Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
On Du, 16 ian 11, 18:48:17, Andrew McGlashan wrote: Now, when will stable release have a 2.6.37 kernel? Squeeze will release with 2.6.32. However, 2.6.37 is already available in experimental and it (or a higher version) will eventually reach testing and from there squeeze-backports. I would estimate 1-2 months after squeeze is released. And are all those changes non-free -- so to be included in supported versions of Debian? Non-free in Debian means non-DFSG[1][2]. What do you mean? [1] http://www.debian.org/intro/free [2] http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines Regards, Andrei -- Offtopic discussions among Debian users and developers: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/d-community-offtopic signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
On Sun, 16 Jan 2011 18:48:17 +1100, Andrew McGlashan wrote: (...) Now, when will stable release have a 2.6.37 kernel? And are all those changes non-free -- so to be included in supported versions of Debian? AFAIK, Gparted has support for 4,096 bytes sector size hdd since moths... But why non-free? It looks like it will become a standard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format Greetings, -- Camaleón -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/pan.2011.01.16.11.30...@gmail.com
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
Hi, Andrei Popescu wrote: On Du, 16 ian 11, 18:48:17, Andrew McGlashan wrote: Now, when will stable release have a 2.6.37 kernel? Squeeze will release with 2.6.32. However, 2.6.37 is already available in experimental and it (or a higher version) will eventually reach testing and from there squeeze-backports. I would estimate 1-2 months after squeeze is released. Excellent. And are all those changes non-free -- so to be included in supported versions of Debian? Non-free in Debian means non-DFSG[1][2]. What do you mean? What I mean is, the kernel changes to add broadcom and other firmware ... will those parts be non-free or will they remain as extras required as they are now. I did an install using squeeze rc1 and without using media with non-free firmware, it would have been more difficult. If the broadcom and other extras coming in 2.6.37 are non-free additions, then that would be fantastic; if they aren't well, it would be a pity. Thanks -- Kind Regards AndrewM Andrew McGlashan Broadband Solutions now including VoIP -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4d32dca1.30...@affinityvision.com.au
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
On Du, 16 ian 11, 22:55:13, Andrew McGlashan wrote: What I mean is, the kernel changes to add broadcom and other firmware ... will those parts be non-free or will they remain as extras required as they are now. I did an install using squeeze rc1 and without using media with non-free firmware, it would have been more difficult. If the broadcom and other extras coming in 2.6.37 are non-free additions, then that would be fantastic; if they aren't well, it would be a pity. I still don't understand exactly what you mean, but maybe this helps: Debian is only the stuff in main, everything else (like contrib and non-free) is provided only as a service to the users. See point 4 and 5 of the Social Contract (one of the links in my previous mail). The Linux kernel used to be the big exception since it contained non-free firmware, but was still distributed in main. This has changed now for squeeze. To the best knowledge of the developers, all non-free firmware has been split out in firmware-linux-nonfree and is available only from the non-free archive. AFAIK this was possible also due to the help from upstream (the kernel developers), where firmware has been split from the drivers. Considering all of the above, I doubt non-free firmware will ever be distributed in main again, unless by mistake (bugs can happen). In case you need the non-free firmware during the installation there are special non-free CD images containing the firmware or you can build you own USB stick with all needed stuff. Hope this explains, Andrei -- Offtopic discussions among Debian users and developers: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/d-community-offtopic signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
Read the ATA and SCSI specifications. Or ask on either mailing list. In short, the drive presents its LBA addressing based on 512B sectors. The kernel can't choose to ignore that--it's stuck with it. Since the drive is presenting LBA based on 512B sectors, there is no way the kernel can address LBA based on 4K sectors. I don't follow: what prevents the kernel from telling the higher-up tools that the drive uses 4KB sectors (or 72KB sectors for that matter)? In any case, the issue is probably not really in the kernel but in the filesystems and partitioning tools: all that's really needed to use the The current problem with the hybrid drives is that the partitioning utilities don't automatically align partitions on the underlying 4k sector boundaries. I'm glad we agree. Indeed, and for that reason 4KB physical blocks wouldn't cause additional disk space usage. The space savings with 4KB sectors has nothing to do with file systems or user data. I was talking about the space usage increase incurred from the use of ≥4KB blocks in the FS, if we assume that the FS uses the underlying HD block size as a lower-limit of its own block size. This is the ONLY reason these 4KB sector drives were developed: more actual end user space on the drive. That's a different topic, but an interesting one as well: the gain seems small (e.g. WD has/had two Green 2TB drives, one using 4KB sectors and the other using good'ol 512B sectors, and this using apparently the same underlying head/drive technology, so it seems the gain, if any, was too small to make it to the end user). So why does WD do that? Stefan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/jwvr5cds7ch.fsf-monnier+gmane.linux.debian.u...@gnu.org
