I'm about to do a HD upgrade and was wondering 1 thing. I think I read in the FAQ that the speed of the HD is not really an issue. Is this true? So paying more for a 5400 is a waste of money? 4200 will be plenty? Just want my empeg to perform the best it can

So paying more for a 5400 is a waste of money? 4200 will be plenty?

Absolutely correct.

The hard drives in the empeg only spin up for a few seconds every five or 10 minutes. Since they are active maybe 3% of the time the player is working, then there is no advantage to having them spin fast.

tanstaafl.

I think I read in the FAQ that the speed of the HD is not really an issue. Is this true?

Nah, I decided to yank everyone's chain when I wrote that.

Made me laugh

You keep your hands off of my chain.

If you know what I mean.

Heh.

Actually, this discussion has made me think of something to add, to strengthen that statement in the Drive Upgrade Guide: A slower drive is actually better in the case of the car player because it will likely be cheaper and produce less heat.

would it really produce less heat ?

consider that altough it spins up faster, it spins down sooner as it takes less time to read the same amount of data ...

Could be talking out of my ass though.

Maybe if the faq qualified the statement on drive speed being irrelevant due to the aggressive caching algorithm in the software, the question wouldnt have been raised in the first place

Slower drives in my experience definitely produce less heat, probably less friction or same friction but less overal movement in the same time interval. Spin up times for fast drives is typically longer, comparing the spin up of a 4200 rpm drive to a 15000 rpm drive, the 4200 drive beats it hands down.

The only things that are improved with a high rpm drive are the time the head has to wait for the right data to appear after seeking to a new cylinder and possibly the max. transfer rate of the data. The wait after seek time is probably the predominant factor, especially on an empeg which doesn't use DMA, so higher transfer rates can't really make the actual IO happen any faster.

One thing that might help a lot more for the empeg is when the ext2 filesystem is modified to avoid scattering data across the various block groups on the disk. The access patterns (both write and read) are very much unlike typical UNIX accesses, and the filesystem isn't really optimized for it.

Maybe if the faq qualified the statement on drive speed being irrelevant due to the aggressive caching algorithm in the software, the question wouldnt have been raised in the first place

Um, that's what it did say. Not in those words, but that was the exact meaning of what it already said.

<tongue in cheek> hah! how dare you suggest the fallibility of the FAQ Master. </tongue in cheek>

Actually, I don't think the FAQ does say that. (Searches on speed, rpm, 5400, access, drive, disc, and disk revealed nothing useful, anyway.) The drive upgrade guide says it in almost exactly those words, though.

Edit: BTW, I like the way the search deal works now, where it only shows you one entry, plus all the other questions, when you click on one. Could we get it to work that way when browsing it, too, Drakino? (Maybe it's not new, though, and I'm just a moron.)

BTW, I like the way the search deal works now, where it only shows you one entry, plus all the other questions, when you click on one. Could we get it to work that way when browsing it, too, Drakino? (Maybe it's not new, though, and I'm just a moron.)

It is new, I implemented the code yesterday (some may have seen the FAQ warnings while I was doing it). The way it stands now, you can either browse it the same as the old way by simply choosing a master category, or you can switch to the one FAQ entry view by clicking on one of the question links. Also, all FAQ referrals from here should also go to the one answer mode, assuming JavaScript is turned on, and Netscape 2.0 or higher javascript is built into your browser.