interesting re hard drives, didn't know about the 15k rpm scsi's, will take a look .. running WD 120gig 7200 rpm drives here, they've been stable so far, they run a lot hotter than the older ones .. but so far so good. .. have kept my pcs running 24/7 for years without any major hardware hassles.. only problems have been w/occasional driver installs, so I use roxio/symc "goback" which is great for restoring the pc to say 15 minutes Before you installed drivers that caused a system lockup/whatever.. (had that happen today w/new VIA drivers for example) .. running pcs 24/7 in an airconditioned place has been fine out here, fwiw .. hey do you need a special m/b for scsi drives, or just a new controller card? and, do they have 100+ gig ones? thx!
My software is 100% custom, and written from scratch. I mostly crunch years worth of intraday data. Thats 450X more candles than EOD (1 min candles). I also crunch it with multiple indicators and through many sets of parameters. Each run can take minutes to hours. I dont have enough memory for my full data sets. Not even close. So the harddrive is working HARD, and the additional speed makes all the difference in the world. The fastest solution would be to purchase 32 gigs of memory peace axeman
1. Thanks everyone for your input. 2. Read reviews on the net. Summing up for "7200 RPM, 8mg cache HDs": (a) Seagate is least noisy, (b) Western Digital runs least hot, (c) Maxtor runs hottest and noisiest but is near the top in performance in virtually all tests, though performance difference is slight. What I did... Got a new WD 80g, 7200 RPM, 8mg cache HD at Best Buy and ran it 12 hours today. (a) Quiet enough that I have to get my ear within about 15" of the case to hear it idle (seek is acceptably quiet, too), (b) SURPRISED at how cool it ran... barely warmer than body temperature after 12 hours with no extra cooling (my 6 month old Maxtor, 2mg cache, would be almost too hot to handle), (c) System performance BARELY improved over 5400 RPM, 2mg cache... considering manufacturer's hype, that was a disappointing surprise. And the best part... I made enough trading today to cover the HD's cost and have beer money to boot! (I didn't mention, did I, that it only took $18 after taxes and rebate?)
I find little logic in getting a harddrive cooler for anything less than 10k RPM and even at that I wouldn't bother.. Just another gimmick they try to sell you that have little real use. You simply wouldn't access your hard drive long enough continuously for it to be noticeable.