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Quiet and reliable 6 - 10GB HDD

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Ole Juul

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What is a good quiet and reliable IDE HDD in the 6-10GB range? IOW, what's the ultimate DOS HDD? It has to be 6GB of course, but the only reason I say 10 max is because I hate to waste stuff. Perhaps I shouldn't worry about that in this case.

I made a mistake when I put together my main DOS box. The drive which I chose was a Fujitzsu MPE3064AT but only because it was 6.45GB and I had it on hand - now I regret that choice. I set the BIOS to spin it down after 6 minutes so it's OK when I'm not using the disk, but when it fires up it's as loud as a Harley. Did Honda make 4 stroke drives? I need something for use inside the house. lol
 
Why 6gb? For DOS (as in real DOS not Win9x DOS mode) I use 4GB drives with 2 x 2GB partitions.
 
I had a FH 5,25" 9 GB IBM drive in my DOS machine for a while.
A very short while..

Now, playing with SCSI its a 7200 rmp 2 GB SCSI drive- almost as loud.

I'm not sure, in my experience, Maxtors in that range are loud, so are Quantums. Maybe Samsung or Seagate (normal speed) is your best bet.

And well. Anything 4 stroke Honda makes is particularly known for its smooth, silent running...
 
Look for a 2.5" drive. They generally are quite a bit quieter than their 3.5" brothers. I have a 6gb Toshiba 2.5" drive that has worked well for quite sometime and is still whisper quiet. They tend to be ~4k RPM so not high end performance, but should be just fine for DOS.
 
I found the 10 GB Seagate Medalist* 3.5" to be quiet and its worked for about 10 years with no problems. Samsung drives tended to be really quiet but Samsung had smaller production runs. Could you consider an adapter to use a laptop drive? Might well be cheaper, quieter and newer than any desktop drive you could track down.

Western Digital drives tended to be quiet for the first year of use and then started to get progressively noisier. I have retired multiple WD drives from active service even though they test fine because of the noise. Beats the sudden death Maxtors though.

* Seagate had a lot of models of about 10 GB; I don't have knowledge of all of them.
 
So, Samsung and Seagate are good choices for quieter drives - good to know. I'll see if there's anything in my inventory like that. Or look for krebizfan's suggestion of a Medalist for sale somewhere. I suppose that even a larger 20GB drive would be OK if it was known to be particularly quite, it's not like I'd have much better use for something in that range anyway.

The idea of a a 2.5" drive hadn't occurred to me, but it sounds like a good idea. What kind of adaptor would I need?
I wasn't planning on spending much money on this, but would a solid state device be reliable?

@Unknown_K: I'm using MS-DOS v6.22 and I'd prefer to just copy the disk geometry with 10 partitions which I've gotten used to, which is

Code: 
Volume size       C     250.7MB (cluster size  4Kb)
Volume size       D-K   509.6MB (cluster size  8Kb)
Volume size       L    1019.5MB (cluster size 16Kb)
 
Ole Juul said:
The idea of a a 2.5" drive hadn't occurred to me, but it sounds like a good idea. What kind of adaptor would I need?
I wasn't planning on spending much money on this, but would a solid state device be reliable?
Click to expand...

Check this out for some 6gb 2.5" drives on ebay. Then grab one of these and you're set.

Yes, a solid state would be reliable, but I don't know if you'll find one that is not SATA. Perhaps a CF to IDE adapter and a 8gb card would work?
 
Thanks for all the footwork lutiana! I don't do much shopping these days so I hadn't seen a "laptop to IDE" adaptor. I just checked and they're only $4.83 at NCIX where I usually order from. A little drive should be cheap, except of course regular stores won't have those.

Looking at the prices IDE to CF adaptor with an 8gb CF card I see that it would actually be pretty cheap, even for my limited budget. I'm guessing that the problems I've heard of in terms of limited read/write cycles would be irrelevant for DOS since the read/write actions are negligible compared to a modern OS. Has anybody tried this with DOS?
 
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Seagate has made a few VERY loud ones before, but they were in the 2-4gb range. (I can't remember the model) I like MFM HDDs in my DOS computers because it completes the old look.
 
