A No HDD system

[PhilEvelyn]

A friend of mine has built himself a Mini ATX motherboard system for use in his bedroom as a glorified mp3 player which is getting the mp3s from a server in his garage.

His problem is the noise from the HDD. There is no room in the case for noise deadening stuff. I advised him to try reducing the swap file to zero to force XP to use the 512MB RAM only as the HDD never shuts up, even when XP's power management is telling it to switch the HDD off after 3 minutes of inactivity.

However, he asked me if he could boot the pc from the server and do without the HDD. Now I am presuming that he could either use a USB 1GB stick to boot a cut down version of XP but other than that I think he is going to need a thin client motherboard and there I get lost as I have no experience of thin client.

Does he have any other options that anybody can think of?... that are not going to cost as much as a thin client motherboard I hope.

 

[MasterPi]

Get a better HD, the new ones don't make hardly any noise

I have a Quantom Fireball TM and it clicks like (fill in the blank with a word of your choice)

But i have a Maxtor 80something and a Maxtor 90845D4 and they dont make hardly any noise

----------------------------------------------
3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716...

MasterPi

 

[SYAR2003]

He could also get a harddisk silencing kit.
Search for it on the net .
Found some quite quick.

http://www.pcsilent.de/en_pdet_pcshd1.asp

http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e...=eq/se=Hard Drive Enclosures.html?id=bWqXZB7L

Here is a rating of different harrdisks noice from
SilentPc review

http://www.silentpcreview.com/modul...ns&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=29&page=1

 

[mainegeek]

Move his Bed to the garage?

 

[SYAR2003]

Or turn up the volume while playing perhaps.
HDD can't be that noisy,can it.

 

[docdebit]

Bootable cd?

 

[SYAR2003]

PE builder perhaps.
Buildt with the neccesary apps
and NIC support .

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Run the PC without harddisk.

 

[hotfusion]

If Linux is a possibility, could the free, downloadable Knoppix be an answer?
As I understand it, this program runs entirely from a bootable CD, although would the BIOS allow this when it fails to detect a HDD? I don't know.
Also, if your HDD is really that noisy, I would seriously suggest it could be close to failing altogether, in which case a nice new Seagate or something simmilar would be required anyhow, and almost inaudible too.
Andy.

 

[SYAR2003]

I have the knoppix cd .
It has player functions and all he would need.
Good idea also.

The Windows PE is more usefull if he needs Bill Gates stuff .It's the same as knoppix only that is buildt
is the windows pe enviroment.

 

[edfair]

Diskless workstations are a feature of lots of ethernet cards. You end up buying a prom to plug in on the board.
Whether one would work with your friends machine is going to be a matter of experimentation.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[PhilEvelyn]

Ok, there are a lot of ideas in there. I will have a chat with him and work through the suggestions. I know there is nothing wrong with the HDD, its just that once the music stops, he leaves the pc switched on all night in his bedroom and it the background hum of the HDD that is causing him trouble.

Thanks for all the suggestions

Phil

 

[mainegeek]

It might just be a fan humming.

 

[docdebit]

Are there some kind of task scheduling capabilities in windows? If so, would scheduling a shutdown at some point in the evening solve the problem?

 

[kewlcoder]

i agree with hotfusion get knopix... its the solution you are looking for.. try it its no harm...
i know you will like it.

 

[SkipCox]

This is interesting; 98se using a compact flash card and a ramdrive.


Hw: PIII 733EB - fanless, 512Mb Ram, 1 Compact Flash ide adapter, 256 Mb Compact Flash (Can be 128)
Steps:

- install on a temp disk win98se on d:\windows (manage to have also d:\program files)
- winzip d:\ (include hidden/system, 8.3 option)
- save Long File Name with doslfnbk
- copy zipped d: to c:
- transfer c: partition to flash card with Ghost

Done, boot time less than a minute.

Ram disk is used to save the Compact flash life.

