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reduce speed of 7200rpm drive

W

wfay

Senior member
hi guys,

just got a new 120gb Western Digital 7200rpm drive that i intend to install in my ReplayTV unit. however, the RTV is already quite warm to the touch, and it has a 5400rpm 30gig drive in it, so 7200rpm will just make it that much hotter.

so i am wondering if its possible to slow this drive down some in an attempt to reduce the heat. i know seagates have some kind of "disk quieter" program which probably slows it down but i'm sure if it would work with my drive. it would have to be some kind of util that writes to the disk's internal bios or whatever as i would want to run it once before installing and then never worry about it again.

so any tips/advice/urls to software that could do this? or is it not even possible?

--wayne
 
I would check WD website to see if they have something if you haven't yet. I'll take a peek later when I get home.
 
moto: already checked their site, found nothing. also tried emailing their tech support but haven't gotten a response, tho i did just send the email like this morning.

smirnoff: i agree its tasty. and glad to have provided some humor into your otherwise dull life. 😉

i think its a decent question given the Seagate utils etc. i am quite experienced with hardware etc and have never heard of such a util, but i thought it was worth asking... 🙂

--wayne
 
no, you cant slow it down.... the disk quieter programs from seagate and maxtor slow down the seek time of the read heads, not the actual rotational speed. this makes sense since the only noticeable noise that a hd makes is when trying to seek
 
Just open it up and take some parts out of it.
That'll slow it down for you.

In fact, it probably won't get hot at all anymore.
 
You don't need a 7200 rpm drive in a tivo. It doesn't require the speed.

5400 is quieter, cooler, more reliable and cheaper. I would switch drives if I were you.
 
I don't know if this will work, but perhaps you can run the drive as ATA/33. That should slow the hd down a bit during data transfers, but not during seeks.
 
i dont think that would really help with the temp, i have a seagate drive that has an internal temp monitor and there is only about a 1 degree difference between sitting idle and doing an all out defrag

im pretty sure there is nothing you can do to decrease the drive's running temp without modifying something for better ventilation
 
the replaytv unit was designed originally to use conductive cooling in an attempt to keep the box as quiet as possible, so there are no fans etc. i am going to just go ahead and add some fans or something.

or i may just use my 80gb 5400rpm drive maxtor instead, but i was really looking forward to the 120gb for 40gb more space. and then put the 120gb 7200rpm in my computer which has ample cooling etc. that drive is slow but works great for mp3s, movies etc and it will be fine for the replaytv.

thanks for all the responses, you guys are great.
--wayne
 
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