[ale] Quiet spinning drives?

[Alex Carver]

I do have backups of all the data and some configuration files
(automatic rsync every night) but it's annoying to restore.  One of my
Pis runs a spinning disk, too, and that one will likely get an update,
too, since it's currently running an old 20 GB IDE laptop drive (I'll
switch to a pocket sized SATA drive over USB).  That one makes some
bearing noise since it's fairly old (having been in three laptops) so
two 2.5" drives is probably not such a bad option.  Only need an
enclosure for one and a cable for the other.

At some point I'll get a big NAS box and dump all the backups on that.

Now if only there was a way to image the whole machine while it was
still running. :)

On 2017-02-14 14:41, DJ-Pfulio wrote:
> Just to be clear, I'm not a big user of SSDs.  Only have 1 system with
> an SSD.  R-pi uses a microSD card.  All the others are on spinning rust.
>  Have some 320G seagates that will probably work longer than I'm alive,
> but all the larger disks are non-seagates (all those seagates have died
> prematurely).  I prefer Hitachi over all other brands (2TB and 4TB
> models), but have Toshiba and WD disks spinning too.
> 
> Regardless, I'm religious about backups so any failure is just a slight
> inconvenience. Nothing more.
> 
> However, if I need 128G or less in storage - sometimes you just don't
> want more for a number of reasons, then SSDs are cheap enough.
> 
> If you want more storage than that, getting almost any 2.5in HDD will be
> fine. None are really THAT noisy.  Picked up a 750G for a laptop and
> don't hear it.
> 
> On 02/14/2017 05:24 PM, Alex Carver wrote:
>> Hah , yeah, the fans are already pretty loud which is why it's sitting
>> in a closet instead of out in the open. :)  But the thing that comes
>> through the most is the whine of the drives.  They're both quite old.  I
>> think I bought them in the very late 90's, but I'm fairly certain
>> they're at least 15 years old so the bearings are probably a bit wobbly.
>>  I don't think mounts are going to help me in this situation.  Right now
>> both drives are suspended inside the case with long zip ties.
>>
>> I may just give in and go SSD anyway but I had hoped there was some
>> quiet-ish spinning drives around.  reviews never seem to comment on
>> noise other than "quiet" without really being specific.
>>
>> On 2017-02-14 13:29, Jim Kinney wrote:
>>> If you turn up the fan speed you won't hear the drive(s). If you run the fan 
>>> long enough like that, you won't notice the drives when the fan runs at normal 
>>> speeds
>>>
>>> What? Speak louder!
>>>
>>> :-)
>>>
>>> Acer had a case with drive mounts to absorb the sound. The case was rather 
>>> dense, plastic over steel. It made for a very quiet system. All the fans were 
>>> large - 6" and up. I think I saw it originally at Frys. The mounting was 
>>> basically a longer screw with a soft silicon grommet that prevented direct metal 
>>> to metal contact between the screw head and the case.
>>>
>>> On Tue, 2017-02-14 at 10:50 -0800, Alex Carver wrote:
>>>> Anyone have a suggestion for a quiet spinning drive?  I've got a few
>>>> that need to be replaced but due to a variety of factors an SSD may not
>>>> be the best option.  I could potentially be swayed.
>>>>
>>>> The machine is one of my home servers.  It's always running but the disk
>>>> I/O isn't huge.  It's not a fast machine so I don't need an ultra fast
>>>> drive.  I'll have to add a SATA PCI card to it to support new drives anyway.
>>>>
>>>> I was thinking one of the WD Blue 5400 RPM drives as they seem to be
>>>> fairly quiet from reviews.  I also considered using a smaller 2.5" drive
>>>> instead of the 3.5" drive.
>>>>
>>>> Capacity doesn't need to be huge, 500GB-1TB is more than sufficient for
>>>> this machine (it currently has two 8 GB drives).  It's primary functions
>>>> are data collection (writing sensor data to various databases, currenly
>>>> using only 1 GB) and log storage from various devices (logs are rotated
>>>> so they don't consume large amounts of storage, about 100 MB).
>>>> Secondary function is serving that data either via web page or direct
>>>> database access.  The web pages use only about 1 GB as well.