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
Hi, Stefan Monnier wrote: Read the ATA and SCSI specifications. Or ask on either mailing list. In short, the drive presents its LBA addressing based on 512B sectors. The kernel can't choose to ignore that--it's stuck with it. Since the drive is presenting LBA based on 512B sectors, there is no way the kernel can address LBA based on 4K sectors. http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Kernel-Log-Coming-in-2-6-37-Part-3-Network-and-storage-hardware-1153025.html quote Storage - The H Open Source: News and Features Numerous changes to the network and storage code are to increase processing speed and improve the system's hardware support. Among the new additions are a PPTP stack, various drivers for Wi-Fi hardware by Atheros, Broadcom and Realtek, and code for hard disks with a logical sector size of 4 Kbytes /quote Now, when will stable release have a 2.6.37 kernel? And are all those changes non-free -- so to be included in supported versions of Debian? -- Kind Regards AndrewM Andrew McGlashan Broadband Solutions now including VoIP -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4d32a2c1.8000...@affinityvision.com.au
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
Stefan Monnier put forth on 1/11/2011 10:28 PM: Isn't it rather than the kernel chooses to only use the logical sector size? Where/when does the drive report 512B physical sector sizes? Read the ATA and SCSI specifications. Or ask on either mailing list. In short, the drive presents its LBA addressing based on 512B sectors. The kernel can't choose to ignore that--it's stuck with it. Since the drive is presenting LBA based on 512B sectors, there is no way the kernel can address LBA based on 4K sectors. In any case, the issue is probably not really in the kernel but in the filesystems and partitioning tools: all that's really needed to use the The problem is none of those things. The problem is hybrid drives. IIRC, the kernel, libata, libscsi, etc, are all ready for _native_ 4K sector drives. The current problem with the hybrid drives is that the partitioning utilities don't automatically align partitions on the underlying 4k sector boundaries. So, what happens is, in essence, when a filesystem is laid down that uses 4K blocks, it will lay across 4 _translated_ 512B sectors. Thus, you end up with a 4K filesystem block that lays across two physical 4K disk sectors. Thus, each time that FS block is written, 8*512B sectors must be read and re-written. Thus, _TWO_ physical 4K disk sectors must be read and re-written instead of just one on an aligned partition, akin to the the RAID5/6 read/modify/write penalty. This misalignment cuts performance by half or more because every FS block write requires to reads and two writes instead of just one. drive efficiently is for fdisk/parted and for mkfs to be told (and make use of) the physical block size. Of course, maybe a good way to provide this info is to teach the kernel about it so those tools don't need to use side-band info via hdparm. Maybe you should hit the LKML, GNU fdisk, and GNU parted list archives before continuing this thread. Indeed, and for that reason 4KB physical blocks wouldn't cause additional disk space usage. The space savings with 4KB sectors has nothing to do with file systems or user data. It has to do with the per sector ECC information that all drives calculate and store in between sectors to safeguard the data in the sector. The number of bits of ECC required per 4KB sector is significantly less than that occupied by the 4 ECC segments of four 512 byte sectors. This is the ONLY reason these 4KB sector drives were developed: more actual end user space on the drive. -- Stan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4d2def0f.1080...@hardwarefreak.com
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
Stan Hoeppner put forth on 1/12/2011 12:12 PM: The number of bits of ECC required per 4KB sector is significantly less than that occupied by the 4 ECC segments of four 512 byte sectors. This is the ONLY This should read 8^ not 4. -- Stan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4d2dff44.8070...@hardwarefreak.com
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
teddi...@tmo.blackberry.net: I think what we mainly should take from all this is Western Digital sucks and we should never buy their crap... Yeah, we should rush out and buy Samsung drives with their faulty firmware which forgets write operations if one sends the wrong IDE command at the right time. (I know, there's a fix, but since it has the same version nuber as the buggy firmware, you can never be sure. :)) And those pesky 4k blocks will never take hold. 512 bytes were a good idea in the 1950s, so what's wrong with it now!? J. -- If I was Mark Chapman I would have shot John Lennon with a water pistol. [Agree] [Disagree] http://www.slowlydownward.com/NODATA/data_enter2.html signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
