[.Luke]

Chibisteven, on 17 December 2013 - 12:32 AM, said:

The only thing Fragmentation can do is slow access time to a files on a hard drive (increased latency). Loading a program would just take longer because it's scattered everywhere. The is not actual problem with any solid state drive or flash device and just has more to do with the mechinical movement of the heads and plates spinning by on mechinical drives, they always spin at the same speed, too but files located in the sectors near the spindle of any drive will have a slower data rate because of the physics of any round flat spinning disc, more data will pass by on the outer edge before it finds what it wants, it takes time for the head to align with any track on the drive and then wait for it to spin right by the head reading it.

A flash drive / solid state doesn't have the issue, so it loads instantly because it's on a microchip. In fact defragging those will wear them out faster, where a traditional hard disk has an infinite seemly amount of rewrites, a microchip has a finite amount.

That's a relief to know it only affects access speed, rather than forcing the drive to work harder. Now I'm a bit stuck to understand why the hard drive was making more noise, and in an interesting development, I haven't heard it reach the same noise level that I recorded in over two days on Windows, despite the HDD getting pretty warm while working on art. I guess this needs more research once the new drive arrives and I install Ubuntu natively onto it. Even if I panicked over nothing, having two hard drives is better than one.

EDIT : Okay, turns out it does still make noise, but I can't hear it at all when I'm listening to music, and it doesn't vibrate the case for me to notice.

Yeah, fragmentation isn't relevant with flash memory, since there are no physical moving parts needed to reach any of the sectors. I'd love to have an SSD for installing an OS to one of these days, boot times are much faster, or I could lengthen its lifetime by using it as a backup storage drive. It sucks solid state drives can only take so many writes for each sector, but seemingly every storage solution has a con that affects the life cycle, so it really depends on which downside is less inconvenient.

This post has been edited by .Luke: 17 December 2013 - 06:03 PM

[TmEE]

I use a fancy CF card for OS storage on my laptop, and soon I'll buy a cheap and slower CF to act as just data drive.

Also has lifetime warranty, something I have not seen normal SSDs have... I'm pretty curious on how long will the card last, before I have to send it to warranty.
I am certainly liking the vibration and shock immunity, and also pretty significant increase in battery life.

[.Luke]

That is making me consider installing Puppy Linux to my micro SD card now. 1GB of space would probably cover most of the programs I use, and I could use my 16GB USB flash drive as storage, which I already do since it's my backup. So that's one alternative I should probably have prepared. That's what I love about technology these days, there is always a way for everything.

Also, the more I think about it, the hard drive may have simply went through normal wear and tear; there is no logical reason WUBI could have damaged it the more you guys are telling me. The internal heat probably did a number on it during the summer especially, since I keep my laptop on the desk for stability, and the fan had to work a little harder to keep the inside cool during livestreams. (Some lasted as long as six hours at a time.) I wouldn't do that again for art until I have a desktop, it royally sucks how laptops easily choke on desks. I don't really like using my laptop in my lap, it jostles every which way when I type.

[.Luke]

I really hope that hard drive ships today, (The payment cleared last night.) the noise is not getting any better. Of which, one of my friends on Skype described it as tapping, and that's definitely double confirmation the drive needs the incoming replacement. The noise levels are still less than they were earlier in the month, so I shouldn't panic over it dieing until the tapping obviously worsens; that's about all the measuring of the lifespan I can do.

In the meantime, I've been trying to think if anything I did to the hard drive in the past caused the fast wear. I remember when live streaming was a huge deal earlier this year in the art community, and I jumped on the bandwagon myself. Livestreaming sessions sometimes lasted six hours, and when I stopped streaming daily, I tried recording art videos instead. The first instance of the noise may have happened while I was recording as well, and that's when I decided to stop because I thought recording in three hour spurts, while also watching music videos in a tiny Movie Player window, was kind of pushing it for the hard drive.

I have had hard drives that lasted several years, and they still worked normally, so I don't think extensive writing itself was the issue. Although the hard drive only has a tiny grill underneath the case to vent heat, (Which gets smothered while sitting on the desk.) so I'm starting to wonder if that caused it to wear down on the bearings faster. If it is, I may have to consider holding the laptop in my lap for any amount of game play, and I'm definitely not going to record or stream myself drawing until I get a desktop, where the heat can exchange in a much roomier case.

[winterhell]

Stop your Laptop and wait tomorrow the new drive to arrive maybe? If you need the new one in order to back up irreplaceable data you don't want to take any chances.

[.Luke]

I plan on backing up everything to CD-Rs. Since this is a laptop, I don't have multiple SATA ports. Everything that's important to me is already backed up on a 16GB flash drive, (And it's nearly full, not too surprisingly.) I mostly need a few CDs to backup stuff I'd rather not have to redownload, like tons of wallpapers, music, videos, and open source games like Open Arena or SuperTuxKart.

The hard drive may or may not arrive as soon as tomorrow, I'm not sure where the seller is in the US. This really is the only PC I have right now to keep up with my friends. If I had a mini-tablet or a 3DS, I would keep up with everybody that way and play games while I wait, but that's not an option either. I might consider drawing in my sketchbook and playing Pokemon Black on my phat DS, but that's really all I'd have to do around here. This whole town I'm in right now is basically a dead, forgettable wasteland of restaurants and strip malls, so there's nothing to do, whether you have a car to get around or not; absolutely cannot wait to be working so I can move to a different state.

[.Luke]

HUGE EDIT :

I am frustrated beyond belief. The hard drive came yesterday, I installed it successfully and it's running on Ubuntu right now, but I'm still getting the same infernal humming noise whenever the CPU fan speeds up! No improvement in the noise levels at all.

I'm beginning to think it has nothing to do with the hard drive, because this one was sealed and had never been used before. I have read that the cradle may actually be the issue, (It's a very thin piece of metal barely glued against the drive.) because I have heard the sounds of failing hard drives online, and virtually none of them match what I'm hearing in mine.

Lurikrunch of OverClock.Net said:

The reason SPCR put dampening material between the chassis and the outer casing is because the vibration of the hard drive is amplified by being in contact with the rather thin metal used in computer cases, which can cause the whole case to vibrate, resulting in the annoying noises.

So, what's the best way to cut down on the HDD vibrations inside a laptop?

This post has been edited by .Luke: 25 December 2013 - 02:56 PM