5 ms·
HDD Clicker generates HDD clicking sounds, based on HDD Led activity
- overstay8930 1y ago21% VAT when shipping to the US? No thanks.
- thepryz 1y agoReminds me of adding a Taptic Engine™ to a flash-upgraded iPod classic. https://eoe.works/collections/shop-all-ipod-video-ipod-classic-replacement-parts/products/new-solderless-taptic-vibration-motor-diy-kit-for-apple-ipod-video-5th-5-5-ipod-classic-6th-7th https://eoe.works/collections/shop-all-ipod-video-ipod-class...
- moron4hire 1y agoI didn't realize you could get Taptic Engines. I had wanted some about 10 years ago while I was working on a haptic data glove project, but Apple kept them under tight wraps because they own the patent and wanted them exclusive to their devices. I ended up using small pager motors, but I really think Taptic Engines would have made for a much better experience, both because they are smaller and because they are 3 axis linear vibrators, instead of a single axis rotary vibe.
- gkhartman 1y agoI wanted to do something similar 3-5 years ago, and while I found that you could order the Taptic Engine, I couldn't find any good info for driving them last time I checked.
- hengheng 1y agoI have a watercooled workstation (don't ask), and one day I made it spin up the pump when the chips heat up. I believe it goes from 17% pwm to 18% whenever any chip is more than 15°C warmer than the water. Changes nothing, and you wouldn't set it up like that. But the immediate frequency change is enough for me to anticipate a delayed reaction. "Oh, computer is computing. Reach for coffee."
- 1970-01-01 1y agoThe sound is not right. This clicker sounds like a Geiger counter ticking out of control. The HDD sound is much deeper. It should sound as if the minute hand on a clock decided to tick out of control. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUvlWt9WTKA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUvlWt9WTKA
- phire 1y agoIt's not really possible to replicate the HDD sound with anything so simple. Because what you hear on a real HDD is the seeks, and the seek time of any SSD is close enough to zero that it probably won't even show up on the HDD LED. All that's left is the data transfer, which are more or less silent on real mechanical HDDs. That's part of the reason why it was useful to have the HDD LED despite fact you already had the loud HDD. The LED showed data transfer, while the sound indicated seeks.
- HPsquared 1y agoTime for a custom FUSE layer or kernel module! Monitor all file I/O and simulate "how would this sound?" A nice portfolio art piece for GitHub (could even be useful for keeping an ear on virtual machines) Come to think of it, maybe the best way is to run the whole system on a VM with a simulated HDD that includes all the delays of a real one, and sound generation. Could also do optical drives.
- anthk 1y agoFSUAE does that.
- globular-toast 1y agoI think under ideal conditions, like raw dogging with `dd`, it wouldn't make a sound. But with a filesystem, at least, there is always a slight sound, but you're right, it's would be very different to a constant seeking sound. It makes me wonder if filesystems had recognisable sounds. I feel like I kinda knew what my hard disk was doing just based on the sound. I also think a large part of the sound was due to the desk it sat on. The only HDDs I run now are in a NAS in a 6 disk RAID. I've had it upstairs and I can hear a thumping sound through the floor downstairs. But now it's on solid ground and all I can hear is the more high-pitched click.
- Quitschquat 1y agoDon’t forget to PARK YOUR HEADS before shutting down!!
- burnt-resistor 1y ago;) That's why I only buy HDDs with voice coil actuators and auto-parking controllers.
- 1-6 1y agoI just realized today after 20 years that my computer stopped making noises. It's progress but I miss those clicking sounds.
- leptons 1y agoI've got 16 3.5" hard drives whirring and chugging next to me. I do not miss the sounds. If I could afford the same setup with SSDs I'd do it in a heartbeat. The heat is another story.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoMy home NAS is 4U 45 3.5" drives 200 TB NAS with a bunch of 1U screaming fans, periodic clicking, and lots of power consumption.
- nvllsvm 1y agoI found it worthwhile to move my desktop to another room by using long, 50ft cables (DP1.4, USB 3.0, powered USB hubs). I also have a pikvm connected to Home Assistant so I can press the power and reset buttons using a ZigBee remote. The desktop lives in a Sliger 4U chassis in a rack with my NAS, networking gear, and a UPS. My office room is now absent of both noise and heat generated by my desktop and it's so much nicer for it.