teddi...@tmo.blackberry.net put forth on 1/10/2011 11:29 PM: I think what we mainly should take from all this is Western Digital sucks and we should never buy their crap... I know there are some who will disagree with this, so no flames needed... Not a flame at all here. Totally agree WRT Green drives. As I've stated or eluded to many times in this thread, I think their Green advanced format drives Suck--yes that's with a capital S. They may be OK under MS Windows but not Linux. They may yet work well with Linux if/when the partitioners get up to speed. However I think the power savings push is a joke. Most of the people buying them aren't using them in a manner conducive to allowing them to shut down aggressively as they are programmed to. I'm guessing many of these Green drives will start failing at the 2-3 year mark due to excessive head parking, prompting WD to pull them from the market or rewrite the firmware so they're not as aggressively Green. They'll then rename them after the current Green brand gets a bad reputation. They'll rename the entire line, eliminating the Blue and Green lines altogether. The new name will be something like Azure with marketing speak something like the best features of the former Blue and Green drives. They'll keep the Black drives, and introduce a new line so they still have three lines. The new one will be called something like Red with a subtitle F ormula 1 Ferrari Red and will be a 10k rpm drive replacing the Raptor line. Disclaimer: I don't work for WDC. If these things come to pass, it is strictly coincidence I mentioned them first. :) The Blue drives are fine. My server, through which this email will travel on its way to you, uses a single 3.5 500GB WD Blue drive. Runs like a champ, no problems. Installed Oct 3, 2009, IIRC: SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051Pre-fail Always - 0 3 Spin_Up_Time0x0027 143 142 021Pre-fail Always - 3808 4 Start_Stop_Count0x0032 100 100 000Old_age Always - 33 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 087 087 000Old_age Always - 9494 10 Spin_Retry_Count0x0032 100 253 000Old_age Always - 0 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000Old_age Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000Old_age Always - 32 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000Old_age Always - 17 193 Load_Cycle_Count0x0032 200 200 000Old_age Always - 15 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 118 104 000Old_age Always - 25 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 200 200 000Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count0x0032 200 200 000Old_age Always - 0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 200 200 000Old_age Offline - 0 I have no personal experience with the Black series drives, but I've neither heard nor read anything bad about them. -- Stan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4d2c7edb.8000...@hardwarefreak.com
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
Robert Holtzman put forth on 1/11/2011 1:44 AM: On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 04:44:13AM -0600, Stan Hoeppner wrote: Interesting advice Bob. Practice it. I did. Read your post again, especially the part that says This is because of your liberal political leanings Yes. I called black black. And you blew your cork. Reread what I was responding to, here: http://www.linux-archive.org/debian-user/474373-hard-drive-energy-not-worth-conserving-drives.html End of OT discussion. Not quite. How would a sociology or political science professor at the nearest college or uni to you likely describe that prose or the person who wrote it? As a conservative viewpoint? No. S/he would describe it as a liberal viewpoint, just as I did. Since when is the mere act of correctly identifying something as being liberal considered an attack of some nature? How is this any different than calling Black Black, or Green Green, or Blue Blue? Did you blow your top because I called Green Green? Or did you blow your top because you thought my classification of his prose was incorrect? Did you feel I was lying? Why exactly did you blow your top Bob? -- Stan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4d2c8985.6000...@hardwarefreak.com
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
Jochen Schulz put forth on 1/11/2011 3:19 AM: And those pesky 4k blocks will never take hold. 512 bytes were a good idea in the 1950s, so what's wrong with it now!? 4KB blocks are great. Too bad these drives report 512B blocks to the kernel, which is what causes the problem. Advanced format = hybrid, not native. When we have _native_ 4KB sectors things will be much better, at least for larger file types. For mail servers native 4KB sectors will waste a lot of platter space... -- Stan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4d2c8aa4.30...@hardwarefreak.com
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
