[joe h]

Hello,

Most notebook computers come with 5400rpm drives. If you wanted to
record a single stereo track at 24/96 or maybe even 24/192, can this
be done ok on such a slow drive?

I know that a 5400rpm drive would be terrible for trying to mix
tracks. But I was thinking more in terms if you wanted to create a
single stereo track high-resolution sound of a car door closing for a
sound effects library. Maybe you could record with a huge buffer or
something like that and get the single stereo track o.k. at high
resolution.

Not really worried about latency/headphone monitoring and things like
that. Just wondering if it's possible/feasible, for short on-scene
sounds to do o.k. with a standard 5400rpm drive.

[William Sommerwerck]

The rotational rate of the drive has nothing to do with the disk's areal
density. In and of itself, it tells us nothing about how rapidly data can be
laid down.

And as far as I know, the software and/or the drive would be buffered.

[Mike Rivers]

On 3/4/2011 5:58 PM, joe h wrote:

Most notebook computers come with 5400rpm drives. If you wanted to
record a single stereo track at 24/96 or maybe even 24/192, can this
be done ok on such a slow drive?

It's not such a slow drive. Sure you can do that. Mackie
originally specified a 5400 RPM drive in the HDR24/96 and
only switched to 7200 RPM drives when they stopped making
5400 RPM 5" drives.

I know that a 5400rpm drive would be terrible for trying to mix
tracks.

Not necessarily, as long as it's in a pretty hotrod
computer. It's the mixing and signal processing that takes
the horsepower. Playing 20 or 30 tracks i

But I was thinking more in terms if you wanted to create a
single stereo track high-resolution sound of a car door closing for a
sound effects library. Maybe you could record with a huge buffer or
something like that and get the single stereo track o.k. at high
resolution.

You must really be a novice at this. That's simple. You can
buy a $200 Zoom recorder that can do that. No computer
necessary.



--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[cjt]

On 3/4/2011 7:24 PM, Mike Rivers wrote:
On 3/4/2011 5:58 PM, joe h wrote:

Most notebook computers come with 5400rpm drives. If you wanted to
record a single stereo track at 24/96 or maybe even 24/192, can this
be done ok on such a slow drive?

It's not such a slow drive. Sure you can do that. Mackie originally
specified a 5400 RPM drive in the HDR24/96 and only switched to 7200 RPM
drives when they stopped making 5400 RPM 5" drives.

I know that a 5400rpm drive would be terrible for trying to mix
tracks.

Not necessarily, as long as it's in a pretty hotrod computer. It's the
mixing and signal processing that takes the horsepower. Playing 20 or 30
tracks i

But I was thinking more in terms if you wanted to create a
single stereo track high-resolution sound of a car door closing for a
sound effects library. Maybe you could record with a huge buffer or
something like that and get the single stereo track o.k. at high
resolution.

You must really be a novice at this. That's simple. You can buy a $200
Zoom recorder that can do that. No computer necessary.



You can do multiple VIDEO streams to modern drives, so audio is
certainly no problem.

[Peter Larsen[_3_]]

joe h wrote:

Hello,

Most notebook computers come with 5400rpm drives. If you wanted to
record a single stereo track at 24/96 or maybe even 24/192, can this
be done ok on such a slow drive?

What makes you think it is a slow drive? - you got the parameter wrong, what
matters is the "number of magnetic domains" pr. revolution.

I know that a 5400rpm drive would be terrible for trying to mix
tracks.

From what source? - in my "pile of drives" there is 3 120 gigabyte WD drives
that I rushed to a good number of years ago because they were with "the old
mechanism" and "new platters" and consequntly offered a higher data rate
than competing 7200 rpm drives.

But I was thinking more in terms if you wanted to create a
single stereo track high-resolution sound of a car door closing for a
sound effects library. Maybe you could record with a huge buffer or
something like that and get the single stereo track o.k. at high
resolution.

You can with some software record to ram and dump the file to disk
afterwards.

Not really worried about latency/headphone monitoring and things like
that. Just wondering if it's possible/feasible, for short on-scene
sounds to do o.k. with a standard 5400rpm drive.

You got the notebook problem plain wrong, the issue that still may or may
not be relevant is the graphics card architecture, ie. whether the graphics
card has its down physical ram or not, but with the general increase in
hardware capability that may now has become a non-issue.

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[Phil W]

"cjt":
On 3/4/2011 7:24 PM, Mike Rivers wrote:
On 3/4/2011 5:58 PM, joe h wrote:

Most notebook computers come with 5400rpm drives. If you wanted to
record a single stereo track at 24/96 or maybe even 24/192, can this
be done ok on such a slow drive?

It's not such a slow drive. Sure you can do that. Mackie originally
specified a 5400 RPM drive in the HDR24/96 and only switched to 7200 RPM
drives when they stopped making 5400 RPM 5" drives.

