Music skips WITH foam shock absorbers, but does not when firmly mounted

**techeros** · 02-18-2007, 12:11 PM

Originally Posted by Mastero

Hello guys,

HDD issue has been solved earlier..

Its the way the HDD is mounted ... if its mounted flat then foam, rubber or any other material will just amplify the bump, causing ur HDD to die in time...

Best solution is to mount it standing.

Reason is the HDD head is always moving inside so any bump will keep the head in its own motion. Straight hdd head will jumps with the bump (gravity plays a good role here) and thus skipping a beat and hitting the HDD inner plate (@5400 rpm) causing a DEAD Hdd sooner or later.

Its basiclly simple let the HDD head move with the car bumps other than against it.

Hope it helps

Mastero

Mastero is right... You need to mount your harddrive standing up or vertical.
If you take apart the harddrive (laying flat) you will see the heads are very close to the platters and move in a horizontal direction (left to right). Mounting the hdd surely helps. Once in a blue moon my system will pause, but recovers. That only happens when I run over a deer or someone stupid. JK

**DodgeCummins** · 02-23-2007, 07:48 PM

Mounted flat.

Bolted straight to the vehicle.

No skips.

Stiff suspension 4x4.

**racer_X** · 04-26-2008, 12:25 PM

i have mine mounted vertical and everytime i hit a slight manhole or something the computer not only skipps but it locks up repeating like 2 seconds of the song that is being played. i then have to get out of the car and reset the computer in the trunk. I think i'm going try to mount it flat and see if that helps. comments?

**BlackStealth** · 04-26-2008, 08:23 PM

I have my 7200rpm 2.5" hard drive mounted flat and it's never skipped a beat. No special foams or shocks.

Of course you could always get a solid state drive if you don't need large capacity and you'll never have to worry about shock again. I'm gonna replace my hard drive soon as I recently picked up a 32GB SATA SSD drive for $256 for faster bootup times, the size is perfect for me as I can fit everything. Then of course there's the slow transcend 32GB SSD for $169 for less money.

**EaRNi** · 04-27-2008, 03:24 PM

i have a 2.5" hdd, i have it mounted on a vertical surface sideways, my car is lowered 110mm and i am running 40 profile tyres on the worst roads in the world (the UK)

i am yet to put power to my system but i am wondering, shall i change the location of my hard drive because i have 60GB of my music and stuff on it and really dont want it to die!?

**Bugbyte** · 04-27-2008, 08:34 PM

I guess this topic just has to come up every now and then. Look here for some info about how others have done it.

As for me - horizontal, bolted to metal L brackets that are bolted to the car. No shock absorption. Never had any problems.

**nobb** · 04-27-2008, 08:42 PM

I made this thread along time ago. Turns out the old drive just didnt handle shock too well. Got an automotive grade EE25 drive now. Built like a tank, has never skipped a beat.

**mpr90** · 04-28-2008, 01:14 AM

Also, to prevent the possibility of future hard drive read errors, is there some sort of parameter that I can change to increase the hard drive buffer or something? With iPods, the iPod reads the file from the harddrive, then puts it in its ram and then the player plays the song from the ram, and not directly from the hard drive. Therefore, for the iPod, this ram acts like a sort of buffer. I am using Winamp, and I am guessing that it does not buffer data into ram in such a manner. Is there some way to make Winamp have a cache/buffer, or something?

Hey nobb,

Did you ever get any feedback on the above? This is exactly what I wanted to do in my system to minimise the amount of time that the disk is spinning. My OS boots and runs from CF and all media is on the HD. I'd like to be able to have Winamp read, for example, an entire track to RAM and then spin down the disk for a few minutes during decode/playback. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Matthew.

**nobb** · 04-28-2008, 07:54 AM

No, sorry. To actually spin up and down the drive all the time would be stressful for the drive. In regards to the buffer thing, I dont know. If you arent having any problems with your system now then there really isnt anything you need to worry about.

**mpr90** · 04-28-2008, 12:49 PM

To actually spin up and down the drive all the time would be stressful for the drive.

Yeah, I chose a laptop (2.5") drive because it's rated for a larger number of spin up/down cycles than a desktop unit (600,000 for my drive). It's also more resilient to chock and vibration.

If you arent having any problems with your system now then there really isnt anything you need to worry about.

Haven't actually got it in the car yet - just trying to do some good planning before I do so!