Stan Hoeppner: Jochen Schulz put forth on 1/11/2011 3:19 AM: And those pesky 4k blocks will never take hold. 512 bytes were a good idea in the 1950s, so what's wrong with it now!? 4KB blocks are great. Too bad these drives report 512B blocks to the kernel, which is what causes the problem. Advanced format = hybrid, not native. My WD10EARS (not the 2TB variant that this thread was about) looks correct: # hdparm -I /dev/sdc | grep Sector size Logical Sector size: 512 bytes Physical Sector size: 4096 bytes # hdparm -I /dev/sdc | grep Model Model Number: WDC WD10EARS-22Y5B1 When we have _native_ 4KB sectors things will be much better, at least for larger file types. For mail servers native 4KB sectors will waste a lot of platter space... Don't we already waste that space with our filesystems? Ext2 cannot use blocks smaller than 1024 Bytes, as far as I can see. And by default even 4kB are used for small filesystems (5GB on my /). J. -- It is not in my power to change anything. [Agree] [Disagree] http://www.slowlydownward.com/NODATA/data_enter2.html signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
Jochen Schulz put forth on 1/11/2011 12:58 PM: Stan Hoeppner: Jochen Schulz put forth on 1/11/2011 3:19 AM: And those pesky 4k blocks will never take hold. 512 bytes were a good idea in the 1950s, so what's wrong with it now!? 4KB blocks are great. Too bad these drives report 512B blocks to the kernel, which is what causes the problem. Advanced format = hybrid, not native. My WD10EARS (not the 2TB variant that this thread was about) looks correct: # hdparm -I /dev/sdc | grep Sector size Logical Sector size: 512 bytes Physical Sector size: 4096 bytes This is reported by the drive to hdparm. Only the 512 is used by the kernel. It has no knowledge of the 4KB physical block size and can't use it because the drive reports 512 bytes to the kernel as the physical block size. That's precisely what causes all the problems. Don't we already waste that space with our filesystems? Ext2 cannot use blocks smaller than 1024 Bytes, as far as I can see. And by default even 4kB are used for small filesystems (5GB on my /). This depends on the FS and how it allocates space for files. XFS for example uses variable length extents. Each extent is comprised of one or more blocks. Each block is 4KB (mkfs.xfs default). Each block is 8 physical sectors on a traditional 512 byte/sector disk. XFS can pack multiple small files into a single 4KB block extent. It is able to do this thanks to delayed allocation. This works fairly well on busy mail servers using maildir storage format as many small files are written in close succession, allowing delayed allocation to pack many into a single extent. XFS on a workstation where there may be many minutes between each small file write will probably not be packing multiple small files into a single extent. But XFS isn't really targeted at general use single use workstations. It's designed for highly parallel workloads with multiple concurrent read/write streams--i.e. servers and supercomputers. Small file storage efficiency is not a core feature of XFS but a fairly recent optimization AFAIK. -- Stan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4d2ce1a7.2040...@hardwarefreak.com
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 10:47:01AM -0600, Stan Hoeppner wrote: Robert Holtzman put forth on 1/11/2011 1:44 AM: On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 04:44:13AM -0600, Stan Hoeppner wrote: Interesting advice Bob. Practice it. I did. Read your post again, especially the part that says This is because of your liberal political leanings Yes. I called black black. And you blew your cork. Reread what I was responding to, here: http://www.linux-archive.org/debian-user/474373-hard-drive-energy-not-worth-conserving-drives.html I did. There is no hit of any political content. End of OT discussion. Not quite. .snip. Did you blow your top because I called Green Green? Or did you blow your top because you thought my classification of his prose was incorrect? Did you feel I was lying? Why exactly did you blow your top Bob? You're trying to bait me and I don't bait well. I said this was the end of the OT wrangling and I meant it. BTW, baiting is also a mark of a troll. You're not one, are you? -- Bob Holtzman Key ID: 8D549279 If you think you're getting free lunch, check the price of the beer signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
Robert Holtzman put forth on 1/11/2011 5:45 PM: I said this was the end of the OT wrangling and I meant it. If that's the case, then why did you respond again? And why are you responding yet again, to this? -- Stan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4d2cf0ff.8070...@hardwarefreak.com
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
# hdparm -I /dev/sdc | grep Sector size Logical Sector size: 512 bytes Physical Sector size: 4096 bytes This is reported by the drive to hdparm. Only the 512 is used by the kernel. It has no knowledge of the 4KB physical block size and can't use it because the drive reports 512 bytes to the kernel as the physical block size. Isn't it rather than the kernel chooses to only use the logical sector size? Where/when does the drive report 512B physical sector sizes? In any case, the issue is probably not really in the kernel but in the filesystems and partitioning tools: all that's really needed to use the drive efficiently is for fdisk/parted and for mkfs to be told (and make use of) the physical block size. Of course, maybe a good way to provide this info is to teach the kernel about it so those tools don't need to use side-band info via hdparm. Don't we already waste that space with our filesystems? Ext2 cannot use blocks smaller than 1024 Bytes, as far