I have recently purchased a TC1100 with a 40 GB

[adrobinson]

Thanks, Gadget Girl, I appreciate your input and I will be ordering a 7K60 posthaste. I look forward to reaping the added performance gains. Oh, and WNewquay, I abhor your "uncharacteristic silence." The witty quips are sorely missed. :):)

[gadgetgirl]

Yeah, mylar balloons are those silver balloons used for parties and stuff. Seems mylar itself is transparent to EM radiation, but aluminized mylar provides some shielding apparently, and looks so cool with a Winnie the Pooh printed on the side. [bday]

I found this link for a shielding study: http://www.ieee.org/organizations/pu...0/penetrat.htm
It doesn't really answer questions in this thread, but has some curiousity value.

Aluminum reportedly provides no shielding, but steel will.

Thinking about it more, the logical reasons (at least to me) for that metal bracket on the drives is to 1) lock the drive into place, 2) cover the exposed wafer board stuff from electrostatic shock, 3) maybe shield the drive itself from EM radiation. (At this point, #2 seems the most likely purpose to me.) I'm open to discuss this though... anyone have a fun counterpoint?

[WNewquay]

More grist for the mill:

I don't think that the metal plate that covers the drive electronics is steel.

Not a scientific test, but my fridge magnet fell off when I tried to get it to stick to the plate.

So I agree, that there is probably a mechanical reason for its presence (Gadget Girl's points 1 and 2 below).

quote:Originally posted by gadgetgirl

Yeah, mylar balloons are those silver balloons used for parties and stuff. Seems mylar itself is transparent to EM radiation, but aluminized mylar provides some shielding apparently, and looks so cool with a Winnie the Pooh printed on the side. [bday]

I found this link for a shielding study: http://www.ieee.org/organizations/pu...0/penetrat.htm
It doesn't really answer questions in this thread, but has some curiousity value.

Aluminum reportedly provides no shielding, but steel will.

Thinking about it more, the logical reasons (at least to me) for that metal bracket on the drives is to 1) lock the drive into place, 2) cover the exposed wafer board stuff from electrostatic shock, 3) maybe shield the drive itself from EM radiation. (At this point, #2 seems the most likely purpose to me.) I'm open to discuss this though... anyone have a fun counterpoint?

[linny]

What is a good price for the drive and where do you recommend someone buy one?

I probably won't buy one myself as I have the 60GB 5400rpm drive from HP.

[adrobinson]

By doing a quicky search on Price Grabber, I found the prices ranging between $210 and $250. I have seen better pricing than this at a hair below $200. Here's the link: http://tinyurl.com/yslof