I'm guessing that the problems I've heard of in terms of limited read/write cycles would be irrelevant for DOS since the read/write actions are negligible compared to a modern OS. Has anybody tried this with DOS?
Click to expand...

Yes, I have. It works pretty well. Obviously, depending on what version of DOS you have you may be limited to 2GB partitions. Also, your system's BIOS may suffer from one of the hard disk size barriers - you can read about this here: http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm

I had to install Quantum Dynamic Drive Overlay on my 2GB CF card to make it work in my 486, which didn't support LBA.

Also, be careful what brand you use. Some of them don't fully support IDE and you can run into problems. I bought a Transcend 133X and it works OK, but occasionally when copying many files it craps out with a read error. I've had better luck with Sandisk cards, so they are probably what I'd recommend.

As far as write cycles go, modern flash cells should be good for over a million writes, which isn't really a problem for a DOS box. Modern cards also include wear-levelling which further increases the lifespan of the card.
 
DOS lives on!!
Seagate has made a few VERY loud ones before, but they were in the 2-4gb range. (I can't remember the model) I like MFM HDDs in my DOS computers because it completes the old look.
Click to expand...

I agree that MFM is generally the right thing for vintage, but this DOS box is actually a Pentium 133 and doesn't really even have a box. It is just a work horse for text and it's on 24/7.

DonutKing said:
Yes, I have. It works pretty well. Obviously, depending on what version of DOS you have you may be limited to 2GB partitions. Also, your system's BIOS may suffer from one of the hard disk size barriers - you can read about this here: http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm

I had to install Quantum Dynamic Drive Overlay on my 2GB CF card to make it work in my 486, which didn't support LBA.

Also, be careful what brand you use. Some of them don't fully support IDE and you can run into problems. I bought a Transcend 133X and it works OK, but occasionally when copying many files it craps out with a read error. I've had better luck with Sandisk cards, so they are probably what I'd recommend.

As far as write cycles go, modern flash cells should be good for over a million writes, which isn't really a problem for a DOS box. Modern cards also include wear-levelling which further increases the lifespan of the card.
Click to expand...

I'm using MS-DOS 6.22 and I plan to keep the 10 partitions the way I normally do it. Thanks for letting me know that it works well because now that I see the price (aprx. $10 for each of the adaptor and 8GB CF card) I really think that would be the best solution.

As for the brand, I have no idea. I see that there are type 4, 6, and 10. I don't think it matters what speed it is for this application, but the fact that the different types are the same price, sometimes the faster ones are even cheaper than the slower ones, confuses me. How do I know what's good? I've been looking here: http://ncix.com/products/?minorcatid=1310&po=0&ps=2
 
I haven't tried SD cards, only CF. All I can suggest is to google before you buy the card to see if anyone has used that particular card in an IDE adapter.
I'd try to stick with Sandisk as they seem most popular for this purpose. They are usually recommended for replacing IDE hard disks in Amiga systems.
 
If you don't like CF or SD, a variation is a MicroDrive; usually 5GB and the size and interface of a CF card. It's probably the quietest mechanical drive out there. I've been using a 5GB one for years on my mail server running 24/7.

I initially got it because I wanted a low-power drive that I wouldn't have to worry about write wear on. I run it on a P3 HP ePC. Absolutely trouble-free.
 
I hadn't thought about MicroDrives, they seem a bit pricey though.

Anyway, I've been doing some hours of research into the IDE/CF thing. It looks like there's a lot of crap information out there. Mostly people who haven't diagnosed their problem and think it's got to do with bad hardware when they can't get something to boot. From what I can see there's no important difference between CF and SD. CF is just a generic term, and SD is a specification. Also, the adaptor apparently is not very relevant. So after reading all the specs and howtos until I'm blue in the face, I still haven't found anything very meaningful on the subject. My take is just to go conservative, so I've decided to get the following:

Syba SD-CF-IDE-A IDE to Compact Flash Adapter ($9.99)
Kingston Technology 8GB SDHC Class 4 Flash Memory Card ($11.80)

Does anybody see anything glaringly wrong or inadequate with that?
 