as I can see. And by default even 4kB are used for small filesystems (5GB on my /). This depends on the FS and how it allocates space for files. Indeed: for mail servers, there are 2 issues: - actual disk space use, which does not have to depend on the block size (file systems can use sub-blocks, they just often elect not to). traditional 512 byte/sector disk. XFS can pack multiple small files into a single 4KB block extent. It is able to do this thanks to delayed allocation. Indeed, and for that reason 4KB physical blocks wouldn't cause additional disk space usage. - performance accessing those small files. Arguably, when accessing such small files, the bandwidth is typically low, so even in the worst case where 4KB blocks increase the bandwidth by a factor 8, it's still not necessarily going to be part of the bottleneck. Stefan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/jwvd3o2ycsu.fsf-monnier+gmane.linux.debian.u...@gnu.org
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
Robert Holtzman put forth on 1/9/2011 7:00 PM: On Sun, Jan 09, 2011 at 03:37:41PM -0600, Stan Hoeppner wrote: This is because of your liberal political leanings, which have no place here. This is a technical discussion list, so keep it technical. I was with you right up until that last sentence. You people always wind up framing every dispute in political terms. Since you pointed out that this is a technical discussion list, STFU with the political garbage. Robert Holtzman put forth on 12/31/2010 3:40 PM: Take a tip: don't jump to unwarranted conclusions. Interesting advice Bob. Practice it. -- Stan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4d2ae2fd.7000...@hardwarefreak.com
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
I think what we mainly should take from all this is Western Digital sucks and we should never buy their crap... I know there are some who will disagree with this, so no flames needed... TeddyB -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/2143830561-1294723761-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-1590697...@bda029.bisx.prod.on.blackberry
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 04:44:13AM -0600, Stan Hoeppner wrote: Robert Holtzman put forth on 1/9/2011 7:00 PM: On Sun, Jan 09, 2011 at 03:37:41PM -0600, Stan Hoeppner wrote: This is because of your liberal political leanings, which have no place here. This is a technical discussion list, so keep it technical. I was with you right up until that last sentence. You people always wind up framing every dispute in political terms. Since you pointed out that this is a technical discussion list, STFU with the political garbage. Robert Holtzman put forth on 12/31/2010 3:40 PM: Take a tip: don't jump to unwarranted conclusions. Interesting advice Bob. Practice it. I did. Read your post again, especially the part that says This is because of your liberal political leanings End of OT discussion. -- Bob Holtzman Key ID: 8D549279 If you think you're getting free lunch, check the price of the beer signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
On 2011-01-09 08:02:05 -0600, Stan Hoeppner wrote: If one is so power consumption conscious to be suckered into a Green (EARS) drive, then one needs to realize the CPU dissipates about 10 times the wattage/heat of a hard drive. Thus, concentrate your power saving efforts elsewhere than the disk drive. Buy a non green drive, and save yourself these sector alignment/performance headaches. Hi, I just wanted to mention that this is a type of faulty logic that we run into all the time when trying to conserve energy. The idea that if a second thing can conserve more energy than the first, then we do not need to conserve energy in the first thing. It can go like this: The first person comes along and says, Why are you so worried about phantom power, when you can get so much more savings from switching to CFL light bulbs? The second person comes along and says, CFL light bulbs? Why bother when city street lights are on ALL NIGHT LONG?. The third person comes along and says, City street lights? What about heating and cooling AIR PORTS around the clock?!. Anyway, nothing personal or angry. I just wanted to mention that I seed this as a logic fault, and it particularly happens around energy conservation. My own opinion is that you should get energy savings everywhere you can. There is a separate point to argue about whether Western Digital hard drives are really Green because they use less energy, or if WD is using the term Green to market and sell inferior technology. Hope this helps, Phil -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110109184822.ga5...@kasploosh.net
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