I know that a 5400rpm drive would be terrible for trying to mix
tracks.

Not necessarily, as long as it's in a pretty hotrod computer. It's the
mixing and signal processing that takes the horsepower.

But rather from CPU and RAM, than the hd drive. We´ve recorded and mixed
(16bit/44,1kHz) normal multi-track sessions (20-30 tracks) on a friend´s
2002 iBook often enough and it worked... we rather ran out of CPU power than
drive limitations.
Of course, the drive has to keep up, but I´d really like to know, why more
and more folks think, the 5400 rpm drives would be such a limitation.
HD recording was done professionally on 5400 rpm drives before there were
7200s.... IF they really are *so* concerned about it, why don´t they just
get a SSD drive, which is faster *and* shock-resistant, as a nice
side-effect.

But I was thinking more in terms if you wanted to create a
single stereo track high-resolution sound of a car door closing for a
sound effects library. Maybe you could record with a huge buffer or
something like that and get the single stereo track o.k. at high
resolution.

You must really be a novice at this. That's simple. You can buy a $200
Zoom recorder that can do that. No computer necessary.

Or about 15-20 similar ones by other makers meanwhile.
Even though many people like the Zoom H2, I´ve always found it to have the
typical "artificial" sound, that I´ve disliked in all Zoom devices since the
early 90s. As there are so many alternatives from other makers meanwhile,
I´d rather check those out, before buying a Zoom one,

You can do multiple VIDEO streams to modern drives, so audio is certainly
no problem.

Unless you employ the hd drive with something else, that really causes a lot
of read/write action at the same time. ...and I assume, noboby would defrag
a drive, while recording to it. ;-)

[Mike Rivers]

On 3/5/2011 2:00 AM, Phil W wrote:

We´ve
recorded and mixed (16bit/44,1kHz) normal multi-track
sessions (20-30 tracks) on a friend´s 2002 iBook often
enough and it worked... we rather ran out of CPU power than
drive limitations.
Of course, the drive has to keep up, but I´d really like to
know, why more and more folks think, the 5400 rpm drives
would be such a limitation.

Probably because it's a number that they can see and, at
least on a physical level, relate to. It's true that higher
platter speed can increase the total throughput (though not
indefinitely, since you run into a speed limit of the I/O
path) and you know how people are since we've had the
Internet. Because there are drives with higher platter RPM,
those with lower speed must be inferior. They (the people,
or, I believe, the Internet) weren't around when there were
2000 RPM drives.

HD recording was done professionally on 5400 rpm drives
before there were 7200s.... IF they really are *so*
concerned about it, why don´t they just get a SSD drive,
which is faster *and* shock-resistant, as a nice side-effect.

I was looking into solid state drives a year or so ago and
found that those that weren't much more expensive per byte
than mechanical drives had substantially lower throughput.
Now you can get SSDs with faster throughput than a
mechanical drive for only a little more cost, but the cheap
SSDs are still slower. In my case, however, nearly
everything but my newest computer uses parallel IDE drives
and all the SSDs are SATA. I have an adapter that allows me
to connect a SATA drive to a parallel port, but I haven't
done any testing to see if it ends up slower than a parallel
drive connected to the same port, for the same application.
How good can a $10 adapter be? g



--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[Arny Krueger]

"joe h" wrote in message

Hello,

Most notebook computers come with 5400rpm drives.

But if it matters, upgrading them to modern high density 7200 rpm drives is
not rocket science.

If your laptop's BIOS can handle it:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...326&CatId=1277

If you
wanted to record a single stereo track at 24/96 or maybe
even 24/192, can this be done ok on such a slow drive?

I know that a 5400rpm drive would be terrible for trying
to mix tracks.

You'd be wrong.

You're looking at the wrong number. For audio, the most relevant parameter
is DTR or Data Transfer Rate.

DTR is the product of rotational speed *and* the amount of data on a track.
The density of data on each track of a modern hard drive has gone up
immensely, due to changes in technology. A modern 3600 rpm drive has a DTR
that is equal or greater than that of a 7200 rpm drive from back in the day
when 7200 rpm drives were strongly recommended for audio.

[hank alrich]

joe h wrote:

Hello,

Most notebook computers come with 5400rpm drives. If you wanted to
record a single stereo track at 24/96 or maybe even 24/192, can this
be done ok on such a slow drive?

I can easily capture ten 24/96 tracks to the internal 5400 rpm HD of my
MacBook Pro.

I know that a 5400rpm drive would be terrible for trying to mix
tracks.

I don't use lods of plug-ins, but I have mixed eighteen tracks in Logic
Studio to that same internal drive.

