S20 15K SAS Drive noise [ Edited ]

[nzcivic]

Hi,

I have purchased the following:

Lenovo ThinkStation S20 Xeon W3550 Quad-Core Processor (3.06GHz 1066MHz 8MB) 4gb (2 x 2gb) udimm ddr3 1333MHz, 300GB SAS (15k) with SAS Controller Card NVIDIA Quadro 2000

This is a brand new system and its really noisy the case itself is fine, all the noise comes from the SAS drive. I've used other SAS drives before and there quiet like a normal HDD is the SAS drive broken or is it meant to sound like there is a little jack hammer inside the case everytime the drive reads or writes?

The performance seems fine, the drive has the following part number: Hitachi HUS156030VLS60 SAS 15KRpm 6Gb/s 3.5"

Here is a image of the performance from HD Tune:

[erik Community SuperMod · Accepted solution]

15K SAS drives are all loud.   there are no free lunches in that department.   even 7200RPM nearline SAS drives are louder at idle than any thinkstation.   seek noises depend on manufacturer and most list exact acoustics in their datasheets.   anything north of 25db will be noticeable.

your 15K600 drive is 37db at idle and a good 12db louder than your S20 system fans.   hitachi doesn't provide seek acoustics for that drive but i imagine it reaches or exceeds 40db.   here's the datasheet: http://www.hgst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/DAC6606EE8DDF5D7862576490028557B/$file/US15K600_DS_fin...

if you need 15K SAS speed but with low sound output then an SSD is your best solution.   i dumped all of my 15K and nearline SAS drives close to two years ago and now run SSDs and 1TB 2.5" notebook HDDs in RAID 1 for storage, all backed up twice daily.

(edit: added acoustics and datasheet, corrected typo)

[jdeb]

My S20 has  SAS Western Digital Drives and they are pretty loud as well but been running strong for a few years. I was thinking of the SSD route as well with the next upgrade. Eric, what is your exact configuration?

[erik Community SuperMod]

jdeb - my current setup is a 160GB intel 320-series SSD for OS, swap space, and scratch disk.   for data storage i use two 1TB WD10JPVT 2.5" notebook drives in RAID 1.   i have a third WD10JPVT inside for daily backups.   then, i have an external thinkpad eSATA+USB secure HDD enclosure with a fourth WD10JPVT inside.

i use windows server 2008 R2 SP1 enterprise edition as my OS.   backup is handled via windows server backup performed twice daily using a custom shell script triggered by the task scheduler.   backups run at noon and 6pm, imaging both the SSD and 1TB data array.   the only drive at risk is the SSD since it's not in RAID 1 with another unit.   i've been waiting for intel to introduce an RST driver capable of handling RAID+TRIM.   currently there are two 6-hour windows where the drive could fail and recent data might not be backed up.   otherwise i have multiple images for recovery.

the SSD is silent and the WD10JPVT drives idle at 22db with 25db seek acoustics and minuscule heat output.   you can hear the drives when they seek but it's very subtle.   otherwise the C20 is imperceptible in my environment.

for a personal workstation deployment i'm done with noisy SAS drives.   at slightly more than 100MB/sec sequential transfer speeds, the WD10JPVT drives are great.   any files needed more quickly can go on an SSD if the need arises.

[jdeb]

What a difference in speed with the Intel 320, price was right as well. They just came down considerably and that was good timing for me. I decided to back up my data on Verbatim BD -R discs as the price has come down considerably on the blue ray drives. I think the archival quality is arguably more advantageous.  I also moved all my DVD's or at least in the process to BD-R's as well. I feel more secure now