- dbg31415 1y agoOld news. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cM_sAxrAu7Q https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cM_sAxrAu7Q
- ValveFan6969 1y ago[dead]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- _0xdd 1y agoIs it perfect? No. But I have one of them in a Pentium 200 MHz system that I use a front-facing CF card slot as the primary means of storage, and I very much appreciate the audible feedback for disk activity. I just wish there was some mechanism to simulate more accurate sounds, but I digress. P.S., Depending on the CF card, this machine runs Windows 9.x, Red Hat 6.2, OPENSTEP 4.0, or Apple Rhapsody DR2 hehe
- geocrasher 1y agoYes, but does it make that magical spool-up sound of a 5MB ST-506 trying to sound like a jet turbine? ST-506 startup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7ImJwSmjzs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7ImJwSmjzs T-53 startup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNe9T1FRhwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNe9T1FRhwg Tell me those aren't the best sounds ever.
- SlightlyLeftPad 1y agoYou’ll never need more than 5MB.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoOr 256 KiB RAM.
- terribleperson 1y agoI think you flipped your links.
- geocrasher 1y agoYes, you're right. Oops. Too late to edit.
- terribleperson 1y agoI appreciated the video of the 5mb HDD anyways. It's astounding how far storage has come. You can get 3 million times as much storage for a 30th of the price. Old HDDs sounded so nice, though.
- jader201 1y agoNow if it could just play FF7 tunes: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RLXQpJgZklk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RLXQpJgZklk
- adzm 1y agoNow I miss Nullsoft Beep which did this along with other futuristic kinda hums and etc. I assumed there would be other good implementations of the same idea but haven't found much yet.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoAgreed with other comments that it doesn't sound quite right. There are many types of HDD seeking noises, but this one is too high pitched, too fast, and too loud. I have a lot of vintage HDDs from 20 MB MFM to several GB IDE & SCSI drives and grew up with them.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoThis needs a floppy companion with spinning and seeking noises for external drives.
- fnordpiglet 1y agoI’d love a 1541 noise emulator.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoI'll raise you a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppotron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppotron
- cFyrute 1y ago[dead]
- stevekemp 1y agoThat reminds me of the Click of Death, which plagued the Iomega zip/jazz drives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death
- oso2k 1y agoFor those that might want a software solution, Trixter made softhddi- https://github.com/MobyGamer/softhddi https://github.com/MobyGamer/softhddi
- viraptor 1y agoThere was a HN submission for a project which had lots of quality sounds for different models of HDDs, but I can't find it anymore. Does anyone have a link?
- elvis70 1y agoIt's probably this discussion about DiskClick: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39406098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39406098 (DiskClick: Ever wanted to hear old hard drive sounds - Feb 2024 - 81 comments). Also, the software was last updated 1 month ago.
- accrual 1y agoI have one of these installed in my 486, happy to answer questions!
- stuaxo 1y agoI like the sound from early XTs hard disks, across between a been and a squeak, with the deeper chkchkchk sounds too.
- catapart 1y agoWhat absolute nonsense. I love it!
- beardedmoose 1y agoIm all for this. I miss the tactile feedback of older hard drives, you knew the computer was actually doing something. New computers are too quiet, like electric cars.
- neilv 1y agoIf it hooked into the OS, it could generate even more appropriate sounds: * past SMART errors => knock of death sound * unrecovered errors => head crash sound
- RedShift1 1y agoThere's probably a way to do this in software? Like some cars simulating engine noises through the speakers...
- arresin 1y agoBut then you need to install something. Probably give it some perm.
- palmotea 1y agoNot necessarily. You could do it in a similar form factor, you'd just probably need a bigger speaker and more complicated acoustic model. Though maybe instead of keying of an HDD LED, it should sit on the IDE/SCSI bus and generate sounds based on the actual access commands. That shouldn't be impossible, since the main market would be in retro-computing, and there are already devices that emulate those disks. Instead of figuring out what block to return, it would instead figure out of how long of a seek would have been needed and play the right sound. If someone produces something that can simulate the sound of a 20MB Miniscribe drive, I'd buy it in a heartbeat: https://youtu.be/9gTiBYEY02E?si=arGdgyI7hCnmJgN4&t=1866 https://youtu.be/9gTiBYEY02E?si=arGdgyI7hCnmJgN4&t=1866
- rzzzt 1y agoUnder MS-DOS such utilities existed and it was also used to demonstrate interrupt hooks in assembly tutorials. To do this, they'd: - change INT 13h (the disk access routines in the BIOS) handler address - write a handler that clicks the speaker or draws something to video memory without modifying any input registers - pass the input over to the original handler which will complete the disk operation - return or remove the return address of the inserted snippet from the stack and let the original handler do an IRET The end result is e.g. an ASCII smiley face blinking in one of the corners of the screen in text mode or a similar style of crackling/screetching from the PC speaker. Here is a full-featured example: https://github.com/MobyGamer/softhddi https://github.com/MobyGamer/softhddi