But I was thinking more in terms if you wanted to create a
single stereo track high-resolution sound of a car door closing for a
sound effects library. Maybe you could record with a huge buffer or
something like that and get the single stereo track o.k. at high
resolution.

Not really worried about latency/headphone monitoring and things like
that. Just wondering if it's possible/feasible, for short on-scene
sounds to do o.k. with a standard 5400rpm drive.


--
shut up and play your guitar * http://hankalrich.com/
http://armadillomusicproductions.com/who'slistening.html
http://www.sonicbids.com/HankandShai...withDougHarman

[Luxey]

On 6 ÜÐà, 01:45, (hank alrich) wrote:
joe h wrote:
Hello,

Most notebook computers come with 5400rpm drives. *If you wanted to
record a single stereo track at 24/96 or maybe even 24/192, can this
be done ok on such a slow drive?

I can easily capture ten 24/96 tracks to the internal 5400 rpm HD of my
MacBook Pro.

I know that a 5400rpm drive would be terrible for trying to mix
tracks.

I don't use lods of plug-ins, but I have mixed eighteen tracks in Logic
Studio to that same internal drive.

*But I was thinking more in terms if you wanted to create a
single stereo track high-resolution sound of a car door closing for a
sound effects library. * Maybe you could record with a huge buffer or
something like that and get the single stereo track o.k. at high
resolution.

Not really worried about latency/headphone monitoring and things like
that. *Just wondering if it's possible/feasible, for short on-scene
sounds to do o.k. with a standard 5400rpm drive.

--
shut up and play your guitar *http://hankalrich.com/http://armadillomusicproductions.com/who'slistening.htmlhttp://www.sonicbids.com/HankandShaidriAlrichwithDougHarman

It must be a decade since HD metters on my computers stopped showing
anything but minimal readings. OTOH, I rarely go beyond 16tr.
In that sense, 7200 rpm seams to be nothing but sails pitch, both
in computer sails marketing, aswell as in studio time.
Just like ther's almost no difference in sound with all the various
equipment, given they are built properly and not pushed too hard,
thers no difference in using 5400 or 7200 before you hit really high
track count. Since there has to be something to distinguish
real studio from "home" one, 7200 was one such thing, especially in
days when 7200 were more expensive. Also, there has to be something
to make you change perfectly good HD for a new one. With cheaper
HDs labeled 7200 studios have to go elswhere to drive custommers
in. Again.
For that matter, I have 2 x 500Gb @ 7200 in my laptop.

[Mike Rivers]

On 3/6/2011 6:39 AM, Luxey wrote:

It must be a decade since HD metters on my computers stopped showing
anything but minimal readings. OTOH, I rarely go beyond 16tr.
In that sense, 7200 rpm seams to be nothing but sails pitch, both
in computer sails marketing, aswell as in studio time.

It doesn't have to be a sales pitch, it might be a matter of
availability. Back when there was a speed race, the fastest
drives (both in motor speed and interface speed) were SCSI,
and pretty much were only used in servers, except for the
early adopters of computer audio recording (and long before
anyone thought you could do video in the same manner). When
I looked into a Turtle Beach 56K system (2 track editing,
pre-Windows) a billion years ago, I was looking at about
$2,500 for a SCSI drive because that was the only way you
could get a drive as large as 650 MB, barely enough for a CD
master.

Today, 7200 RPM is pretty standard for full sized drives,
5400 RPM for laptop sized drives, and, because SATA is so
much faster than parallel ATA, some full sized drives are
available at 5400 RPM, which saves power and keeps them
cooler (and probably also allows them to be built cheaper
without risking in-warranty failures). Nobody using the
drives for ordinary purposes, and few using them for
extra-ordinary purposes, notices any more.

Since there has to be something to distinguish
real studio from "home" one, 7200 was one such thing, especially in
days when 7200 were more expensive.

I don't think that any studio really used that as an
advertising point. But today there are more "home" studios
that use laptop computers, which, by nature, usually have
5400 RPM drives. Some people would use external drives, but
mostly as a matter of convenience for keeping individual
projects separate, both for working and backup purposes.
Those were mostly 7200 RPM just because of availability.
Nowadays, if you buy a packaged external drive, it'll have a
5400 RPM drive inside the case to keep the cost and power
requirements down.

Also, there has to be something
to make you change perfectly good HD for a new one.

Usually that's a matter of capacity. You're recording more
tracks and at greater bit depth and higher sample rate now
than you were 20 years ago (because your computer can do it)
so you need more disk space. That 120 GB drive you thought
you'd never fill up is no longer big enough to hold a full
album's worth of sessions with every take (even the bad
ones, just in case) saved.

With cheaper
HDs labeled 7200 studios have to go elswhere to drive custommers
in.

Yeah. They have Waves plug-ins or API mic preamps or Neumann
mics. Disk drives are a commodity these days. Who cares as
long as it works?


