Shouting At Your Hard Drive Is Bad

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You have to watch this video and tell me what you think. Is it possible that screaming at your hard drives could cause unusually high disk I/O latency during a streaming write test? You have to wonder....how'd they figure that one out? Were they just randomly screaming at hard drives when they stumbled across this?
 
Sounds plausible, why not send it to Mythbusters and let them investigate ^^
 
LOL whatever, it's totally obvious there female disk!!!!!!!!! DAHH
 
I guess that also means you shouldn't have your server running while sitting on the washing machine.
 
Hmm, plausible.

Audio noise causes platters to vibrate in unusual way... I've seen a master plumber who used a tuning fork to clean off soot from water tank heater coil (but that was physical contact - I think)

Maybe its all the hot air he is expelling thats causing the damage, lol.
 
They use audio frequencies all the time up here in Canada to start controlled avalanches - but if that doesn't work, they just do the old RPG'ed dynamite stick, never fails - but sure as heck scares everyone within a few miles.
 
I imagine that excess vibration in the case can cause similar.
Large arrays of disks in a single enclosure may be subject to the same problem, performing slower if not well isolated.
It would be nice to see a real time comparison of both running.
 
Exavior said:
I guess that also means you shouldn't have your server running while sitting on the washing machine.
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I learned that a long time ago with the original CD writers. My friend lived in a trailer, and every time his girlfriend started the washing machine, it created coasters.

Good ole 2x burners with no buffers.
 
There is also a Level 400 Physics type answer to this, it involves multiple gyroscopes, and why they tend to run in synch when in parallel.

A single sympathetic vibration can cascade through the gryoscopes, causing eventual failure - just like that Mythbusters episode where they try to take down the bridge with the 5 pound weight.

Which is BTW: Why you never use multiple gyroscopes of the same size in the same direction.

And a Harddrive is basically the same idea as a gyroscope.
 
I wonder if the heat from his voice rolling over the hard drive enclosure added to it at all. I understand the vibration theory, just wondered if there were two factors involved.
 
That_Sound_Guy said:
I wonder if the heat from his voice rolling over the hard drive enclosure added to it at all. I understand the vibration theory, just wondered if there were two factors involved.
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Heat transfer is not instantaneous to any part of a drives internals so any heating effect from breathing/voice will be averaged over a lot of metal and will spread over a long period of time before it reaches anything critical.
The effect is probably not measurable at critical points.
 
This is why I run all of my hard drives inside a vacuum. You guys should try it sometime.
 
That is hilarious! Now companies can say vibration supression for hard drives can increase speed. :D Here comes $20 rubber gaskets and gromets.
 
ZenOps said:
There is also a Level 400 Physics type answer to this, it involves multiple gyroscopes, and why they tend to run in synch when in parallel.

A single sympathetic vibration can cascade through the gryoscopes, causing eventual failure - just like that Mythbusters episode where they try to take down the bridge with the 5 pound weight.

Which is BTW: Why you never use multiple gyroscopes of the same size in the same direction.

And a Harddrive is basically the same idea as a gyroscope.
Click to expand...



Hmmm... *turns second drive in RAID upside down so platter rotates in the opposite direction*


That better? :D
 
Nenu said:
Heat transfer is not instantaneous to any part of a drives internals so any heating effect from breathing/voice will be averaged over a lot of metal and will spread over a long period of time before it reaches anything critical.
The effect is probably not measurable at critical points.
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Agreed, just a wondering throught I had. One of many pointless ones throughout my day. :(
 
here's a test. Do that with a couple of JL Sub's and see what it does to them :p
But this video is quite cool, never thought of this
 
Ehren8879 said:
That is hilarious! Now companies can say vibration supression for hard drives can increase speed. :D Here comes $20 rubber gaskets and gromets.
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oh yeah, i should start selling them now. Get a hold of Billy Mays and start the TV aid! :D
 
There is a chance this is a hoax.
It will be good to see if others get similar results.
 
This must be something unique to voices because laptops don't have trouble while being shaken around. I also have computers at work that run just fine wile the equipment vibrates the floors. Maybe it causes some kind of ringing like a bell that requires high frequency.
 
Oh and I have my home computer sitting right above my 12" sub. Never had an issue with that.
 
kdw1975 said:
This must be something unique to voices because laptops don't have trouble while being shaken around. I also have computers at work that run just fine wile the equipment vibrates the floors. Maybe it causes some kind of ringing like a bell that requires high frequency.
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Laptops have locking hard drive heads to prevent vibration damage. It'll park the head to prevent damage while being moved.

The vibrations from voice just caused a slow down in performance I believe, not actual damage (although that could very well be a long term effect if you continually scream at your drives)
 
kllrnohj said:
Yes, which is why hard drives are sealed.
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I know they are sealed but are they hermetically sealed? Im not sure if this is something I read somewhere but I remember reading that theres a very tiny hole with a filter that allows air to pass through when there is a pressure difference or something. I could just be crazy though ;)
 
^^ THIS

If you pop one open (a failed one) there is a while with a half inch filter glued onto the upper cover. It's about a half inch canister shape.
 
It's no surprise really. Yelling that close could/does create some sort of resonance on the disk which adversely effects the performance. I'm guessing the disk, or needle, is vibrating at a high frequency and short distance, just enough so it screws up knowing where it's at, thus error correction freaks out. Now what they should do is try another test with SSD's. ;)
 
That was such a cool video. It makes one wonder just how often and how strongly/abusivly they shouted at their drives to actually notice the latency effect.
Heaven knows I've shouted bloody murder at my hardware at times. ;) :D
 
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