Which SATA drives are quiet?

[fuzzybabybunny]

300-500GB, SATAII

Maxtor
Seagate - I own the 320GB and the seeks are LOUD.

Western Digital, Hitachi, and Samsung are not often in Hot Deals. I hear (no pun intended) WD is among the quietest.

I've owned some 160GB WD and Maxtor IDE drives that were loud, not sure how it translates into SATA drives. I had a 160GB Hitachi drive that was silent too.

 

[Tarrant64]

I use WD, and they've always been just fine as far as noise goes. I have used Maxtor HD's as well. Relatively quiet, I had one die on me once though. Not a big deal really. I know in the past it was a problem. I'm sure nowadays they are still on the top list of what to buy as far as HD's go.

Not too familiar with Hitachi as desktop hard drives. They have some of the best notebook hard drives though.

I've never used a Samsung HD.

If you want loud, the old 36.* GB WD Raptor I used to have in a RAID 0 array would just scream when seeking. Kind of funny actually.

 

[xitshsif]

Are you trying to run completly silent, or with the case on your desk next to you?
Cause I can't hear my Seagate Barracude 7200.10 320GB. Is yours an older drive?

 

[Oyeve]

One of my drives is a Seagate 400gb 7200.10 SATA and I barely hear it at all. Of all my drives, the Maxtor Maxline III are the quietest.

 

[Howard]

WD5000KS, SP2504C

And then there are the 2.5" drives...

 

[Matthias99]

Silent PC review HD section: http://www.silentpcreview.com/section13.html

The Samsung Spinpoint P80 drives (the 80-160GB models) are pretty damn quiet. I haven't heard the new Seagates personally, though SPCR seemed unimpressed (calling the 7200.10 an "exceptionally large drive with exceptionally loud seeks").

2.5" notebook drives are the way to go for the quietest operation. But soft-mounting any drives can help.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Originally posted by: xitshsif
Are you trying to run completly silent, or with the case on your desk next to you?
Cause I can't hear my Seagate Barracude 7200.10 320GB. Is yours an older drive?

I'm trying to run as silent as possible, with the case on the desk next to me.

Mine's the 7200.10 as well. While idleing the drive is silent, but when it's seeking (working) it's pretty dang loud.

Originally posted by: Matthias99
Silent PC review HD section: http://www.silentpcreview.com/section13.html

The Samsung Spinpoint P80 drives (the 80-160GB models) are pretty damn quiet. I haven't heard the new Seagates personally, though SPCR seemed unimpressed (calling the 7200.10 an "exceptionally large drive with exceptionally loud seeks").

I really like the Samsungs, BUT aren't the kinda slow with their 8MB cache? And yeah, like I stated above, the Seagates have really loud seeks, annoyingly so.

 

[Auric]

Prolly shan't find a Hot Deal on a drive that is both quiet and high-performance. Best you could hope for is an older Maxtor (not a Seagate rebrand).

Seagate desktop drives are essentially mass-market and featureless with scant attention paid to noise, heat or power consumption. However they do benchmark relatively well and are cheap and that combined with a five year warranty and the marketing appeal of being first to the desktop with PMR has made them pop in some circles.

Samsung is introducing a new series now with increased density (also PMR), capacity and cache -however the motor vibration issue apparently remains (still quiet though) and they may not run as cool as previous models.

Western Digital drives can be quiet while sporting leading performance and with the RE2 series, warranty and reliability too but the higher capacities are relatively hot since not having transititioned to the latest platters yet.

Hitachi don't seem to compromise in any area. The T7K500 series have quiet motors, AAM, APM, high density and solid performance with good temperatures (not as cool as Samsung P but significantly less than Seagate).

 

[w00t]

http://www.silentpcreview.com/

They have recommended drives. I decided on getting the WDSE16 320GB instead of the Seagate 320GB ( 7200.10 series? or was it 9 ) I am very happy the drive. They have sound recordings you can hear keep in mind most of them are very close than they have a further one I think like 1M.

 

[CraKaJaX]

From personal experience... I know the Samsung SpinPoint drives are REALLY quiet.

 

[Susquehannock]

My Seagate 200gb are pretty quiet. Definitely more quiet than the 300gb WD in my other system.

The Seagate buyout of Maxtor has me worried though. Afraid their (Seagate) quality will suffer.