If you change your windows config, winzip and doslfnbk again. ;-)

21th Nov 2003, François, Switzerland


autoexec.bat
------------
mode con codepage prepare=((850) C:\ega.cpi)
mode con codepage select=850
keyb sf,,C:\keyboard.sys
xmsdsk 200000 d: /t /y
d:
c:\pkunzip -e -d -Jhrs c:\d.zip
c:
doslfnbk d: /r /force
set COMSPEC=d:\windows\command.com
set PATH=
set PATH=d:\windows;d:\windows\system;d:\windows\command
set winbootdir=
set winbootdir=d:\windows
set windir=
set windir=d:\windows
d:
cd d:\windows
win.com

config.sys
----------
DEVICE=C:\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\DBLBUFF.SYS
DEVICE=C:\IFSHLP.SYS
DEVICE=C:\setver.exe
device=C:\display.sys con=(ega,,1)
Country=041,850,C:\country.sys
LASTDRIVE=J

msdos.sys
---------
[Paths]
WinDir=d:\WINDOWS
WinBootDir=d:\WINDOWS
HostWinBootDrv=C

[Options]
BootMulti=1
BootGUI=1
DoubleBuffer=1
AutoScan=1
WinVer=4.10.2222
DisableLog=1
;
;The following lines are required for compatibility with other programs.
;Do not remove them (MSDOS.SYS needs to be >1024 bytes).
;xxxxxxxxxxxxx...

dir c:\
-------
Volume in drive C is C
Volume Serial Number is 2767-1DE7
Directory of C:\

COMMAND COM 93'890 23.04.99 22:22 COMMAND.COM
KEYBOARD SYS 34'566 23.04.99 22:22 KEYBOARD.SYS
MSDOS SYS 1'690 20.11.03 18:06 MSDOS.SYS
IO SYS 222'390 23.04.99 22:22 IO.SYS
D ZIP 50'977'485 20.11.03 13:07 D.ZIP
PKUNZIP EXE 29'007 20.07.94 11:35 PKUNZIP.EXE
DBLSPACE BIN 68'871 23.04.99 22:22 DBLSPACE.BIN
XMSDSK EXE 20'016 12.08.98 1:09 xmsdsk.exe
ATTRIB EXE 15'252 23.04.99 22:22 ATTRIB.EXE
DISPLAY SYS 17'175 23.04.99 22:22 DISPLAY.SYS
DOSLFNBK TXT 38'861 12.10.02 21:47 DOSLFNBK.TXT
BACKUP LFN 28'667 20.11.03 12:46 BACKUP.LFN
COUNTRY SYS 30'742 23.04.99 22:22 COUNTRY.SYS
HIMEM SYS 33'191 23.04.99 22:22 HIMEM.SYS
EDIT COM 69'902 06.05.98 20:01 EDIT.COM
AUTOEXEC BAT 403 20.11.03 18:07 AUTOEXEC.BAT
DOSLFNBK EXE 74'320 12.10.02 21:50 DOSLFNBK.EXE
DBLBUFF SYS 2'614 23.04.99 22:22 DBLBUFF.SYS
EGA CPI 58'870 23.04.99 22:22 EGA.CPI
EMM386 EXE 125'495 23.04.99 22:22 EMM386.EXE
IFSHLP SYS 3'708 23.04.99 22:22 IFSHLP.SYS
KEYB COM 19'927 23.04.99 22:22 KEYB.COM
MODE COM 29'271 23.04.99 22:22 MODE.COM
SCANDISK EXE 143'818 23.04.99 23:22 SCANDISK.EXE
SETVER EXE 18'939 04.11.03 22:27 SETVER.EXE
CONFIG SYS 171 20.11.03 17:55 CONFIG.SYS
27 file(s) 52'227'401 bytes
1 dir(s) 200'384'512 bytes free

D:\>dir d:

Volume in drive D is MS-RAMDRIVE
Volume Serial Number is 0000-0000
Directory of D:\

WINDOWS <DIR> 20.11.03 18:13 WINDOWS
PROGRA~1 <DIR> 16.11.03 17:25 Program Files

2 dir(s) 79'020'032 bytes free







Skip

http://home.comcast.net/~scox9/index.html

 

[ceh4702]

They Make IDE Flash drives up to about 1 Gig that plug right into the IDE drive interface. Normally they need to be the only drive on the ribbon. This makes them bootable.

It might also be possible to just buy 1-2 Gigs of memory and boot off the network or something like that. I do not know how you make a motherboard boot from the network but I have seen similar things done.

Some motherboard may be able to boot off of a USB Flash drive. Via Mini-ITX motherboard may have the option to boot off a superdisk floppy drive, off the network and from USB drives. I think a lot of the people building these things are using stripped down versions of Linux.

Check out this site:

http://shop.store.yahoo.com/ituner/

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.