Solid State Drives

Jistari · 12-19-2007, 03:42 PM

In discussing my intentions to adding a PC to the car with my brother (who btw was involved in HD research, HD design, HD slaes over the last 25 years) is assuring me that a conventional laptop HD will not survive in a car environment.

He went into shock damping, cold/freezing and hot weather environmental concerns. I'm in the North Eastern US, so we get a wide range of temps here.

Should I be looking into using a solid state drive for the os and data?

Im aware of the price premium on solid state drives, just wondering how the laptop drives i see people using here hold up in cold/hot environments?

Where do you live ? What type of Drive are you using? and How long has it been operating ok (or if it failed, how long did it last)?

thwack · 12-19-2007, 04:03 PM

G'day

I am using a CF card asmy boot drive here in Australia for the past 8 months and everything is working fine.

I still have a HDD in my computer as a storage drive / backup drive and it has been in the car for over a year with no problems. I have mounted the drive using rubber mounted screws to avoid vibration damageas much as possible. I run 4WD Tours and Training through out Australia and the car has been subjected to some severe weather conditions ranging from -10 C to +55 C and the HDD has started every time with no problems.

I agree that SSD would be the ultimate for the car environment though the price is pretty huge compared to the cost of a standard hdd. I am begeining to think that the most cost effective solution for me is to run a 4Gb CF card as boot and then a 16Gb usb flash drive as storage. No moving parts and good life.

Cheers
Thwack

rijk · 12-19-2007, 04:36 PM

I have a sdd as os drive (transcend 8 gb(with 9mb/s read, and 5 mb/s wright), but it wil be replaced bij the ntronics (16 Gb) (100mb/s read, 80 mb/s wright) within a week

, the transcend is to slow.
And a 2,5”normal laptop-disc for the data. I have yellow Koni sport shocks set on the stiffest dampening position. Have had shocks that would shake out the fillings in your teeth, laptopdisc still works (3/4 of a year in the car).

So i wouldn’t really be to pessimistic of the lifetime of a laptop-disc.

Mane thing to look after is how you position it in the car. Should be mounted vertical. And in the forward direction. That way the biggest shakes it gets will in a worse case cause the arm to move alongside the disc, without touching it.

ssd is bulletproof

Bugbyte · 12-19-2007, 04:44 PM

Your brother is wrong. He's advising against putting it in the car because he knows too much. They can and do survive. If it does fail, they are so cheap, you just replace them.

The main issue with laptop drives is that they are usually fluid bearings and those bearings can freeze or get close to freezing and the drive doesn't respond. After the car warms up, the fluid will warm up and it will work. If that is a worry, get a ball bearing desktop drive.

Look in the FAQ Emporium for "climate extremes" for more info.

h3rk · 12-19-2007, 05:10 PM

Maybe you can adapt a cartridge or a tape drive from your TRS80 color computer, from back in the days where radio shack was still cool. They'll probably work in extreme weather. I can't speak so well for the speed and capacity though.

I totally forgot about that old beast, my first. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

There's a lot of discussion in adition to Bugbyte's FAQ (good read) that cover just this question on varied levels of detail, covering many other's experiences, from several viewpoints. Try HDD, cold, hard drive, weather as search terms in the forum's search function and I'm sure you'll find more than you'd get from replies to this thread, though you may get some.

I have no probs with my 2.5 HDD, but I'm in vegas, so not much

here. My shocks need replacement bad, and I haven't heard from my HDD about it at all. It has last about a year so far.

jbors · 12-19-2007, 05:19 PM

I think solid drive is a very right way of using it in a car (even considering industrial HDD as a vital choice).
Now you can get CF 16GB for <$80+ something for CF-IDE converter. Install more memory ~1GB and turn off paging file.
You will see great improvement in speed and robustness.
I run all my home PCs this way for long time and very pleased with power consumption.
My car pc was working like this for 1 year cold booting in 20secs...

Jistari · 12-19-2007, 10:15 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Bugbyte

Your brother is wrong. He's advising against putting it in the car because he knows too much. . . .

Exactly what I was thinking also :-) but what could I say to him, he really does know this stuff down to the molecular level. Its probably the case that its not (usualy) that extreme of an environment in the car .

Its a 2001 C5 Corvette so while the suspension is stiffer than luxury, its not harsh (I wasnt worried about the shock anyway), and I keep it parked inside my garage (not heated but pretty sure it doesnt get to freezing often in there, and chances are if its that cold I'm not out driving anyway), was just worried about the occasional really cold but clear day and leaving it parked outside somewhere.

My main concern is that if I put the system together as I anticipate, if the PC wont start all Ill have is AM/FM and the CD drive in the head unit. So I want to be as sure as I can about it working all the time.

Maybe I'll put two drives, a smaller solid state (just gotta fugure out how big it needs to be for the OS (Win XP S2 paired down, will need the browser, front end, bluetooth, XM and nav software) and then add a laptop drive for data.