--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[Sean Conolly]

"Luxey" wrote in message
...

It must be a decade since HD metters on my computers stopped showing
anything but minimal readings. OTOH, I rarely go beyond 16tr.
In that sense, 7200 rpm seams to be nothing but sails pitch, both
in computer sails marketing, aswell as in studio time.

Higher RPMs reduce the average latency for random access. That really
doesn't matter for a DAW since it's mostly serial data streams.

For applications that need massively random access, like a large database,
higher RPMs have real advantages.

Sean

[Luxey]

Higher RPMs reduce the average latency for random access. That really
doesn't matter for a DAW since it's mostly serial data streams.

For applications that need massively random access, like a large database,
higher RPMs have real advantages.

Sean

I'll try to remember this, unless someone jumps in saying above is not
true-

[Peter Larsen[_3_]]

Luxey wrote:

Higher RPMs reduce the average latency for random access. That really
doesn't matter for a DAW since it's mostly serial data streams.

For applications that need massively random access, like a large
database, higher RPMs have real advantages.

Sean

I'll try to remember this, unless someone jumps in saying above is not
true-

There is shorter rotation time to the block furthest away from the
read-write head the faster the drive spins. Western Digital has 15000 rpm
drives in standard 3.5" format, a lot of cooling fin and a smaller driv
inside it.

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[hank alrich]

Peter Larsen wrote:

Luxey wrote:

Higher RPMs reduce the average latency for random access. That really
doesn't matter for a DAW since it's mostly serial data streams.

For applications that need massively random access, like a large
database, higher RPMs have real advantages.

Sean

I'll try to remember this, unless someone jumps in saying above is not
true-

There is shorter rotation time to the block furthest away from the
read-write head the faster the drive spins. Western Digital has 15000 rpm
drives in standard 3.5" format, a lot of cooling fin and a smaller driv
inside it.

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

Those are Formula One drives. g

--
shut up and play your guitar * http://hankalrich.com/
http://armadillomusicproductions.com/who'slistening.html
http://www.sonicbids.com/HankandShai...withDougHarman

[vdubreeze]

When comparing apples to apples, a 7200 is definitely a faster drive
than a 5400. I can tell the difference when upgrading from the latter
with the same manufacturer's former, like I did last month on my MBP,
and when I did the same on a bus powered FW drive which I use for
backing stuff up to. But whether it'll will make a difference using
X software and interface to record audio is a different story. And
since there are good 5400 drives and not so good 7200 drives the water
is muddied further. OP, what mechanism are you talking about? Any
current model 5400 should acquit itself pretty well, a 5 year old one
not so much. But set a big buffer and away you go.

Wait, is this another one of those threads where someone asks a
question and we answer it five different ways and then go off on a
bunch of tangents and it grows to 200 posts and we start flaming each
other, and meanwhile they never comeback? : )

[Peter Larsen[_3_]]

vdubreeze wrote:

When comparing apples to apples, a 7200 is definitely a faster drive
than a 5400.

Again, I have three 5400 rpm WDC's that tested faster than competing 7200
rpm drives in a german test some years ago.

Wait, is this another one of those threads where someone asks a
question and we answer it five different ways and then go off on a
bunch of tangents and it grows to 200 posts and we start flaming each
other, and meanwhile they never comeback? : )

Let's skip the flaming ... ah, tea is ready!

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[Mike Rivers]

On 3/6/2011 9:26 PM, vdubreeze wrote:
When comparing apples to apples, a 7200 is definitely a faster drive
than a 5400. I can tell the difference when upgrading from the latter
with the same manufacturer's former, like I did last month on my MBP,
and when I did the same on a bus powered FW drive which I use for
backing stuff up to. But whether it'll will make a difference using
X software and interface to record audio is a different story.

What difference do you observe? That the computer boots up a
little faster than with the original drive? Do you have
files large enough to copy to or from a drive so that any
noticeable difference really changes the way you work? If
you're backing up 30 GB on a regular basis, does it make a
difference between having time to eat lunch while it's
chugging along compared to only having time to pee?

Wait, is this another one of those threads where someone asks a
question and we answer it five different ways and then go off on a
bunch of tangents and it grows to 200 posts and we start flaming each
other, and meanwhile they never comeback? : )

Yes, and the original poster already made his decision
before posting and just wants confirmation.


--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[Mr Soul]

On Mar 4, 6:03*pm, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:
The rotational rate of the drive has nothing to do with the disk's areal
density. In and of itself, it tells us nothing about how rapidly data can be
laid down.
The faster the rotation, the higher the transfer rate - so that
implies to me that rotational speed is a factor. I've done a lot of
recording with 96/24 and it generates very large files. I would not
want to be using a disk drive with less than 7200 RPM.

