDS to check to see if there are any 'event' occurring with my
> drives, if there have been any sectors re-mapped or if the drive is having
> to keep trying to read data more often than it should. I also like to know
> what temperature my drives are at. The only drive failures I've had, or been
> involved with as unpaid PC builder / PC support to my friends (other than
> infant mortality) in the last decade have been from drives running too hot.

I am not sure Google's study is a red herring or not. As I understand
they purposely left out the makes and models out of the study. Which is
somewhat disturbing, but understandable why they would do this.

I also admit, SMART does provide some useful information. But it doesn't
and can't tell you everything that goes wrong with a drive. For example,
a motor windings can short or open up like a fuse. And SMART will give
you no warning whatsoever. And one day everything is just fine and the
next, the motor will not spin up. And there is no way you can have
access to it once again without lots of delicate surgery.

I too use HDS and it always reports that nothing is ever wrong and my
drives. Giving them a 100% rating. And despite their claims it works
with SSD (solid state drives), I find HDS to be really lacking in this
regard.

>> And "Corporate buyers might rethink purchasing plans in light of
>> Carnegie Mellon's finding that fiber-channel and SCSI drives appear no
>> more reliable than the cheaper SATA variety. But IDC analyst David
>> Reinsel says fiber-channel and SCSI drives are still worthwhile when
>> performance matters."
>>
>> So this suggests that expensive drives don't last longer than cheaper
>> drives.
>
> I only suggested that expensive drives might be better in light of the
> drives having built-in anti-shock protection are more expensive than those
> without.

Yes ok. Although I am ok using without, but I don't recommend using them
in a portable environment. And when you solve the problem with
anti-shock technology, performance suffers when it is activated. So
while you save it from drive damage, anti-shock isn't perfect either.

>> P.S. I saw your earlier posts and I'll get to them in the next day or
>> so. This one I had time for though. ;-)
>
> OK, Cheers,

--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 702G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Xandros Linux (build 2007-10-19 13:03)

Much of this discussion does not make sense.

In the first place, 60C is about 150F. I simply do not see ANY hard
drive, of ANY laptop (or netbook) getting THAT hot.

In the second place, sure, the drive DOES have a temperature sensor, and
it does record the highest temperature recorded. But, relative to the
comment below: "Now that Seagate has it, they can make it read anything
they want too" ...

Think about this for a minute: Last week, Newegg was selling Seagate
500GB 7,200 rpm laptop (2.5" sata) drives for $99. RETAIL. Just how
much time do you think that Seagate is going to put into analyzing a
drive the comes back "defective"? The usual answer is zero. If it
comes back defective, and it's in warranty, the customer gets sent a
refurb drive. Then this drive goes to the shop to be refurbed (after
which it will go out to someone else as a replacement). It's not cost
effective to spend even 15 to 30 minutes looking at drives that sell for
less than $100 to see if there is grounds to deny a warranty.


BillW50 wrote:

>
> So I see a big problem here. Most customers are not going to have a clue
> what this reads when they send the drive back to Seagate. Now that
> Seagate has it, they can make it read anything they want too. And turn
> around and claim that *you* mistreated it.
>
> Sorry, I have seen how Seagate operates for over 20 years now. And it is
> true that some of their drives are indeed very good. But they have
> proved lousy when it comes to warranty.
>

Barry Watzman wrote on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:22:17 -0400:
> Much of this discussion does not make sense.

Reminds me of when you told everybody don't worry about upgrading your
2.5 inch drives because they only draw 500ma max. That is after I told
people that as an electronic engineer, I have to spec 2.5 inch hardware
designs for just over 2000ma.

Well I couldn't find many specs for drives, so I couldn't say much. But
later I found out that those original HDD in my '06 Gateway laptops,
SMART claims they draw just over 2000ma. So much of your claim that HDD
doesn't draw more than 500ma, eh?

