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Quiet SATA drives?

Z

Zyzzyva100

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Feb 26, 2001
Messages
1,204
I just built my new system, and I think I designed it quite well for cooling and quietness. lots of fans, but everything, including the PSU, is on fan controllers. This way when I want to game I just crank up the fans, and am ready to go, but for just surfing the web it doesn't sound like a plane is taking off.

My problem now is that my hard drives are the loudest part of my computer. Granted, I have 6 (only 5 in there now), but even with all but my boot drive unplugged, there is still a terrible, horrible high pitched squeeling noise.

The drives I have are 4x 250 WD sata, 1 120 gig WD sata, and 1 36 WD raptor. Currently the raptor is being returned from rma, so I am booting off the 120 gig drive. The 250's were supposed to be for a raid 5 array, but thats not going to happen because the controller doesn't like my motherboard.

So, what I am looking for are some nice quiet sata drives. Most likely I will go to booting off something new, since Im sure the raptor is going to be even louder with this case (CM stacker, the front panel is all "grill" material, it breathes, but lets more noise out. I know I need to go with some fluid bearing drives. Probably some thing like 3x 200 gig drives, since I still want to have at least that much mass storage. Then a smaller, 80 gig or so drive to boot from. (I have yet to notice a real performance loss booting from the 120 gig compared with the raptor, so I really don't care if the quieter drives are a bit slower).

Anyway, what are some good, quiet drives? Im mostly looking for drives that don't whine too much. For my case the drives mount in "4 drives in 3 bays" enclosures, which have giant rubber pieces between them and the case, so vibrational noise is not really my problem here. (Or at least I don't think it is)
 
I just sold my Raptors last week because they were far too loud. I got a Seagate 7200.7 drive from Newegg, and it is very quiet. I also have a 120gb WD drive, it is noticably louder than the Seagate.
 
saturnine2 said:
I just sold my Raptors last week because they were far too loud. I got a Seagate 7200.7 drive from Newegg, and it is very quiet. I also have a 120gb WD drive, it is noticably louder than the Seagate.
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Granted a 7200 rpm drive is going to make some noise, but Is the drive actually noticably quieter to the point that its no longer annoying? I seem to be very sensitive to high frequency pitches. White noise from fans doesn't bother me at all, and I wish it sounded more like that.
 
Zyzzyva100 said:
Granted a 7200 rpm drive is going to make some noise, but Is the drive actually noticably quieter to the point that its no longer annoying? I seem to be very sensitive to high frequency pitches. .
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I cannot hear the Seagate at all over the 80mm stealth fan thats cooling it. I'm sensitive to high frequency sounds too, and those Raptors were driving me crazy. I could hear their devilish noise even while wearing headphones.
 
saturnine2 said:
I cannot hear the Seagate at all over the 80mm stealth fan thats cooling it. I'm sensitive to high frequency sounds too, and those Raptors were driving me crazy. I could hear their devilish noise even while wearing headphones.
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Awesome. I have 120 mm stealth fans cooling my drives, so if I can't hear the drives over them, I will be the happiest person alive.
 
I have an 80GB SATA Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 HD and it's very silent. Try that out.
 
I've got several Seagates and with the 7200.7's, there damn near silent. The only time I can hear them is under heavy read/write operations, and then I have to stick my ear next to the case and then the quiet Panaflo makes more noise than it :)
 
I have 2 Maxtor 80/8's that I used the "acoustic management" tool on to take OFF the AM, and they along with a WD 80/8 and Seagate 80/8 are all so quiet I need to look at the LED to know they are on and running.
 
The quietest drive tested todate is the Hitachi SATA Drives. You can get a 250 GB one at newegg for 181.00
 
Seagate and Samsung make quiet HDDs. I've also heard good things about Hitachi.
 
agree with the above two. The samsungs are actually probably the best drive out right now for noise levels.. but once you start comparing them against the hitachi's and seagates you're looking at seek noise etc... i think silentpcreview.com will give you a pretty good idea of what to look for. They also do comparisons of their own. I'd recommend the seagate because they have a kickass warranty if you're worried about it. The hitachi's are also pretty great. They're faster than the seagates, but IMO sliiiightly louder. Just a different pitch to the noise.
 
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