Phil Requirements put forth on 1/9/2011 12:48 PM: On 2011-01-09 08:02:05 -0600, Stan Hoeppner wrote: If one is so power consumption conscious to be suckered into a Green (EARS) drive, then one needs to realize the CPU dissipates about 10 times the wattage/heat of a hard drive. Thus, concentrate your power saving efforts elsewhere than the disk drive. Buy a non green drive, and save yourself these sector alignment/performance headaches. I just wanted to mention that this is a type of faulty logic that FULL STOP. My logic is not faulty in the least bit, and your examples below are a bunch of crap. Here's why: all of the excuses you list below are just that: excuses people give as to why they don't want to use CFLs, etc. Each phantom person you list is passing the buck to an entity that everyone knows isn't going to change. we run into all the time when trying to conserve energy. The idea that if a second thing can conserve more energy than the first, then we do not need to conserve energy in the first thing. This is _NOT_ what I did when I said concentrate on the CPU power dissipation first, then worry about the HD. I was not passing the buck. There is a _HUGE_ difference. As far as my logic being faulty? Since you're so fond of analogy, here's a much more applicable one for you: if your carotid artery has been slashed and you're bleeding to death, you need to address that before addressing your bleeding hang nail. Once your life is saved, fix the hang nail. It's simply a matter of priorities, and one should address the larger concern first. CPU power dissipation in modern CPUs ranges from around 45 to 135 watts under full load. The most power hungry of modern hard drives max out at around 10 watts under heavy seek loads, a ratio of 4:1 to 13:1. Now, compare a WD Green drive's power consumption in all modes against a Blue drive. The differences are insignificant compared to the amount of power you can save by making sure your system is optimized to keep CPU consumption at a minimum. PRIORITIZE your efforts to maximize gain. Now, with all of that said, the assumption is that in this discussion thread we're focusing on desktop computers with one or two drives, since most folks on debian-users are desktop/laptop users, not SAs. If this were a list full of SAs my statements would likely be different WRT disk power consumption, as SAs are are typically managing large disk arrays, and many of them, whose power consumption can rival, or exceed, that of server CPUs. For online storage systems you can't enable per drive power saving features, as the arrays are under constant access. For near line arrays, such as tape replacement D2D backup systems and the like, or database systems that's aren't accessed much from 7pm to 7am, you can deep sleep the drives when the system isn't doing much. bunch of nonsense analogies snipped) Anyway, nothing personal or angry. Well, yeah, you did make it personal when you called my logic faulty, when it is absolutely right on the money. I just wanted to mention that I seed this as a logic fault, This is because of your liberal political leanings, which have no place here. This is a technical discussion list, so keep it technical. and it particularly happens around energy conservation. My own opinion is that you should get energy savings everywhere you can. Key words: my opinion You're stating opinion. I'm stating sound technical policies and backing them with technical detail and logical reasoning. Your goals are laudable. I offer you a bit of advice: 1. Start with the big stuff and the little stuff takes care of itself. I'm sure your grandmother has told you at least once, Save your dollars and the pennies take care of themselves. Save thing. It was good advice when she gave it to you, and it's good advice today. 2. Don't be a zealot, which is what you've done here. 3. Don't call out perfectly reasoned, logical, technical advice, as faulty simply because it doesn't fit in your personal political belief system. There is a separate point to argue about whether Western Digital hard drives are really Green because they use less energy, or if WD is using the term Green to market and sell inferior technology. As with all products, it's a little of both. They do use less energy, if you don't use them. But you buys a drive to not use it? Regardless, my argument against the Green drives still stands on solid technical feet, no matter how much _less_ power they use than other drives. The total power consumption compared to other components is too small to worry about, unless/until you address the others. -- Stan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4d2a2aa5.4060...@hardwarefreak.com
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
On Sun, Jan 09, 2011 at 03:37:41PM -0600, Stan Hoeppner wrote: This is because of your liberal political leanings, which have no place here. This is a technical discussion list, so keep it technical. I was with you right up until that last sentence. You people always wind up framing every dispute in political terms. Since you pointed out that this is a technical discussion list, STFU with the political garbage. -- Bob Holtzman Key ID: 8D549279 If you think you're getting free lunch, check the price of the beer signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [OT] Hard Drive Energy Not Worth Conserving drives?
On Sunday 09 January 2011 21:37:41 Stan Hoeppner wrote: I'm sure your grandmother has told you at least once, Save your dollars and the pennies take care of themselves. Save thing. It was good advice when she gave it to you, and it's good advice today. Here in the UK we have a saying which is the complete opposite: Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves. http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=30hl=enq=%22Take+care+of+the+pence%2C+and+the+pounds+will+take+care+of+themselves%22btnG=Searchaq=faqi=aql=oq=gs_rfai= http://www.answers.com/topic/take-care-of-the-pence-and-the-pounds-will-take-care-of-themselves Lisi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201101100738.57588.lisi.re...@gmail.com