> In the first place, 60C is about 150F. I simply do not see ANY hard
> drive, of ANY laptop (or netbook) getting THAT hot.
>
> In the second place, sure, the drive DOES have a temperature sensor, and
> it does record the highest temperature recorded. But, relative to the
> comment below: "Now that Seagate has it, they can make it read anything
> they want too" ...
>
> Think about this for a minute: Last week, Newegg was selling Seagate
> 500GB 7,200 rpm laptop (2.5" sata) drives for $99. RETAIL. Just how
> much time do you think that Seagate is going to put into analyzing a
> drive the comes back "defective"? The usual answer is zero. If it
> comes back defective, and it's in warranty, the customer gets sent a
> refurb drive. Then this drive goes to the shop to be refurbed (after
> which it will go out to someone else as a replacement). It's not cost
> effective to spend even 15 to 30 minutes looking at drives that sell for
> less than $100 to see if there is grounds to deny a warranty.
>
>
> BillW50 wrote:
>
>>
>> So I see a big problem here. Most customers are not going to have a
>> clue what this reads when they send the drive back to Seagate. Now
>> that Seagate has it, they can make it read anything they want too. And
>> turn around and claim that *you* mistreated it.
>>
>> Sorry, I have seen how Seagate operates for over 20 years now. And it
>> is true that some of their drives are indeed very good. But they have
>> proved lousy when it comes to warranty.

Back in the late '80's, there was a company making external HDD for
Commodore computers. The Internet wasn't big back then, but BBS were.
Many of them were ran on Commodores. And this company sold tens of
thousands of these external HDD. And all of them were Seagates. Well a
few months went by and tens of thousands of these things were failing.

It turned out that Seagate had used too much oil on the platters. And
when you spin a disc, the oil migrates to the outer track. Right where
the head parks. So starting up cold, the head, oil, and platter would be
sort of stuck together. And the motor would burn out trying to spin the
stuck platter. I believe they called this striction.

These external HDD were expensive. The major cost was the Seagate HDD
themselves. I seem to recall a price of like $800+. So these things were
not cheap. So lots of angry customers. The company couldn't afford to
replace tens of thousands of drives and Seagate said it wasn't their
problem. Contact the manufacture.

Well the company went belly up, and tens of thousands of customers got
screwed. And Seagate got off scot free by selling defective HDD. Seagate
continued this game all the way to this day AFAIK.

Companies like Seagate who sells HDD that are defective and won't do
anything after you get screwed, are companies I don't trust. But you can
support them if you like too Barry, I don't care. As they have stolen
too much money from us good people already.

--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 702G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Xandros Linux (build 2007-10-19 13:03)

Very few 2.5" drives draw more than 500ma. Got to newegg, or zzf, or
the mfgrs sites and check the specs. VERY few draw over 500ma, because
that is the limit on a USB port. There are more older drives that do
draw a bit more. But the most I've EVER seen is between 800 and 900ma.

Barry Watzman" <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote in message
news:hc24mh$cht$2@news.eternal-september.org...
> Very few 2.5" drives draw more than 500ma. Got to newegg, or zzf, or
> the mfgrs sites and check the specs. VERY few draw over 500ma,
> because that is the limit on a USB port. There are more older drives
> that do draw a bit more. But the most I've EVER seen is between 800
> and 900ma.

I just popped two in and checked them. Both manufactured in 2005. The
Hitachi even says 5V 1.0A right on the label. Go figure.

Hitachi IC25N060ATMR04-0 60GB 4200rpm ATA-100 (940ma)
Fujitsu MHV2060AT 60GB 4200rpm ATA-100 (1100ma)

--
Bill
Windows 7 Ultimate (build 7100)
Asus EEE PC 702G16 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC

1. I didn't say that there were none
2. I did say that "here are more older drives that do draw a bit more"

Two drives doesn't prove anything, either way.


BillW50 wrote:
> Barry Watzman" <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote in message
> news:hc24mh$cht$2@news.eternal-september.org...
>> Very few 2.5" drives draw more than 500ma. Got to newegg, or zzf, or
>> the mfgrs sites and check the specs. VERY few draw over 500ma,
>> because that is the limit on a USB port. There are more older drives
>> that do draw a bit more. But the most I've EVER seen is between 800
>> and 900ma.
>
> I just popped two in and checked them. Both manufactured in 2005. The
> Hitachi even says 5V 1.0A right on the label. Go figure.
>
> Hitachi IC25N060ATMR04-0 60GB 4200rpm ATA-100 (940ma)
> Fujitsu MHV2060AT 60GB 4200rpm ATA-100 (1100ma)
>

In news:hc2u8g$ddl$2@news.eternal-september.org,
Barry Watzman typed on Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:33:02 -0400:
> 1. I didn't say that there were none
> 2. I did say that "here are more older drives that do draw a bit
> more"
> Two drives doesn't prove anything, either way.

