How loud is the Raptor?

K

Karama

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Hey, I am thinking about buying the 74GB WD Raptor. So how loud is it really? I have heard different accounts so was just wanting the feedback. Is the price of the drive justified? I have a 120 GB Serial ATA Seagate Drive with 8 MB Cache currently and that one will become my backup drive if I buy the Raptor.
 
How loud is your computer right now?

The 74gb raptor is not very loud IMHO (in fact I can't hear it over my fans), but I have another hdd next to it and a few fans in my system.
 
IMO, it's very quiet considering it's the fastest SATA drive around. I can only hear it when it's seeking.
 
In the case where I have 2 74GB Raptors I usually "sleep" them down as that machine only sees bursts of activity. When I first started using it I found myself taking off the case and touching the drives to make sure they were actually spinning up ... they were so quiet they sounded dead.

There was an issue with bad spindle bearings in the first Raptors, but I think that was fixed entirely with the 74GB models.

I'm a Altas 15k fan at heart, but I love my Raptors.
 
SLiCkFX said:
IMO, it's very quiet considering it's the fastest SATA drive around. I can only hear it when it's seeking.
Click to expand...
I agree with that assessment of the 74GB Raptor. It's true that it's somewhat noisier than most current 7200 RPM hard drives. But I have had much slower-performing hard drives which spun at much lower RPMs that were significantly noisier (both idle and seeking) than the 74GB Raptor.
 
I wouldn't get one if the rest of my system was designed with quietness in mind. That's why I don't have one in my everyday PC. However, if quiet operation is less than your primary concern, I think you will be satisfied with the noise they emit.
 
They are not very loud at all, there is a slight whirr at start up and in games, and when defragging there is that clicky hard drive sound, but you can't really here them.
also my pc is very quiet, (nv5, silenx 120mm fans) and I cannot hear them...
f
 
Mine is loud and clattery as hell... but I don't have it screwed in properly, so meh.
 
i got one and i compared the sound and its significantly louder.i have a quieter pc then most though with my antec aria case. it bothered me. then again i couldn't tell much of a performance difference between my 250 western sata and the raptor 74. so i got rid of the raptor cause it wasn't worth the money. i really couldn't tell a difference
 
It is slightly louder when seeking, and makes sort of a different pitched noise than most hard drives I've owned. Maybe it's just me, but I find it to be less disruptive due to just the pitch of the noise it makes. Definitely not a reason not to buy one in my opinion, unless you are really picky about noise.
 
I'm a bit biased as I used to live with a pair of IBM 15K RPM drives that were noisy as hell, but it's definitly not a loud drive at all. It's not audible over the pair of 80mm fans that are cooling my drive cage, so I figure < 36dba idle, and seeks aren't that much louder either. YMMV
 
Idle it is as quiet as 7200 drives, seeking it makes somewhat of a noticeable sound, but very low pitched. No highpitched whining like other 10k and 15k drives. And to the guy who said he couldn't tell a speed performace, he must be talking about loading up solitaire. I had to reinstall windows today and it took 12 whole minutes on my raptor.
 
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