Don't Yell at Your Hard Drives: Sun Engineer

[btarunr]

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.

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[btarunr]

Many Thanks to AuDioFreaK39 for sending this in.

 

[MRCL]

Lol. Good thing I only yell at the monitor.

 

[Homeless]

lol that's pretty funny

 

[DonInKansas]

That's why the pwnerer only pwns his monitor while pwning noobs at RTS.

And stuff.

 

[francis511]

Dude , funny shit !

 

[rampage]

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

 

[oli_ramsay]

"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

 

[Lillebror]

Just think about it! the vibrations from your high cfm fans can make your hdd's go slow!

 

[Mr.President]

hmm speechless.

 

[technicks]

I can see the future waring stickers on drives already.

WARNING DON'T . Hehe.

 

[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.

 

[Black Panther]

Interesting...

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

 

[TheGuruStud]

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?

I swear, most bosses are retarded.

 

[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.

 

[TheGuruStud]

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.

I'm sure that plus the magnetic field isn't helping

 

[hrvoje]

I'm sure that plus the magnetic field isn't helping

Well changing brand from Maxtor to Hitachi helped

 

[TheGuruStud]

Well changing brand from Maxtor to Hitachi helped

Even more

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

WDs all the way

 

[Mussels]

hmm speechless.

good way to get better latency.

Interesting...

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

Do what i did. put the sub on the opposite side of the desk to the PC.

 

[Haytch]

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.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

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.

 

[Aceman.au]

Good thing I put my keyboard thru the screen istead...

 

[Lazzer408]

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.

 

[farlex85]

Verbal abuse doesn't make hard drives tow the line quicker? Well, I'm out of ideas, looks like they'll get the belt.....

 

[epaprika]

Nowadays HDDs have RV sensors ... you can yell however loud you want.