You are missing my point. First off, I don't consider drives
manufactured in 2005 as old drives yet, do you? I do have three newer
drives:

WD1200BEVE 5400rpm 120GB (08 APR 2008)
WD1600BEVE 5400rpm 160GB (08 FEB 2009)
WD1600BEVE 5400rpm 160GB (08 FEB 2009)

And they all say 5V 0.55A. So that is five 2.5 inch drives that all use
more than 500ma. And I don't have any 2.5 inch drives at all in my
collection that uses 500ma or less. And I do use some of them in USB
enclosures as well. And I don't have any USB power problems from them
even using one USB port.

On a side note about USB power. I have two no-name DVD slimline burners
from China that does something interesting. When I plug them into any
one of my netbooks, the power blinks out for about 200ms and they
reboot. This doesn't happen on my Gateways. Nor does other USB devices
including my Samsung slimline DVD burner. So I don't know how much of a
surge those no-name burners draw, but it must be a lot.

> BillW50 wrote:
>> Barry Watzman" <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote in message
>> news:hc24mh$cht$2@news.eternal-september.org...
>>> Very few 2.5" drives draw more than 500ma. Got to newegg, or zzf,
>>> or the mfgrs sites and check the specs. VERY few draw over 500ma,
>>> because that is the limit on a USB port. There are more older
>>> drives that do draw a bit more. But the most I've EVER seen is
>>> between 800 and 900ma.
>>
>> I just popped two in and checked them. Both manufactured in 2005. The
>> Hitachi even says 5V 1.0A right on the label. Go figure.
>>
>> Hitachi IC25N060ATMR04-0 60GB 4200rpm ATA-100 (940ma)
>> Fujitsu MHV2060AT 60GB 4200rpm ATA-100 (1100ma)

--
Bill
Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) - Windows XP SP2

Somewhere on teh intarwebs BillW50 wrote:
> In news:hc2u8g$ddl$2@news.eternal-september.org,
> Barry Watzman typed on Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:33:02 -0400:
>> 1. I didn't say that there were none
>> 2. I did say that "here are more older drives that do draw a bit
>> more"
>> Two drives doesn't prove anything, either way.
>
> You are missing my point. First off, I don't consider drives
> manufactured in 2005 as old drives yet, do you? I do have three newer
> drives:
>
> WD1200BEVE 5400rpm 120GB (08 APR 2008)
> WD1600BEVE 5400rpm 160GB (08 FEB 2009)
> WD1600BEVE 5400rpm 160GB (08 FEB 2009)
>
> And they all say 5V 0.55A. So that is five 2.5 inch drives that all
> use more than 500ma. And I don't have any 2.5 inch drives at all in my
> collection that uses 500ma or less. And I do use some of them in USB
> enclosures as well. And I don't have any USB power problems from them
> even using one USB port.

Don't be any more of a dick than God made you Bill.

From: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=312

[And they should know right?]

Current Requirements
5 VDC
Read/Write 500 mA
Idle 400 mA
Standby 45 mA
Sleep 38 mA

That's for the 160GB. It's the same for the others. But only according to
the manufacturer. Perhaps you know better?

k'wit.

--
Shaun.

"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's
warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchet, 'Jingo'.
> On a side note about USB power. I have two no-name DVD slimline
> burners from China that does something interesting. When I plug them
> into any one of my netbooks, the power blinks out for about 200ms and
> they reboot. This doesn't happen on my Gateways. Nor does other USB
> devices including my Samsung slimline DVD burner. So I don't know how
> much of a surge those no-name burners draw, but it must be a lot.
>
>> BillW50 wrote:
>>> Barry Watzman" <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote in message
>>> news:hc24mh$cht$2@news.eternal-september.org...
>>>> Very few 2.5" drives draw more than 500ma. Got to newegg, or zzf,
>>>> or the mfgrs sites and check the specs. VERY few draw over 500ma,
>>>> because that is the limit on a USB port. There are more older
>>>> drives that do draw a bit more. But the most I've EVER seen is
>>>> between 800 and 900ma.
>>>
>>> I just popped two in and checked them. Both manufactured in 2005.
>>> The Hitachi even says 5V 1.0A right on the label. Go figure.
>>>
>>> Hitachi IC25N060ATMR04-0 60GB 4200rpm ATA-100 (940ma)
>>> Fujitsu MHV2060AT 60GB 4200rpm ATA-100 (1100ma)

