Quiestest HD

[Degrador]

I've had a recent spurt of inspiration that made me realise that I can power down secondary HDs when I'm not using them. As such I'm now wanting to get an ultra quiet drive for windows and for downloading onto, with my current WD drives for storage / games / movies to use when comp noise doesn't matter much.

I've read that the seagate's are pretty quiet, but are they THE quietest drives? And if so, would any size drive be quieter than another?

Size doesn't matter to me too much (I have a WD 120GB SATA and a WD 80GB PATA drive already, as well as 200GB on my xbox), cost would like to be kept reasonable, although I don't mind having to pay a bit more for a quieter drive. But noise is paramount.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

 

[InlineFive]

Seagate and Fujitsu come to mind.

However I think Seagate would be tops overall because they have a 5-Year Warranty ( :shocked: )! And Fujitsu descended from IBM. :\

 

[wfbberzerker]

i second the seagate, i've heard its the quietest of the mainstream hard drives (ibm, maxtor, etc), so its a quality drive, and it has the 5 year warranty.

 

[Dman877]

I've used IBM's and maxtors mostly and recently tried a samsung based on recommendations for it's silence and love iit. It's extremely quiet, I can't comment on the seagates though, but I can say the samsung 120 gig I have is just about silent, my panaflo L1A's at 5v are louder so I can't really tell if it's silent or just nearly silent.

 

[Kishan]

samsung-120gb for 89 bucks from newegg. They use fluid bearing technology so they are ultra quiet.

 

[SneakyStuff]

Originally posted by: KPSHAH316
samsung-120gb for 89 bucks from newegg. They use fluid bearing technology so they are ultra quiet.

I own the 80 gig, it's dead silent

 

[CeilingHoles]

I have a Seagate Barracuda 120GB. It's very quiet, plus it has the new 5 year warranty.

 

[Farbio]

i love my seagate barracuda - i can never notice when the thing is spinning or not, its not noticeable over the psu and case fans at all

 

[Degrador]

Thanks,

I might start looking into those samsungs, might be worth venturing a try. Would there be any difference in noise for different sized disks?

 

[CraigRT]

I haven't heard them all, but both my main drives are VERY quiet... my Seagate 7200.7 120GB and my 800JB Western Digital are very, very silent hard drives.

 

[Pudgygiant]

Hitachi/IBM drives are quiet too.

 

[nick1985]

seagate

 

[whattaguy]

The Hitachi drives are silent. You have an option to have the drive silent with a little less performance, or you can boost the performance with a little less silence. I have it set in-between and I like it. The only negative thing is the "whine" or cat meow every no and then, but I got used to it.

 

[tr1kstanc3]

the new samsung drives are much quieter than the new seagate barricudas. i've owned 2 samsung and 3 barricudas that are all recent models. the samsungs are dead silent whereas the seagates crunch when accessing data. i would go with samsung even tho i have 2 seagates in my main box. =(

 

[Degrador]

Originally posted by: CraigRT
I haven't heard them all, but both my main drives are VERY quiet... my Seagate 7200.7 120GB and my 800JB Western Digital are very, very silent hard drives.

I have a 800JB, and trust me, they're not very silent . I now have a case with only 120mm fans, all connected to a fan controller, xp-120 heatsink (with 120mm fan on fan controller), vga silencer, and antec psu, so now the loudest things in my case are the hard drives. And the 800JB is the one that I can have shut down when not in use, and it's only when you hear it shut down that you realise how loud the disk is.

 

[Degrador]

Originally posted by: tr1kstanc3
the new samsung drives are much quieter than the new seagate barricudas. i've owned 2 samsung and 3 barricudas that are all recent models. the samsungs are dead silent whereas the seagates crunch when accessing data. i would go with samsung even tho i have 2 seagates in my main box. =(

Thanks, looks like I probably will get a samsung. Just a smaller one (probably only 80GB) 'cause I don't really need it for the space.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Stick anything in the zalman cooler and it becomes silent.