Thanks Bug (and all), Im gonna go read your faq. Pretty sure I read it already but I've been reading so much on this lately that it all runs together after a while. You tend to remember only the "I have a problem" or "this doesnt work" posts, and there often is no reason to post if everything works as it should, so you get the impression that everything is a problem by reading the posts :-)

TruckinMP3 · 12-19-2007, 10:25 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Jistari

In discussing my intentions to adding a PC to the car with my brother (who btw was involved in HD research, HD design, HD slaes over the last 25 years) is assuring me that a conventional laptop HD will not survive in a car environment.

He went into shock damping, cold/freezing and hot weather environmental concerns. I'm in the North Eastern US, so we get a wide range of temps here.

Should I be looking into using a solid state drive for the os and data?

Im aware of the price premium on solid state drives, just wondering how the laptop drives i see people using here hold up in cold/hot environments?

Where do you live ? What type of Drive are you using? and How long has it been operating ok (or if it failed, how long did it last)?

Right on parts wrong on others.

On the specifications and intended use. Right.

On the impact of a good mounting in the car, wrong.... the drives last just fine.

In fact they are far more durable (even in wrecks) than the passengers of the cars.

Mount the whole PC set up firmly (not wiggle) to the car. The cars shocks and mass will deal with the rest. (baring some race type suspensions)

I have had more drives fail on my desk (one in almost 30 years) than in my car (none) in over 10 years and several car wrecks. The car PC was not the cause of the wreck either.

nobb · 12-19-2007, 11:32 PM

Consumer drives simply are not designed to work in the car environment and intuition tells me that (statistically speaking) a drive operated in the automobile environment will die sooner than in a desktop environment. Most users say that their drives work fine, but there are also some that say they suspect their drive died due to being used in the car. If you want piece of mind, the best option would be to get an automotive grade drive (Hitachi Endurastar, Seagate EE25) or go solid state. Both have their advantage and disadvantages.

I am trying to sell a 30GB Hitachi Endurastar Automotive drive for $60 shipped to USA/CAN if anyone is interested. According to a publication (forgot where), one of the goals of the engineers who designed these type of drives was for the lifespan of the drive to be similar to the lifespan of the car (10+ years). Or if you have some old drives laying around, then why not use those? If you dont need the drives anyways, might as well put them to use.

Bugbyte · 12-20-2007, 07:56 AM

Lots of solutions here. I think the solid state is an elegant solution that eliminates the shock issues and expands the temperature range. Until recently, they were an expensive solution, but now they seem like a good option. If I was building from scratch, I would install a solid state drive for boot and have a firewire or USB media drive that was portable.

Compared to the cost of the system itself, the cost of a drive is trivial and you can afford to experiment with it if you want. What's the worst that will happen? No boot, buy a replacement?

Jistari · 12-20-2007, 03:27 PM

Yup, also found "extreme environment" conventional platter drives. Since main concern was heat/cold, these are supposed to be good from -20 C to +plenty C, 40 gigs about $160, sounds like a winner to me.

Now to ID a processor and MB :-)

TruckinMP3 · 12-20-2007, 05:22 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by nobb

Consumer drives simply are not designed to work in the car environment and intuition tells me that (statistically speaking) a drive operated in the automobile environment will die sooner than in a desktop environment. Most users say that their drives work fine, but there are also some that say they suspect their drive died due to being used in the car. If you want piece of mind, the best option would be to get an automotive grade drive (Hitachi Endurastar, Seagate EE25) or go solid state. Both have their advantage and disadvantages.

I am trying to sell a 30GB Hitachi Endurastar Automotive drive for $60 shipped to USA/CAN if anyone is interested. According to a publication (forgot where), one of the goals of the engineers who designed these type of drives was for the lifespan of the drive to be similar to the lifespan of the car (10+ years). Or if you have some old drives laying around, then why not use those? If you dont need the drives anyways, might as well put them to use.

Let us know when your experience level catches up with your intuition.

Sure, several reasons exist to spend more money on less storage. (physical size, power) Durability is not as different as you make it sound.

Jistari · 12-20-2007, 10:39 PM

Truck;

You're in Colorado no? Should get pretty cold there :-)

Do you park your Suburban outside for a few hours in below 32 F ?

Caelric · 12-20-2007, 11:24 PM

I live in CO, and work nights, park my car outside on cold nights. No hard drive problems so far this winter, and none last winter.

I use a Hitachi Travelstar 7k100 SATA for my HD

TruckinMP3 · 12-21-2007, 01:54 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Jistari

Truck;

You're in Colorado no? Should get pretty cold there :-)

Do you park your Suburban outside for a few hours in below 32 F ?

Yup, Colorado. If I am home it is in the garage.... At my lady's house it is outside.

In the last couple of weeks the 6 AM temp when I leave her house has ranged from 9 F to 25 F depending on the night. Really, No issues with the PC.

Keep in mind temp does have a factor but the 32 F (0 C) barrier is more important for water and living things than PC components. Notice I did not dismiss cold temps, I qualified. They can matter, I have not seen them be an issue.

This is a small desktop board, a desktop HD and a PC power and cooling DC to DC PS.
I think I am the only member with this PS, it was an early commercially produced unit.