SD is completely different to Compact Flash... which in itself is pin-compatible with the IDE interface (the adapter boards are just directly cabled between the IDE header and the CF slot, usually with a VRM to provide 3.3v to the card if required (and inevitably a coupe of LEDs serving broadly no purpose). Going solid-state is a good call though.

Personally I've found SD cards to be very slow mostly. 30MB/s CF cards are cheap as chips pretty much. No doubt there are decent performing SD cards too but I've not looked in to that personally.
 
CF and SD cards are physically different.

Can you post links to the two products you are planning to buy?

Is this the Syba adapter you are talking about?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822998002

Despite having SD in the product name, as far as I can see its for CF cards only. You physically cannot connect an SD card to it.

These are SD cards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital
These are CF cards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_flash
Look at the pictures on the right.
 
DonutKing: CF and SD cards are physically different.
Can you post links to the two products you are planning to buy?
Click to expand...

Thanks for responding. :) Yes, I noticed they were physically different but didn't think that was significant as far as function was concerned. The adaptor will of course have to take it. The one you point to at Newegg is the one but here is the my link - and to the SD card as well. Either one seems OK to me.

IDE-SD http://tinyurl.com/3c8rdqz
Kingston SDHC http://tinyurl.com/3jzc878
Patriot SDHC http://tinyurl.com/4ygdoxh

Now that I look again, that adaptor doesn't look like it will take a CF card. The manufacturer's site is here: http://www.sybausa.com/productInfo.php?iid=384
It does say "Connect 3.5" IDE & CF memory card". Boy what a mixup in vocabulary around these things.

That particular adaptor seems like a good choice and it's cheap. The reason I wasn't looking at so called CF cards is that they are so pricey compared to the ones they call SD. Anyway, here is a $20 CF card which is the cheapest 8GB one at NCIX, perhaps I should get that.
Kingston 8GB CompactFlash CF Type 1 Compact Flash Memory Card http://tinyurl.com/3vqwq9c
 
pearce_jj said:
SD is completely different to Compact Flash... which in itself is pin-compatible with the IDE interface (the adapter boards are just directly cabled between the IDE header and the CF slot, usually with a VRM to provide 3.3v to the card if required (and inevitably a coupe of LEDs serving broadly no purpose). Going solid-state is a good call though.

Personally I've found SD cards to be very slow mostly. 30MB/s CF cards are cheap as chips pretty much. No doubt there are decent performing SD cards too but I've not looked in to that personally.
Click to expand...

OK, so it looks like SD is not the way to go for IDE compatibility but that CF is a better choice. As for speed, the SD is actually very fast according to what people say. This is for a Pentium 133 and the data transfer is 830Kbps for FTP. With SD speeds of minimum 4Mbps reading a typical file of say 3K would require an insignificant amount of time.

BTW: I wonder why you've experienced cheaper CF chips. To me it looks like they are on the average about 5 times more than SD.
 
Boy what a mixup in vocabulary around these things.
Click to expand...

You're telling me. :D
Guy at work bought an 8-in-1 card reader to use with his camera, lo and behold his camera's memory card physically wouldn't fit in ANY of the reader's slots. I forget what format it was though.

If you really want to use an SD card instead of CF, this might be worth checking out: http://www.dealextreme.com/p/sd-mem...adapter-creates-a-ssd-solid-state-drive-14362
I've never actually tried this adapter myself.

EDIT: according to this thread: http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=55723
that particular adapter is a poor choice.
 
Thanks for the info and warnings DonutKing. It's 6 am here and I'm loosing it, but I'll get back on this tomorrow. I've pretty much decided that I'm going to get this IDE to solid state thing working since it doesn't look like it will cost that much and the benefits are likely great.

Unless of course I listen to all the millions of people who are complaining about how slow this or that chip is. I think I'll just plug my ears. Is it REALLY that much slower than a typical hard drive? I just can't imagine that to be true. Perhaps I'll be surprised and find that an MFM drive has faster access times - we'll see. lol
 
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