"~misfit~" <sore_n_happy******.com.au> wrote in message
news:hc9959$mjn$1@news.eternal-september.org...
> Somewhere on teh intarwebs BillW50 wrote:
>> In news:hc2u8g$ddl$2@news.eternal-september.org,
>> Barry Watzman typed on Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:33:02 -0400:
>>> 1. I didn't say that there were none
>>> 2. I did say that "here are more older drives that do draw a bit
>>> more"
>>> Two drives doesn't prove anything, either way.
>>
>> You are missing my point. First off, I don't consider drives
>> manufactured in 2005 as old drives yet, do you? I do have three newer
>> drives:
>>
>> WD1200BEVE 5400rpm 120GB (08 APR 2008)
>> WD1600BEVE 5400rpm 160GB (08 FEB 2009)
>> WD1600BEVE 5400rpm 160GB (08 FEB 2009)
>>
>> And they all say 5V 0.55A. So that is five 2.5 inch drives that all
>> use more than 500ma. And I don't have any 2.5 inch drives at all in
>> my
>> collection that uses 500ma or less. And I do use some of them in USB
>> enclosures as well. And I don't have any USB power problems from them
>> even using one USB port.
>
> Don't be any more of a dick than God made you Bill.
>
> From: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=312
>
> [And they should know right?]
>
> Current Requirements
> 5 VDC
> Read/Write 500 mA
> Idle 400 mA
> Standby 45 mA
> Sleep 38 mA
>
> That's for the 160GB. It's the same for the others. But only according
> to the manufacturer. Perhaps you know better?
>
> k'wit.

Hi Shaun. A Dick, eh? We will see who is the Dick! And I am going by the
label on the three drives and they state 0.55A like this one does. If
you can't read it, I'll take a snapshot of one of mine. Or all of them
if you want.

http://www.epelmart.com/images/all/H...0BEVE-unit.jpg

Remember Shaun, read the fine print:

"Product specifications subject to change without notice".

http://www.wdc.com/WDProducts/librar...178-771119.pdf

If they really make 500ma 2.5 inch hard drives, I don't have one yet.
And I got five 2.5 inch drives in the last four years.

> "Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and
> he's warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchet, 'Jingo'.
>> On a side note about USB power. I have two no-name DVD slimline
>> burners from China that does something interesting. When I plug them
>> into any one of my netbooks, the power blinks out for about 200ms and
>> they reboot. This doesn't happen on my Gateways. Nor does other USB
>> devices including my Samsung slimline DVD burner. So I don't know how
>> much of a surge those no-name burners draw, but it must be a lot.
>>
>>> BillW50 wrote:
>>>> Barry Watzman" <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote in message
>>>> news:hc24mh$cht$2@news.eternal-september.org...
>>>>> Very few 2.5" drives draw more than 500ma. Got to newegg, or zzf,
>>>>> or the mfgrs sites and check the specs. VERY few draw over 500ma,
>>>>> because that is the limit on a USB port. There are more older
>>>>> drives that do draw a bit more. But the most I've EVER seen is
>>>>> between 800 and 900ma.
>>>>
>>>> I just popped two in and checked them. Both manufactured in 2005.
>>>> The Hitachi even says 5V 1.0A right on the label. Go figure.
>>>>
>>>> Hitachi IC25N060ATMR04-0 60GB 4200rpm ATA-100 (940ma)
>>>> Fujitsu MHV2060AT 60GB 4200rpm ATA-100 (1100ma)

--
Bill
Windows7 Ultimate (build 7100)
Gateway MX6124 - 2G RAM