veneman
Re: Which Hard Drive for Tyros 2?
Hello,

If audio recording is not important nearly all 2.5"drives will be suitable.
If audio recording is important certainly you might expect problems with cheap or older 2.5" drives like 4200 RPM, 1MB buffer memory and low transfer speed.
Its not particular the HDD drive speed that makes the difference. But compare the most improtant specs, if audio.
The main specs that are relevant for Audio Recording
Listed for a top model Toshiba 5200 RPM and others
- Average Access Time < 12 mSec
- Max Transfer Speed, 100 MByte/second (ATA5 or ATA6) interface
- Buffer Memory 8 or preferably 16 MB

A top model 2.5"HDD with 7200 RPM only benefits a slightly lower Average Access Time of around 10.5 mSec. and is currently very expensive 60GB = 2000 Euro.

For streaming audio particular Buffer memory and Transfer Speed are important.
Above spec's of hte 5200 RPM of current HDD's will likely be more than suitable.

But I can imagine a very cheap or older model 2.5" HDD with 5200 RPM and 1 MB Buffer memory and older ATA spec interface with low Transfer speed might cause you trouble, causing Audio signals transfer to be interupted. But practice will learn us.
May be Yamaha Support specialists are able to do some test with different models.

Cheers JaapV (NL)

From experience now:

I did several tests to record audio on the TYROS2, with my older Harddisk from Tyros1.
I did not realize it was an 4200 RPM HD, one MB buffer memory.
I could record as well as mix new record with existing track as well as replay audio without problems on this harddisk.

One of the TOP demonstrators of Yamaha very told me he has build his older T1 5200 RPM disk into the T2 and had no problems at all, and was very confident a recent 5200 RPM disk is sufficient.

If somebody now tells me disasters when I dont take a 7200RPM disk, I strongly tend not to believe him, also price and noise is higher.

Cheers JaapV (nl)

The Samsung range works spot on.
Pick from the
MP0402H
MP0603H or
MP0804H

I installed the 40GB version easily and have had no trouble with it.

[This message has been edited by Craig_UK (edited 11-10-2005).]

If you want premium speed at a premium price and don't want to settle for less than the best then I would highly recommend the "new" Hitachi 7K60 7200RPM Drive[s]. It is regarded as the fastest 2.5" Drive on the planet. Hitachi also makes the 7K80 (80GB) and the 7K100 (100GB) 7200RPM Drives but you will pay quite a bit more for them over the 60GB Drive.

Here is a link with info and specs on the 60GB Drive:

Hitachi 7K60 2.5" Hard Drive

PS: You may be able to find it for less if you search around.

The new Hitachi 7K Hard Drives are the first 7200RPM Drives to hit the market since 2003.

Btw, Seagate has a new 7200RPM Drive out also but it is not as fast as the new Hitachi Drives and is more for Server type applications. The Seagate does offer better I/O performance than the Travelstar though.

If you do a lot of Audio recording with the Tyros2 and load Samples then the faster the Hard Drive the better. I would even except the Operating System to respond quicker too. If you are not aware, it has been noted that on certain menus the Tyros2 has a noticable delay when switching screens. It is possible with a faster Hard Drive the delay may be reduced significantly. Just a thought.

Best regards,
Mike

PS: I wanted to mention that the new Hitachi Drives come in either ATA/100 or Serial ATA. The Tyros2 does NOT support Serial ATA Drives. You will need to get the ATA/100 Drive for the Tyros2. Also be advised that this drive has NOT been officially tested by Yamaha for compatibility with the Tyros2 so it may or may not work. It is however within the "size" (height) range at 9.5mm.

If it doesn't work with the Tyros2 you can simply return it for a refund since all merchandise has a 30 day money back guarantee. If you find it cheaper somewhere else make sure that they also have a 30 day money back guarantee so you will not be out anything if it's not compatible with the Tyros2. Except maybe for shipping costs..


[This message has been edited by keybplayer (edited 11-14-2005).]

Ok, my thoughts: I initially purchased the aforementioned Hitachi 7200RPM hard drive, but returned it, opting for the substantially lower priced (1/2 the price of the 7200RPM Hitachi) 5400RPM 60GB Samsung model MP0603H instead. The Samsung MP0603H is working out great for me. Here's why, and of which was so well presented & explained by "the Wolf", on a recent "Tyros2.Net" messageboard forum posting:

"The faster drive is fine, if you have the extra cash, and don't mind the higher noise. Will it make your Tyros2 perform faster in any way? Not a chance. Let me explain for the last time why, and hopefully prevent others from doing the same mistake.

2.5" hard drives today spin at either 4200, 5400 or 7200 revolutions per minute (rpm). The faster the discs spin, the faster a drive's "seek time" will be. The seek time is the (average) time it takes for the read/write heads of the drive to move to the correct place. Also, faster drives have faster internal data transfer rates. This means how fast the drive is able to actually read a chunk of data into the drive's internal cache, ready to be bursted to the system, through the drive's "interface" which in the Tyros2's case is IDE/EIDE (ATA-100).

Now, let's consider the usage of a drive. When used in a computer, a faster drive will greatly benefit the system. When you boot up windows for instance, the operating system is in effect reading hundreds of small files scattered across the hard drive, in which case the better seek times of faster 7200rpm drives are very welcome. The comput"er will have finished booting several seconds earlier than it would have with a slower drive.

But what about when used in the Tyros2? What type of usage can we expect?

