Seagate Barracuda IV noisy?

[kgraeme]

I have a couple Seagates that I'm wondering about. The 40GB drive is pretty quiet. I can faintly hear it seeking from my normal distance of 3ft away. The 80GB drive though I can definitely hear. It's not like it's loud or anything, but I can certainly hear it. What are other people's experiences with these? I thought they were supposed to be the quietest drives on the market.

 

[NotoriousJTC]

I have a 40GB Seagate IV and it's the quietest HD i've ever had. Seek noise is unnoticable. And the drive emits little to no sound. My Maxtors (2 of the same model, different capacities) developed a strange high pitched seering sound over time.

I'm definetly going back to Seagate for more HD's.

 

[MWink]

I've used quite a few Seagate Barracuda IV's (40GB-80GB) and they have all been just about dead silent. If it's really loud it could be failing.

 

[Biggs]

According to Seagate, the double platter 60 and 80GB are slightly noisier than the single platter 20 and 40GB versions. However, I wouldn't think it would be that noticeable. You might have a defective unit. Also, you might want to check if the AAM is enabled for both drives. You can use IBM's own software utility to check.

 

[ElDonAntonio]

So seagate makes the quietest drives on the market (for consumer level IDE drives)?

 

[Biggs]

At the moment, yes.

 

[ElDonAntonio]

Do you have any reference or reviews to point me too? I want to buy an external enclosure and an IDE HDD, but as it'll be sitting right next to my laptop on my desk, I'm worrying about the noise. It's always better when the HDD is tucked away inside a PC case!

 

[Biggs]

SilentPC Review

 

[ElDonAntonio]

thanks a lot Biggs, I'll check it out

 

[kgraeme]

This is strange because it's my third Barracuda drive that makes this noise.

 

[splice]

I have a 80GB Seagate B-IV. It's running in my almost silent 1GHz Duron server. I cannot hear it running or seeking. Of course, it's sitting on a rack kind of hidden away, but it's definitely not a noticable sound in the room.

 

[MWink]

Do you have any reference or reviews to point me too? I want to buy an external enclosure and an IDE HDD, but as it'll be sitting right next to my laptop on my desk, I'm worrying about the noise. It's always better when the HDD is tucked away inside a PC case!

I have a Barracuda IV 80GB in an external Firewire enclosure and it is still silent. Though the enclosure has a fan which does make a bit of noise.

 

[ElDonAntonio]

MWLink, which enclosure did you choose, and where did you buy it from? Is the performance good?

 

[OldScratch]

The newest Seagate drives are extremely silent - I have a Seagate Barracuda IV 80GB (Model ST380021A) and can only hear it if I put my ear right next to it. I also have a Maxtor Quiet Drive 80GB (Model 6L080L4) which is slightly audible, but still very quiet. The Maxtor drive is capable of ATA-133, whereas the Seagate only offers ATA-100.

The trick with Maxtor is to pick a drive with xxxxxLx as the model number. For example, the Maxtor 80GB Model 6L080J4 does not have the silent technology (fluid bearings), but the 6L080L4 model does.

Good Luck!

 

[MWink]

I bought the enclosure from Newegg. It's the one that can take either a 3.5" or 5.25" drive. The performance is quite good. According to Sandra it is about 30% faster than my laptops internal 4200RPM HD.

 

[EyeOfThe]

$95.95 - HardDrive: Maxtor DiamondMax Plus D740X 80.0GB Ultra ATA/133 Mfg Part No: 6L080J4, 8.5 ms, 7200 RPM, 2048 KB Cache

The above drive uses liquid bearings and is supposed to be dead silent according to a 'Silence' article I saw on extremetech.

 

[EyeOfThe]

Originally posted by: OldScratch


The trick with Maxtor is to pick a drive with xxxxxLx as the model number. For example, the Maxtor 80GB Model 6L080J4 does not have the silent technology (fluid bearings), but the 6L080L4 model does.

Oh snap! I almost got fooled into buying the wrong one.... Thanks for the info!