What's a quiet hard drive

[StinkyPinky]

I've built my wife a nice little micro-atx system in a slimline case. It's great, but to save costs I used an old 160gb sata WD drive I've had lying around for sometime.

Anyway, the thing is REALLY noisy. To the point we both find it annoying. So I'm thinking of getting a new cheap sata drive, where the main concern is it not being noisy rather than performance. The size is not important, so 160gb will be ample.

 

[roid450]

Western Digital Green or Blue, the Black has dual motors or heads, cant remember which, but was very slightly louder than my Caviar Blue...... slightly

 

[alcoholbob]

What about something like a 80GB 4200RPM hard drive

 

[fleshconsumed]

Originally posted by: StinkyPinky
I've built my wife a nice little micro-atx system in a slimline case. It's great, but to save costs I used an old 160gb sata WD drive I've had lying around for sometime.

Anyway, the thing is REALLY noisy. To the point we both find it annoying. So I'm thinking of getting a new cheap sata drive, where the main concern is it not being noisy rather than performance. The size is not important, so 160gb will be ample.

There is a good chance that 160GB drive had ball bearings. Get WD Green series 5400RPM drive. They are relatively cheap, plenty fast, run cool and are very very quiet, perhaps even quieter than most laptop drives.

 

[Golgatha]

SSD or Velociraptor would be the best.

Any 2.5in drive or 3.5in Samsungs are nice too since top performance isn't necessary. The 500GB Seagate 7200.12 is nice also, as it is a single platter (lower noise and heat).

 

[Griswold]

Originally posted by: Golgatha
SSD or Velociraptor would be the best.

You must have missed the words "save cost" and "quiet".

The velociraptor may not be nearly as loud as the old raptors, but most of the aforementioned drives are still quieter than that one.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: Griswold

Originally posted by: Golgatha
SSD or Velociraptor would be the best.

You must have missed the words "save cost" and "quiet".

The velociraptor may not be nearly as loud as the old raptors, but most of the aforementioned drives are still quieter than that one.

Fair enough. I'd get the 500GB Seagate 7200.12 myself. Plenty of storage and very cheap. It's nice and fast (heck, the sequential reads are faster than my Velociraptor), the thermals are excellent, and noise is pretty much non-existent.

Also, the new Velociraptors are 2.5in drives mounted to a 3.5in metal brick. They are dead silent.

 

[imported_Scoop]

Originally posted by: Griswold

Originally posted by: Golgatha
SSD or Velociraptor would be the best.

You must have missed the words "save cost" and "quiet".

The velociraptor may not be nearly as loud as the old raptors, but most of the aforementioned drives are still quieter than that one.

Take the velociraptor out of that horrible icepack thingy or whatever and it's actually very quiet like 2.5" notebook drives tend to be. It's not cheap though.

Here's some drives with measured airborne acoustics and vibration evaluation.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article927-page4.html

The WD Caviar Green 2TB drive seems to top the charts but it's not cheap either

 

[alcoholbob]

I can definitely vouch for the quietness of the the WD 2TB Green except its also slow as molasses

I think I'd have to go back to the day's of 4200RPM laptop drives to get something similarly slow. RAR extraction is an eternity.

 

[nobb]

I would say the WD Green series, except it parks its head after every 8 seconds of inactivity, making a faint click sound. Just something to consider.

 

[taltamir]

the new raid edition 2TB WD drive is supposedly very quiet because its built to tigher specs and is more balanced.