Mike
http://www.pcDAW.net

[Frank]

On Mon, 7 Mar 2011 17:55:36 -0800 (PST), in 'rec.audio.pro',
in article sample rate question with 5400rpm hard drives,
Mr Soul wrote:

On Mar 4, 6:03*pm, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:
The rotational rate of the drive has nothing to do with the disk's areal
density.

Actually, it does, but only in the sense that you're not going to see
drives of extremely high density spinning at high rates such as 15,000
rpm, as such a drive wouldn't be particularly reliable.

As a general rule, the most reliable drives are those that spin slowly
and have low areal density. Unfortunately, such drives have poor
performance.

In and of itself, it tells us nothing about how rapidly data can be
laid down.

This is true.

The faster the rotation, the higher the transfer rate - so that
implies to me that rotational speed is a factor.

It certainly is a factor.

I've done a lot of
recording with 96/24 and it generates very large files. I would not
want to be using a disk drive with less than 7200 RPM.

The situation is that *both* areal density *and* rotational rate are
factors, and that's why direct comparisons between different drives
based only upon one of these factors are valid only when the other
factor remains constant.

IOW, for four different drives, all having identical areal density
(and other factors such as the number of recording surfaces/heads),
the slowest drive would be the 5400 rpm model, the next fastest would
be the 7200 rpm model, next would be the 10,000 rpm model, and the
fastest of them all would be the 15,000 rpm model.

Similarly, for two drives both spinning at the same rate, the drive
with the higher areal density would be the faster drive, again
assuming that all other factors remained constant.

What I think may be confusing people is that most of today's very low
cost drives have, compared to what was available just a few years ago,
extraordinarily high areal density. Because of this, it's not uncommon
for a contemporary 5400 drive to outperform a 7200 drive of older
vintage.

HTH.

--
Frank, Independent Consultant, New York, NY
[Please remove 'nojunkmail.' from address to reply via e-mail.]
Read Frank's thoughts on HDV at http://www.humanvalues.net/hdv/
[also covers AVCHD (including AVCCAM & NXCAM) and XDCAM EX].

[TheMaskman]

You should seek legal assistance. I believe you have a case against him for what he is doing. At my firm, we never give negative references for that reason. Even if they were a terrible employee, we still won't talk negatively about them as they would be able to sue us.

[TheMaskman]

According to Le Chatelier's Principle, the reaction will try to reduce the increase in temperature by favoring the endothermic part of the equilibirum.

[Arny Krueger]

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in
message

The rotational rate of the drive has nothing to do with
the disk's areal density.

It seems to, indirectly. Getting the head to fly low enough for high
density pickup seems to be a problem when the rotational speed is very high.
Frankly this surprises me, but the facts are there in the spec sheets.


And as far as I know, the software and/or the drive would
be buffered.

Yes, eveything is buffered, but audio involves enough data that reasonably
sized data buffers can't help a disk that can't keep up.

[John Williamson]

TheMaskman wrote:
You should seek legal assistance. I believe you have a case against him
for what he is doing. At my firm, we never give negative references for
that reason. Even if they were a terrible employee, we still won't talk
negatively about them as they would be able to sue us.


?
Hard drive speed v sample rate?
--
Tciao for Now!

John.

[William Sommerwerck]

The rotational rate of the drive has nothing to do with
the disk's areal density.

It seems to, indirectly. Getting the head to fly low enough
for high density pickup seems to be a problem when the
rotational speed is very high. Frankly this surprises me,
but the facts are there in the spec sheets.

That surprises me, too. I was, of course, trying to make the point that, in
theory, high areal density should translate to rapid data transfer.

[Arny Krueger]

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in
message
The rotational rate of the drive has nothing to do with
the disk's areal density.

It seems to, indirectly. Getting the head to fly low
enough for high density pickup seems to be a problem
when the rotational speed is very high. Frankly this
surprises me, but the facts are there in the spec sheets.

That surprises me, too. I was, of course, trying to make
the point that, in theory, high areal density should
translate to rapid data transfer.

That would be a joint goal of ours.

However I had to proceed carefully, because I knew about the density
problems associated with large relative velocities between the heads and the
disk.

Bottom line is that areal density increased rapidly *after* 7200 rpm drives
became common. I believe that the reason for this was the switch over to
perpendicular recording.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpendicular_recording puts the switchover
in 2005.

"Perpendicular recording can deliver more than three times the storage
density of traditional longitudinal recording."

If that 3x bonus was manifest, then a 5400 rpm drive with perpendicular
recording could beat an older 15,000 rpm drive. (!!!)

It is not hard for a modern 5400 rpm drive to have higher DTR than an older
7200 rpm drive. Its not hard for a modern 7200 rpm drive to have higher DTR
than an older 10,000 rpm drive, etc.

