One of the key changes in the impending Testbed4 rollout will be the way we deal with measuring the heat generated by hard drives.
As we worked behind the scenes to expand SR’s coverage to notebook drives, we knew that power consumption remained a key facet of tests. To satisfy this end, we commissioned the construction of a custom device that would measure power dissipation of not just a notebook drive (which draws power through a 5V line) but also of more traditional 3.5″ offerings (which draw the bulk of their power through a 12V line in addition to the 5V).
With some basic thermodynamic principles kept in mind, it became clear that measuring the total power dissipation of a drive was a more reliable method of assessing aggregate heat generation than Testbed3’s method of taking top-plate temperature samples. With Testbed4, power dissipation results will replace temperature measurements. Care to see how current drives stack up? This thread previews the results!
