Need recommendation on silent hard drives

Happy Hopping

Happy Hopping

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I have 2 x Seagate Ultra 320 SCSI ST336607LW, and 1 x ST380013AS in my system. All these time, I thought it's the fans in the system that is causing all these noise.

As I turn the hard drives off after 3 minutes of no activity under the power option, the system is very quiet. so it is the spinning and operation noise of these Seagate hard drives that's causing all the noise. The SCSI hard drive are 10K rpm drive. But according to Seagate manual of these drive, they actually said "There will not be any discrete tones more than 10dB above the masking noise on typical drives when measured according to seagate spec. 30553-001. there will not be any tones more than 24 dB above the masking noise of any drive".

So w/ 24 dB, I shouldn't be able to hear these noise at all. But the humming noise is unbearable, but i can't see all these drives are detective.

What's the latest technology that can create the most silent hard drives? I really want to replace all of the above. What brand name comes with such technology for silent hard drive?
 
Samsung is known for quiet drives, and mounting them with rubber washers to help decouple them from the case can help a little, too. You could go to extremes and get a solid-state drive like the iRam or a flash-based thing, but those are expensive.

If you're interested in selling those drives, the FS/FT forums here are pretty nice.

 
People never believe me when I tell them that most of their system noise is hard drives spinning, haha.

Samsung Spinpoint for the win. They're silent.
 
what about futijsu? I used them before, they seems very good. Are they quiet? How are they compares to Samsung?
 
Blown 89 said:
Samsung Spinpoint for the win. They're silent.
Click to expand...
What he said. I have a 160GB Spinpoint SATA, and I have never seen a quieter drive.
 
Happy Hopping said:
...according to Seagate manual of these drive, they actually said "There will not be any discrete tones more than 10dB above the masking noise on typical drives when measured according to seagate spec. 30553-001. there will not be any tones more than 24 dB above the masking noise of any drive".

So w/ 24 dB, I shouldn't be able to hear these noise at all. But the humming noise is unbearable, but i can't see all these drives are detective.
Click to expand...
Emphasis mine.

The drives may not be defective, it's just saying that they shouldn't be more than 10dB louder than a normal drive. Assuming they specify 30dB to be a normal drive loudness-level-thingie, that would mean the drive could be as loud as 40dB.

My Fujitsu MAU was a bit of a loud drive. Granted, it was 15,000RPM, not 10K, but it still sounded like a tube of m&m's in the washer. Sure was fast, though :)

If you're wanting to stick with SCSI, I'm assuming you want speed. It's rough to find that without noise. Samsung does have the "quiet drive" thing down, if you're willing to break away from SCSI. Otherwise, I wouldn't know what to recommend. You might want to ask at the following sites as well:

silentpcreview.com - All things related to quiet computers
2cpu.com - People who play with SCSI on a daily basis
 
IN the past years, I want speed. As Ultra 320 SCSI is no doubt faster than SATA. But ideally, I now prefer a silent drive. So my plan is to get rid of the Seagate SATA, and switch to Samsung SATA.

then get rid of both SCSI hard drive, cut down to 1 hard drive, and I prefer a 320 Ultra SCSI for speed and use the SCSI hard drive as data drive.

So 1 down, 1 to go, if I go with SCSI, is there any silent option? Is any hard drive that c/w Fluid Dynamic Bearing be automatially a silent drive?
I can cut down the performance from 15K to 10K, although the above seagate is already 10K.
 
RavenD said:
What he said. I have a 160GB Spinpoint SATA, and I have never seen a quieter drive.
Click to expand...

The T 400 GB is 8.9 ms, 7200 rpm, I don't know the speed of your 160GB. Do you find the speed acceptable, slow or fast?
 
I have a 160gb seagate 7200.7 in my Antec Aria HTPC, and its damn loud. I'd also like to know some good quiet hd's. I hear WD's hard drives are quiet.

How are the raptors?? are they loud?
 
unhappy_mage said:
You could go to extremes and get a solid-state drive like the iRam or a flash-based thing, but those are expensive.
Click to expand...