The hard drive on the Tyros2 is used for recording digital audio (HD recorder), loading/saving custom styles, custom voices and samples. The bitrate of digital audio recording is about 1.4 Mb/s. 4200rpm drives have an internal transfer rate of around 370 Mb/s. 5400rpm have around 440 Mb/s. 7200rpm have around 500 Mb/s. So it is clear that even with the slowest 4200rpm drive, you would have absolutely no problem using the HD recorder on the Tyros2 - even in full duplex mode (which is also possible, it means you hear your previous recording and can at the same time record on top of it). This would use double the data rate. But as we can see, HD recording uses only a fraction of the data rate capabilities of any available 2.5" hard drive.

What about seek times then? Well, there are no "many small files" to load. You always load just one style, one midi, one registration setup. In effect, usually one file. What are the differences in seek times between these drives? 4200/5400 drives typically seek in 12ms (that's MILLISECONDS) whereas 7200rpm drives do it in 10ms. As you know, a millisecond is one-thousandth of a second. This means in theory, Scott there can load his style "two one-thousandths of a second" faster than me (with my 5400rpm drive). In practice however there would be no difference, as the Tyros2 operating system is fairly slow in itself, wasting any speed gains in actually reading the style data.

As we know, the USB ports on the Tyros1 are v1.1, which effectively kills the advantage of any fast hard drive when importing / exporting samples or music. It is just terribly slow and I know, because I've already used it. smiley

There is just one scenario where one could slightly benefit from having a 7200rpm drive: loading a HUGE sample into Tyros2's sample memory. Let's say you have imported a 500MB voice library using your USB thumb drive (and waited for half an hour for it to finish), then want to play with it. 500MB equals 4000Mb (MB=Megabytes, Mb=Megabits). With the theoretical transfer speed of 440Mb/s, my 5400rpm Samsung would load this in 9 seconds, whereas Scott's Hitachi (at 500Mb/s) would manage it in 8.

So that one second advantage in a very unlikely / rarely used scenario is, in my opinion, not enough to compensate for the one very considerable downside of 7200rpm drives: they are more noisy. Hard drives have motors to spin the discs (duh). Looking at the specifications of Scott's 7200rpm Hitachi, it emits 35 dB (decibels). That's over TEN decibels more than my 5400rpm Samsung (24 dB ). That's a fair amount of more noise, as any audiophile will recognize. I don't want my Tyros2 to sound like an aeroplane (which it may look like smiley ). In noisy environments like at gig venues this will not make a difference, but in the silence of my home, or when I'm doing a recording, I don't want any more noise than is absolutely necessary. The hard drive cover on the Tyros2 is full of holes (to allow air to circulate) and does not provide any noise insulation. As it is now, I can barely hear my Samsung drive humming when the room is quiet. I would assume a 7200rpm drive would be much more of a pain in the ass."

Scott

Awesome article Scott!!!!

There are two more elements to this that havn't been discussed and that is the amount of Cache memory and shock rating on the drive. The more cache memory, the faster subsequent reads/writes will be. This effectively makes the drive act faster.

I think the 5400 rpm drives will be perfect for the Tyros.

I'm actually more concerned about the shock/g rating of the drive then the read/write speed. If your transporting your Tyros as a working musician, this is very important as no matter how careful we are with our gear, it always get's knocked around, jarred, and bumped. The SHOCK rating of the drive should be an important metric in determining the reliability of the drive. I noticed the Hitachi drive mentioned above has a shock rating of Provides an operational shock rating of up to 200Gs at (2ms), the Samsung Drive has a similar shock rating of 200-250G http://product.samsung.com/cgi-bin/nabc/...=Specifications

So the only shock value you get is in the sticker price! (pun intended)


Al

[This message has been edited by kbrkr (edited 11-15-2005).]

BTW, I found this site which has the Samsung drive for $81.
http://www.supergooddeal.com/product_p/mp0603h.htm

Ouch! I didn't realize the bitrate of digital audio recording on the Tyros2 was only about 1.4 Mb/s.

Scott, since you had the Hitachi 7200RPM Drive I assume you installed it in your Tyro2 before switching it out to the Samsung drive. As a comparison did you notice any difference at all with the Drives? The delay in switching screen menus on the Tyros2 as Simon talked about, was that as noticable with the Hitachi drive as compared to the Samsung drive? Did the noise difference really seem that noticable also?

The Tyros2 is essentially a computer btw. I realize that keyboards are years behind in technology compared to your average Desktop or Laptop computer so the benefit of a faster hard drive in a keyboard, although beneficial is some ways, faster Drives cannot be used to their full advantage because of the bottlenecks in other parts of the Keyboard's system as "The Wolf" pointed out. I didn't realize though that the Tyros2' audio recording function was so drastically limited in transfer rate thus nullifying any tangible gain a faster Hard Drive may give it.

But I am glad Hard Drive Manufacturers are getting back into the game by making faster 2.5" Hard Drives. Eventually I think Keyboards will get to a point where they will indeed take full advantage of the fastest Hard Drives you can throw at them. We may have a bit of a wait though before that happens..

PS: I personally have a 10,000RPM Hard Drive in my Desktop computer at home and it is as quiet as any 7200RPM Drive I've owned. In fact it is actually quieter than a couple of 7200RPM Drives I've owned. Go figure. So depending on the Company and the model of the Drive itself faster does not always mean 'louder' neccesarily.

A few years down the road when the Tyros3 comes out I can imagine even 10,000RPM 2.5" Hard Drives being as quiet as current 5400RPM Drives are now. I can even fathom that the Tyros3 having the processing power of its CPU equivalent to a Pentium4 or the AMD Opteron and a Motherboard that has the same performance and buss speeds as todays Desktop computers.

Now if it only came in 76 keys....

Best regards,
Mike



[This message has been edited by keybplayer (edited 11-15-2005).]

Tyros2 compatible harddrives: http://www.tyros2.net/news.php?readmore=52

Tyros2 compatible DIMM RAM: http://www.tyros2.net/news.php?readmore=61

Kenneth, www.Tyros2.Net