I suspect that the 5400 rpm drives that came out shortly before
perpendicular recording became common also had faster DTR than earlier 7200
rpm drives.

[vdubreeze]

On Mar 7, 2:32*pm, Mike Rivers wrote:

What difference do you observe? That the computer boots up a
little faster than with the original drive?

Barely. Program opening speeds seem to be very slightly better, but
might be the placebo effect.


Do you have
files large enough to copy to or from a drive so that any
noticeable difference really changes the way you work? *If
you're backing up 30 GB on a regular basis, does it make a
difference between having time to eat lunch while it's
chugging along compared to only having time to pee?


I use the MBP mostly for Aperture and Photoshop, audio editing at
home. Definitely an improvement when moving large folders of files
but not a huge one like going from FW400 to 800. It doesn't change a
lunch break to a pee break, but it shaves enough off to be
noticeable. And there's a subtle but definite hint of more
responsiveness in general poking around. Nothing eyeopening for sure
but well worth the $65 and demoting the 5400 to a $15 enclosure.

[Peter Larsen[_3_]]

TheMaskman wrote:

According to Le Chatelier's Principle, the reaction will try to reduce
the increase in temperature by favoring the endothermic part of the
equilibirum.

As I recall things someone in this newsgroup, possibly Richard Crowley,
relayed having seen a sign on some office wall saying: "Intel giveth,
Microsoft taketh away"

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[Frank]

On Tue, 8 Mar 2011 10:22:13 -0500, in 'rec.audio.pro',
in article sample rate question with 5400rpm hard drives,
"Arny Krueger" wrote:

Bottom line is that areal density increased rapidly *after* 7200 rpm drives
became common. I believe that the reason for this was the switch over to
perpendicular recording.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpendicular_recording puts the switchover
in 2005.

That is correct. In fact, in May of 2006, I put up a quickie little
Web page on this very subject, and named perpendicular recording
technology as a primary reason for the sudden increase in storage
capacity.

I even contrasted the drives of May 2006 with an old Egghead
advertisement from September 1997, where a spacious 1 GB drive was
selling for a mere $99.93, referred to in the ad as "Our LOWEST PRICE
ever!".

I had found the ad in a stack of old audio/video magazines and since
it was in such good shape physically, I just couldn't resist scanning
it and putting it on a Web page.

Frank's thoughts on HDV - Hard Disk Drive Prices
http://www.humanvalues.net/hdv/hdd.html

P.S. Kids today are *so* spoiled. I can remember paying almost $2500
for a couple of 9.1 GB Micropolis SCSI drives years ago for use in a
video editing workstation that I was building.

Regards,

--
Frank, Independent Consultant, New York, NY
[Please remove 'nojunkmail.' from address to reply via e-mail.]
Read Frank's thoughts on HDV at http://www.humanvalues.net/hdv/
[also covers AVCHD (including AVCCAM & NXCAM) and XDCAM EX].

[Arny Krueger]

"Frank" wrote in message


P.S. Kids today are *so* spoiled. I can remember paying
almost $2500 for a couple of 9.1 GB Micropolis SCSI
drives years ago for use in a video editing workstation
that I was building.

My first hard drive was a Seagate 20 MB. Yes, that's megabytes. Cost over
$660 including separate full-length controller. Looked like a great deal as
just a year or two earlier, $800 got you 5 megabytes.

[Scott Dorsey]

Frank wrote:
P.S. Kids today are *so* spoiled. I can remember paying almost $2500
for a couple of 9.1 GB Micropolis SCSI drives years ago for use in a
video editing workstation that I was building.

It's not the price that was alarming on those, it's the total data loss.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Frank]

On Wed, 9 Mar 2011 18:19:04 -0500, in 'rec.audio.pro',
in article sample rate question with 5400rpm hard drives,
"Arny Krueger" wrote:

"Frank" wrote in message


P.S. Kids today are *so* spoiled. I can remember paying
almost $2500 for a couple of 9.1 GB Micropolis SCSI
drives years ago for use in a video editing workstation
that I was building.

My first hard drive was a Seagate 20 MB. Yes, that's megabytes. Cost over
$660 including separate full-length controller. Looked like a great deal as
just a year or two earlier, $800 got you 5 megabytes.

Yes, young people reading this today might think that we were crazy,
or even just making this stuff up (you know, when I was your age I had
to walk 20 miles to school, and it was uphill both ways), but those
were indeed the prices back then. Heck, it was either that or floppy
drives - and they were just too slow and lacked the needed capacity to
do anything really useful except store word processing documents and
spread sheets.

I was lucky, though, because for personal systems I would always
salvage used drives from discarded machines at work, so that
ultimately I don't recall ever having to pay those sort of prices for
use in any system that I was building for myself.

Just for the record, I've never been a "dumpster diver" except for
when it comes to electronics.