I am not verse in iRAM. does iRAM c/w 300 GB? What about flash based product, what's the highest capacity available?
 
i know a lot of htpc builders used seagate 7200.8 or 7200.9 drives. not sure what is real quite know. i know a WD and seagate both boast drives that run "cool and quiet"
 
Happy Hopping said:
I am not verse in iRAM. does iRAM c/w 300 GB? What about flash based product, what's the highest capacity available?
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iRAM's just about the fastest thing you'll find. Much faster than your SCSI drives. And 0dB sound. (Literally silent). The disadvantage to it is the following:

1) Price. Expect to pay around $425-450 USD for a 4GB version.
2) Capacity. There's a max of 4GB per iRAM.
3) Backup. If you unplug your computer for six hours or so, all data on the iRam is lost.
 
Happy Hopping said:
I am not verse in iRAM. does iRAM c/w 300 GB? What about flash based product, what's the highest capacity available?
Click to expand...
The iRam is based on DDR Ram. So you can only get 4 1GB sticks in it, and that runs $300 or so plus the cost of the device ($130). For Flash drives, you can probably get 64GB, but again that's going to be expensive. The advantage is that they're solid-state, and really, really fast.

But the Samsung drives are probably your best bet. Take a look at silentpcreview's review of them for a comprehensive look at their noise production compared to other drives.

 
http://www.kanguru.com/flashdrive_max.html

http://www.buslink.com/B1/p_BDP2U2.shtml

this is something they don't want you to know, there is a read and write cycle limitation of 1 million times. So each time windows xp uses your drive to store temporary files, it counts as 1 write.

I write a lot of stuff on the hard drive every day, I don't know how long would 1 million write last. The other part that is not clear is whether they mean one million red/write on the same spot, or 1 million read/write overall in total.

What is data retention of 10 yr. means? That the 64 GB media only last 10 yr.?
 
unhappy_mage said:
Click to expand...

I have my computer set to open MP3 files by Real Player. And yet somehow, Quicktime open this file. Does everyone has the same issue?

When quick time opens it, I bet the volume control isn't sensitive enough, there is no sound regardless of the vol. setting on that Nexus MP3 file.

Now w/ the sound files using this quicktime:

The seagate file is NOT found from the web site, I find it very hard to believe that the Seagate is at a seek of 25 - 26 dB, because my one is much louder than that, to the pt. that all 3 hard drive noise, ie., any one of them at any one time, is unbearable. And 2 of the 3 harddrive is Cheetah, i.e., much higher end than the Barracuda.

As to the Samsung sound files, the noise level is highly acceptable. But the sound file clearly does not cover Vibration-induced noise, all the file did is show the normal hard disk seek, read, write operation noise.

I am dealilng w/ humming noise here, when the hard disk is not power down under the Power Off after 3 min. in the Power menu under control panel. Silent PC should have show hard drive making those noise on the Samsung.

IS there anywhere on the web that has an audio on Vibration induced humming noise from these Spinpoint?

And this is what I'm talking about. At least seagate knows about it but clearly didn't do a damn thing about it

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article82-page2.html

* Vibration: Identified by Seagate as being the parameter that most dominates HDD-caused noise in most PC systems, it can be manifested in many different kinds of sounds. Typically it causes low level buzzing that is often not noticed until eliminated -- and then subjectively, is as if an acoustic fog has been lifted.

OR THIS:

High frequency noise: Probably considered the most annoying of all hard drive noises, most drives of 7200 rpm spindle speed or faster are characterized by this whine, typically at 8~16 kHz. Even trace amounts can be very annoying because of its psychoacoustic impact and its high directionality: A simple movement of the head can cause the highly directional sound to come in and out of audibility, causing a dynamic stuttering effect that drives some people nuts.
Click to expand...
 
There's no way to measure vibration noise because it varies based on what case you put it in. If there are loose bolts, etc, you'll get a lot more noise than a well-built case.

I suggest you take the current drive out of the case and set it on something static-proof and see how loud it is then. That should eliminate the vibration as a factor. Maybe you'll find out something else was actually making all the noise.

 
No, it's definitely the hard drive. Once the drive is power down, the whole case is quiet.
 
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