Hi all, I finally got myself a little home media server but the tiny 20GB hard drive is driving me mad whining away so I had the idea of swapping it out for a new SSD. Ok, so I'd only go for a 30GB jobbie and not increase storage capacity but it would be completely silent - winner. Only problem is that my Mini-ITX board doesn't have a SATA connector so I would be limited to connecting it via a SATA-to-IDE converter like this - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bi-Directio...2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1248089816&sr=8-2 Can anyone see any reason why it wouldn't work? Or a cheaper silent solution? Cheers, Andy
The SSD would be to store the (Xubuntu) OS by the way, important data will probably be shifted to a nice big Samsung drive which can be spun down when not needed.
Excellent, thanks. Irony is in limiting the speed I guess? My only other option for completely silent that I can see would be a CF card, plus CF-IDE adapter = just as expensive as a SSD. As I say, willing to take suggestions if theres an easier (cheaper) option that I'm missing.......
Er... Drives today are probably a bit queter than your 20GB one... Western Digital Green series, if I remember correctly, spins at variable speeds and spins down when not in use. Should be quite quiet. Expensive but not as expensive as an SSD by a long shot. Not silent though...
You're probably right, but Linux keeps paging to disk on a regular basis so never gives it a chance to spin down unfortunately. A newer disk would definately be a lot quieter though I agree. The plan is to get hold of the big 'backup' drive first anyhow - I think I'll see how noisy that is in comparison and take a decision. £90 for a completely silent SSD doesn't seem so bad though
If by "spins at variable speeds" you mean "spins at 5400RPM", then yes, it spins at variable speeds. All hard drives spin down when they're not in use, the Green Power series just has a startlingly short 8 second idle timer before it does so, which is closer to laptop drives than desktop drives. Windows pages the disk far more often than Linux, and this is a major problem (ironically) for Green Power users in Linux. Under Windows, the hard drive generally does not get a chance to spin down because pages are coming constantly every few seconds, but under Linux the hard drive is paged every 10-30 seconds. The Green Power under Linux will thus be constantly spinning up and down and loading/unloading its heads, which some users have reported greatly reduces the lifespan of the drive - it's rated for 300,000 head load/unload cycles, and with this behavior in Linux this limit will be reached much more quickly. Of course, I have no firsthand experience and this is just information cobbled together from what I've read online - take it at your own risk.
Does your motherboard have an expansion slot of any kind (most likely PCI or PCI-E x1)? If so, you could shoot for a cheap PCI-to-SATA or PCI-E-to-SATA board... - Diosjenin -
It does, but only one PCI slot unfortunately and that is currently full with a wireless adapter. I've ordered a direct adapter now for the grand total of £8 which I can happily bear, so that will do.