As for those full-length controller boards, I do indeed also remember
those. My memory may be a bit faded on this, but I seem to recall that
at least some of them had DIP switches on them that needed to be set
properly before certain drives could function properly. I also seem to
recall reading "bad sector lists" off of printed labels on the drive
so that the locations could be manually entered, else the drive might
try to seek to a bad sector. Today, all drives handle this
automatically, and know where spare sectors are located and when and
how to use them - all done transparently to the user.

In more recent news, Sony has announced its new SR-R1 Memory Recorder
for use primarily with its high-end HDCAM SR camcorders and cameras
(SRW-9000, SRW-9000PL, F23, and F35). As recording media, it will use
high-speed 1 TB RAID 5 flash memory cards.

--
Frank, Independent Consultant, New York, NY
[Please remove 'nojunkmail.' from address to reply via e-mail.]
Read Frank's thoughts on HDV at http://www.humanvalues.net/hdv/
[also covers AVCHD (including AVCCAM & NXCAM) and XDCAM EX].

[Frank]

On 9 Mar 2011 19:27:29 -0500, in 'rec.audio.pro',
in article sample rate question with 5400rpm hard drives,
(Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Frank wrote:
P.S. Kids today are *so* spoiled. I can remember paying almost $2500
for a couple of 9.1 GB Micropolis SCSI drives years ago for use in a
video editing workstation that I was building.

It's not the price that was alarming on those, it's the total data loss.
--scott

Well, they weren't exactly "low cost" drives, but it is certainly true
that I never saw one last longer than about two years or so, and often
just one year. They had severe reliability issues - and ran very hot.

Fortunately for the end user, they weren't very often used for
long-term storage of important data but were instead used as working
storage (scratch space) in audio/video editing workstations.

I wasn't especially surprised when the company went out of business.

--
Frank, Independent Consultant, New York, NY
[Please remove 'nojunkmail.' from address to reply via e-mail.]
Read Frank's thoughts on HDV at http://www.humanvalues.net/hdv/
[also covers AVCHD (including AVCCAM & NXCAM) and XDCAM EX].

[Arny Krueger]

"Frank" wrote in message

On Wed, 9 Mar 2011 18:19:04 -0500, in 'rec.audio.pro',
in article sample rate question with 5400rpm hard
drives, "Arny Krueger" wrote:

"Frank" wrote in
message

P.S. Kids today are *so* spoiled. I can remember paying
almost $2500 for a couple of 9.1 GB Micropolis SCSI
drives years ago for use in a video editing workstation
that I was building.

My first hard drive was a Seagate 20 MB. Yes, that's
megabytes. Cost over $660 including separate
full-length controller. Looked like a great deal as just
a year or two earlier, $800 got you 5 megabytes.

Yes, young people reading this today might think that we
were crazy, or even just making this stuff up (you know,
when I was your age I had to walk 20 miles to school, and
it was uphill both ways), but those were indeed the
prices back then.

Heck, it was either that or floppy
drives - and they were just too slow and lacked the
needed capacity to do anything really useful except store
word processing documents and spread sheets.

Floppy drives started out in the $800 range as well. That would be a 180k,
one-sided floppy.

I was lucky, though, because for personal systems I would
always salvage used drives from discarded machines at
work, so that ultimately I don't recall ever having to
pay those sort of prices for use in any system that I was
building for myself.

My first PC was paid for by some lucrative writing projects. I showed my
kids how to do word processing early on.

My kids were not allowed to turn in computer-printed papers because the
teachers interpreted that as prima facae evidence that the paper was
prepared by an adult. The quickly grasped the benefits of easy editing and
wrote on the PC and hand copied their papers to turn in.

Just for the record, I've never been a "dumpster diver"
except for when it comes to electronics.

Been there, done that. My most lucrative dumpster dive involved recovering 3
"Think Tanks" which were dictation recorders based on huge tape loops in
huge vertical bins, maybe 4 square feet on a side. From these I recovered
power supplies and gold contact telephone relays that were used to build
many early prototype ABX Comparators.

As for those full-length controller boards, I do indeed
also remember those. My memory may be a bit faded on
this, but I seem to recall that at least some of them had
DIP switches on them that needed to be set properly
before certain drives could function properly.

Mine was delivered with an improperly burned ROM chip that put in so much
allowance for seek delay that my 20 mSec access time Seagate ST 4026 ran at
floppy-disk speeds. I was able to get a new ROM from the controller
manufacturer rep in Chicago that got it up to speed.

I also seem to recall reading "bad sector lists" off of printed
labels on the drive so that the locations could be
manually entered, else the drive might try to seek to a
bad sector. Today, all drives handle this automatically,
and know where spare sectors are located and when and how
to use them - all done transparently to the user.

