some media drives ( at least this used to be true ) had a different TCal logic (thermal recalibration) to keep the data stream as a priority.
On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 11:35 AM, Ben Scott <mailvor...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 9:27 AM, David Lum <david....@nwea.org> wrote: > > IS there anything special about Dell-supplied SATA drives? > > Define "special". > > The HDA (hard disk assembly) and PCB (printed circuit board) are > almost certainly the same as you would get if you bought a similar > spec'ed drive from Wal-Mart. > > Some Dell drives have firmware which identifies themselves as > "Dell", thus allowing them to work with Dell RAID controllers which > refuse anything else. > > Some "enterprise" hard disk drives have tweaked firmware, supposedly > to "optimize" them for "enterprise usage". Exactly how much, if any, > benefit there is to such tweaks is a subject of considerable debate. > > Firmware tweaks *can* make a difference. Examples: > > One of the reported problems in the infamous IBM "DeathStar" debacle > was that the drives would idle the heads in a single track. Under > typical home luser usage patterns, that wasn't a problem. For a PC > left on all the time but largely idle, though, it could lead to wear > on that one track. The fix was to tweak the firmware to occasionally > move the actuator arm, even when idle. > > Some HDD models are marked for "media" use, like in DVRs. What they > do is tweak the firmware to quickly give up on a read/write error. > Typical hard drives will keep retrying, often for several seconds. > For a Word document, that's what you want, but for streaming media, > it's more important to keep the stream streaming. A single lost block > will be a barely noticeable glitch in the audio or picture. > > -- Ben > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
