Saturday, January 3 2009
No, seriously don't. An engineer at Sun Microsystems' Fishworks lab discovered that yelling at your hard-drive causes sharp (yet momentary) increases in the hard-drive's latency. The engineer demonstrated this by yelling a portion of a server holding a RAID JBOD array, while monitoring its IO/s and latencies of the drive he was yelling at it. Each time he yelled at it, there was a surge in the drive's latency. The engineer posted his demonstration on YouTube. Now you know that yelling at your hard-drive isn't going to help, or is it? This opens up some interesting topics to research on, of how the rather loud environment enterprise hard-drives are put through in high-density storage environments impact on them, and to what extant vibration dampening helps them. The video can be viewed here.
posted by btarunr - 11:53 AM |  Related News

User comments
by btarunr (January 3rd - 11:55 AM) - Reply
Many Thanks to AuDioFreaK39 for sending this in.
by MRCL (January 3rd - 11:57 AM) - Reply
Lol. Good thing I only yell at the monitor.
by Homeless (January 3rd - 1:00 PM) - Reply
lol that's pretty funny
by DonInKansas (January 3rd - 1:04 PM) - Reply
That's why the purepwnage.com]pwnerer only pwns his monitor while pwning noobs at RTS.

And stuff. :laugh:
by francis511 (January 3rd - 1:10 PM) - Reply
Dude , funny shit !
by rampage (January 3rd - 1:52 PM) - Reply
noise can create vibrations and we all know vibration is bad for read/write/seek times on a HDD, i thought this was common sense ? but i have to admit i didn't realize it was that sensitive tho
by oli_ramsay (January 3rd - 2:23 PM) - Reply
"yelling at your hard-drive causes sharp (yet momentary) increases in the hard-drive's latency"

or to put it another way; scientists get very bored :laugh:
by Lillebror (January 3rd - 3:58 PM) - Reply
Just think about it! the vibrations from your high cfm fans can make your hdd's go slow!
by Mr.President (January 3rd - 4:04 PM) - Reply
hmm speechless.
by technicks (January 3rd - 4:15 PM) - Reply
I can see the future waring stickers on drives already.

WARNING DON'T :eek:. Hehe.:laugh:
by 3870x2 (January 3rd - 4:32 PM) - Reply
I tried to convince my unit to go for SSDs instead of the 2.5in hdds for our laptops, that there will be less failure for us, and a more streamlined workforce, the chiefs reply was "too expensive".
and they wonder why there is so much field failure with our laptops.
by Black Panther (January 3rd - 5:12 PM) - Reply
Interesting...

I wonder what effect will it have on a HDD having a Z5500 subwoofer placed barely 3 ft away then... :twitch:
by TheGuruStud (January 3rd - 6:39 PM) - Reply
by: 3870x2
I tried to convince my unit to go for SSDs instead of the 2.5in hdds for our laptops, that there will be less failure for us, and a more streamlined workforce, the chiefs reply was "too expensive".
and they wonder why there is so much field failure with our laptops.


You're not running raid 1? :eek:

I swear, most bosses are retarded.
by hrvoje (January 3rd - 6:40 PM) - Reply
Maybe this explained failure of my 2 HDDs in about 2 weeks. I have one 300/600W Sbu near comp, and 4 other speakers in room 2 150/300W and 2 35/50W. I like to use them very loude. :ohwell:
by TheGuruStud (January 3rd - 6:41 PM) - Reply
by: hrvoje
Maybe this explained failure of my 2 HDDs in about 2 weeks. I have one 300/600W Sbu near comp, and 4 other speakers in room 2 150/300W and 2 35/50W. I like to use them very loude. :ohwell:
I'm sure that plus the magnetic field isn't helping :laugh:

:slap:
by hrvoje (January 3rd - 6:45 PM) - Reply
by: TheGuruStud
I'm sure that plus the magnetic field isn't helping :laugh:

:slap:
Well changing brand from Maxtor to Hitachi helped
by TheGuruStud (January 3rd - 6:49 PM) - Reply
by: hrvoje
Well changing brand from Maxtor to Hitachi helped
Even more :laugh:

Yeah, I wouldn't trust a maxtor for one day.

WDs all the way :rockout:
by Mussels (January 4th - 4:07 AM) - Reply
by: Mr.President
hmm speechless.

good way to get better latency.

by: Black Panther
Interesting...

I wonder what effect will it have on a HDD having a Z5500 subwoofer placed barely 3 ft away then... :twitch:

Do what i did. put the sub on the opposite side of the desk to the PC.
by Haytch (January 4th - 10:36 AM) - Reply
Ive always tried to minimize the sound and vibration around the hard drives. Sun Engineer's should get back to work and stop messing around.
by LAN_deRf_HA (January 4th - 9:28 PM) - Reply
Like a decade ago I had a computer that would speed up or unfreeze when I hit it. Wonder if doing that caused a program error or some sort of usage denial on whatever programs were causing the slow down.
by Aceman.au (January 5th - 12:38 AM) - Reply
Good thing I put my keyboard thru the screen istead...
by Lazzer408 (January 5th - 3:46 AM) - Reply
Interesting stuff. I didn't want to take the risk that my drive's spindle motor could effect performance....so I unpluged the power to them. They do nothing faster then I've ever seen them do it before.
by farlex85 (January 5th - 3:51 AM) - Reply
Verbal abuse doesn't make hard drives tow the line quicker? Well, I'm out of ideas, looks like they'll get the belt.....
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