To a degree. Modern drives can still let marginal sectors slip by and
software utilities such as XP's CHKDSK can still be used to make unusuable
drives marginally usable enough to get the data off of them.

In more recent news, Sony has announced its new SR-R1
Memory Recorder for use primarily with its high-end HDCAM
SR camcorders and cameras (SRW-9000, SRW-9000PL, F23, and
F35). As recording media, it will use high-speed 1 TB
RAID 5 flash memory cards.

This week: very expensive. In 10 years: toilet paper.

[Scott Dorsey]

Frank wrote:
On 9 Mar 2011 19:27:29 -0500, in 'rec.audio.pro',
in article sample rate question with 5400rpm hard drives,
(Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Frank wrote:
P.S. Kids today are *so* spoiled. I can remember paying almost $2500
for a couple of 9.1 GB Micropolis SCSI drives years ago for use in a
video editing workstation that I was building.

It's not the price that was alarming on those, it's the total data loss.

Well, they weren't exactly "low cost" drives, but it is certainly true
that I never saw one last longer than about two years or so, and often
just one year. They had severe reliability issues - and ran very hot.

They were worthless garbage and they eventually led to Micropolis finally
enjoying a well-deserved bankruptcy.

The last Micropolis product I ever used was their unreliable floppy drive
in the mid-seventies. I was quite surprised that they lasted into the
gigabyte drive era, I was even more surprised that they were the first vendor
that introduced a 9GB drive. But I wasn't surprised when they started dying
like flies due to a design error.

I wasn't especially surprised when the company went out of business.

The 9GB drive basically put them out of business.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[William Sommerwerck]

My first hard drive was a Seagate 20 MB. Yes, that's megabytes.
Cost over $660 including separate full-length controller. Looked like
a great deal as just a year or two earlier, $800 got you 5 megabytes.

I had a friend who paid $2500 for a 5MB drive for his Apple ][.

[Frank]

On 10 Mar 2011 09:21:45 -0500, in 'rec.audio.pro',
in article sample rate question with 5400rpm hard drives,
(Scott Dorsey) wrote:

The 9GB drive basically put them out of business.

Speaking of out of business, and this is old news from three days ago,
but Western Digital is acquiring the hard disk drive business unit of
Hitachi for a mere $4.25 billion, thereby once again reducing the
number of HDD manufacturers in the world.

Western Digital Press Release
http://www.wdc.com/en/company/pressr...f-7f02aa42f444

For those who may not recall, it was Hitachi who acquired IBM's hard
disk drive business when IBM made the decision to get out of the
personal computer business.

--
Frank, Independent Consultant, New York, NY
[Please remove 'nojunkmail.' from address to reply via e-mail.]
Read Frank's thoughts on HDV at http://www.humanvalues.net/hdv/
[also covers AVCHD (including AVCCAM & NXCAM) and XDCAM EX].

[Frank]

On Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:44:57 -0500, in 'rec.audio.pro',
in article sample rate question with 5400rpm hard drives,
"Arny Krueger" wrote:

Note that this post is neither a criticism nor a clarifcation of the OP
which is a correct quote of a signficiant news item.

Rather, my comments are based on the results of some addtional study of the
situation which seem to be far less rosy than many well-known analysts seem
to be suggesting.

My feeling, as someone who's been doing computers for forty years now,
is that any analyst who believes that there's anything "rosy" about
any of this simply doesn't fully comprehend the situation.

Hitachi sold out because they couldn't take the heat any longer.

My concern, if I were to have any, is that from an end user viewpoint,
the choice has just gotten smaller, with Western Digital and Seagate,
the later of which now also includes the former Maxtor operation,
producing the bulk of the world's drives.

I mean, who else, besides Seagate Technology and Western Digital
Corporation (WDC), still makes HDDs? Fujitsu, Samsung, and Toshiba are
all that come to my mind, and none of them hold a major piece of the
pie.

The Western Digital/Hitachi deal sets up the two companies (Seagate
and WDC, that is) for a potential price-fixing situation, not that
such a thing would ever occur, of course.

--
Frank, Independent Consultant, New York, NY
[Please remove 'nojunkmail.' from address to reply via e-mail.]
Read Frank's thoughts on HDV at http://www.humanvalues.net/hdv/
[also covers AVCHD (including AVCCAM & NXCAM) and XDCAM EX].

[joe h]

Wow, thanks everyone!

It looks like a bit of a Rip Van Winkle effect here. I was aware that
hard drives have been offering ever-more amounts of memory at
affordable prices. I didn't know that much had been improved in terms
of data delivery density on 5400rpm drives. I haven't been studying
them closely in about five years.

It looks like a lot of the people here are saying that they complete
24/96 multi-track sessions on 5400rpm drive notebook computers without
any problems. That makes my simple stereo track 24/96 or 24/192 look
plenty easy for the drive to handle.