4 ms·

It's not an original thought, but for my home / office environments (ie. non-data center) where most machines have at least one 5.25" bay, I'd be really happy w

by Jedd 10y ago

It's not an original thought, but for my home / office environments (ie. non-data center) where most machines have at least one 5.25" bay, I'd be really happy with a larger, slower, higher density, disk. I appreciate most vendors are selling to the commercial market which eschews this old format, but it's still hard to buy a tower case that doesn't include at least one 5.25 inch bay that never gets populated. (Nota bene - I'm referring to half-height 5.25". I've long since dumped my impressive stash of 2GB full-height 5.25" SCSI disks.)

aexaey 10y ago
Biggest problem with large spindle is that noise and heat dissipation (both mostly due to air friction) are roughly proportional to the square of linear speed of the outer part of the platter, and bigger the platter, more linear speed you'll get at the same angular speed. On the other hand, you want to crank up angular speed to get any decent random IO operation/second value. Last 5.25" HDD I've seen was Quantum Bigfoot CY [1], (which happened to be half-height FWIW), and this thing was pretty noisy even at 3,600 RPM. Dividing this by 60 (seconds in one minute) gives you theoretical maximum of only 60 random IOPS. Not exactly stellar, and as far as I remember, that was substantially lower in practice. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Bigfoot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Bigfoot
- SoapSeller 10y ago
  I can imagine a 5.25" drive populated with a couple(3-5) sets of ~1.8" platters, you could also have internal raid speeding things up and protecting from single set failures.
  - givinguflac 10y ago
    Why would you ever do that vs having separate disks you RAID if desired? That sounds like you'll inevitably end up with at least one failed disk in your 5.25" array, and then what do you do? If you can open it to replace the part, what is the functional benefit over separate disks to begin with?
- fulafel 10y ago
  The Bigfoot failed in the market because they crashed and ate your data. The time might be right to try again with better execution. The current use for using spinning disk is for capacity applications like archive/media storage, so the speed tradeoff would be fine.
lmm 10y ago
I bought a cheap adapter bracket and put an ordinary hard drive in mine. Not the most efficient use of space but it means it isn't completely wasted.
Arizhel 10y ago
They tried that. Quantum made the quarter-height 5.25" "Bigfoot" drives for a little while. They didn't go far. I think the problem is that a larger disc, though it has greater area, also comes with worse mechanical stresses, plus the head has to be larger, which again means greater mechanical stresses and distortion under movement, and can't seek as quickly. There's a reason drives have gotten steadily smaller; otherwise they'd be making big, flat 8" or 12" hard drives for really high-capacity needs.
lisper 10y ago
Those bays are for DVD drives, not hard drives.
- fulafel 10y ago
  Do you mean it's against the natural order of things, or that there are technical obstacles like limited airflow (cooling)? A good temperature monitoring and throttling system could be a reasonable failsafe for the heat. BTW does anyone know why current rotating HDD's are always fixed RPM?
  - lisper 10y ago
    I was responding to this: > it's still hard to buy a tower case that doesn't include at least one 5.25 inch bay that never gets populated
    - teach 10y ago
      Do many people have two optical drives? I have two exposed 5.25" bays but only one DVD reader. I would happily put a slower 40TB hard drive in the other if the price were right.
      - lisper 10y ago
        > Do many people have two optical drives? I have no idea. But Ron's third law applies: it is usually better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
- detaro 10y ago
  Which quite a few people don't use anymore, and thus leave these slots empty. (I didn't plug mine in after the last motherboard change. Didn't have a fitting cable at hand, and never needed it since, so no pressure to fix that)
  - lisper 10y ago
    Yes, I know that. The point is if you want to use a DVD drive then you must have a 5-inch bay. You can't shrink a DVD drive the way you can shrink a hard drive because you are constrained by the size of the media. So the 5-inch bays are there simply to leave open the option of installing a DVD, not so you can fill them with hard drives. You actually can put a 3-inch drive in a 5-inch bay using readily available adapters if you really want to. But asking manufacturers to make 5-inch drives so you can fill 5-inch bays is silly.

by Jedd 10y ago

aexaey 10y ago

Biggest problem with large spindle is that noise and heat dissipation (both mostly due to air friction) are roughly proportional to the square of linear speed of the outer part of the platter, and bigger the platter, more linear speed you'll get at the same angular speed. On the other hand, you want to crank up angular speed to get any decent random IO operation/second value. Last 5.25" HDD I've seen was Quantum Bigfoot CY [1], (which happened to be half-height FWIW), and this thing was pretty noisy even at 3,600 RPM. Dividing this by 60 (seconds in one minute) gives you theoretical maximum of only 60 random IOPS. Not exactly stellar, and as far as I remember, that was substantially lower in practice. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Bigfoot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Bigfoot

SoapSeller 10y ago
I can imagine a 5.25" drive populated with a couple(3-5) sets of ~1.8" platters, you could also have internal raid speeding things up and protecting from single set failures.
- givinguflac 10y ago
  Why would you ever do that vs having separate disks you RAID if desired? That sounds like you'll inevitably end up with at least one failed disk in your 5.25" array, and then what do you do? If you can open it to replace the part, what is the functional benefit over separate disks to begin with?
fulafel 10y ago
The Bigfoot failed in the market because they crashed and ate your data. The time might be right to try again with better execution. The current use for using spinning disk is for capacity applications like archive/media storage, so the speed tradeoff would be fine.

lmm 10y ago

I bought a cheap adapter bracket and put an ordinary hard drive in mine. Not the most efficient use of space but it means it isn't completely wasted.

Arizhel 10y ago

They tried that. Quantum made the quarter-height 5.25" "Bigfoot" drives for a little while. They didn't go far. I think the problem is that a larger disc, though it has greater area, also comes with worse mechanical stresses, plus the head has to be larger, which again means greater mechanical stresses and distortion under movement, and can't seek as quickly. There's a reason drives have gotten steadily smaller; otherwise they'd be making big, flat 8" or 12" hard drives for really high-capacity needs.

lisper 10y ago

Those bays are for DVD drives, not hard drives.

fulafel 10y ago
Do you mean it's against the natural order of things, or that there are technical obstacles like limited airflow (cooling)? A good temperature monitoring and throttling system could be a reasonable failsafe for the heat. BTW does anyone know why current rotating HDD's are always fixed RPM?
- lisper 10y ago
  I was responding to this: > it's still hard to buy a tower case that doesn't include at least one 5.25 inch bay that never gets populated
  - teach 10y ago
    Do many people have two optical drives? I have two exposed 5.25" bays but only one DVD reader. I would happily put a slower 40TB hard drive in the other if the price were right.
    - lisper 10y ago
      > Do many people have two optical drives? I have no idea. But Ron's third law applies: it is usually better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
detaro 10y ago
Which quite a few people don't use anymore, and thus leave these slots empty. (I didn't plug mine in after the last motherboard change. Didn't have a fitting cable at hand, and never needed it since, so no pressure to fix that)
- lisper 10y ago
  Yes, I know that. The point is if you want to use a DVD drive then you must have a 5-inch bay. You can't shrink a DVD drive the way you can shrink a hard drive because you are constrained by the size of the media. So the 5-inch bays are there simply to leave open the option of installing a DVD, not so you can fill them with hard drives. You actually can put a 3-inch drive in a 5-inch bay using readily available adapters if you really want to. But asking manufacturers to make 5-inch drives so you can fill 5-inch bays is silly.