Fast HDD

brummie · 1 May 2010 at 20:35

Anyone what's a fast, quiet, non SSD hard drive is? or a comparison on-line somewhere that is accurate?

In need of a fast but not necessarily large drive that is quiet enough to run next to you sleeping.
I bought a Hitachi drive for them but the hum from it is awful and i'm having to exchange it for them.

help! please!

oli356 · 1 May 2010 at 20:53

Keep hearing people say that the samsung F3 is quiet'ish' along with quick..
Though of course a hdd has nothing in comparison to a ssd apart from the raptors though no idea how loud/quiet they are.

I left my pc on like 24/7 for like 3 weeks at one stage, you just get use to the sound and sleep normally

So don't see how it can affect sleeping hehe

xJcBx · 1 May 2010 at 20:53

VelociRaptor is as fast as hell, probably not the quietest tho, F3 is a good bet.

icedbullet · 1 May 2010 at 21:10

I can vouch for the 1TB Samsung F3. Very quick drive (boots me into win7 in 45 seconds) and its surprisingly quiet, I got it because I didn't want to jump into the ssd market just yet.

shahpor · 2 May 2010 at 03:33

I can also vouch for the Samsung's quietness.

Got two 1TB F3's in my rig, which I leave on 24/7 and I am hard pressed to even tell they are on most of the time.

brummie · 2 May 2010 at 09:01

F3 it seems to be then

Thanks everyone so far

Vertigo · 2 May 2010 at 11:10

Think I'm going to get an F3 myself, despite having a bad experience with one when they first came out. Was looking at the WD Black but apparently they're a bit noisy and nowhere near the raw speed of the 2TB model anyway, which is daft money. F3 looks like the best speed/noise/price balance right now.

oli356 · 2 May 2010 at 11:21

xJcBx said:
VelociRaptor is as fast as hell, probably not the quietest tho, F3 is a good bet.

Rather nice price actually if you have the cash, would be great to store like games on there as a large SSD is very expensive

timmymeuk1 · 2 May 2010 at 20:24

I noticed there is a £1000+SSD somewhere lol

Ive used the f3 series before and its pretty quiet and quick. 45 seconds for system to boot? to me thats a long time.

Rroff · 2 May 2010 at 20:50

Samsung is usually a good bet if you want quiet, tho not as reliable from my experience as WD or Seagate. Seagate 7200.12 drives using the 500GB platter are pretty quick but its a lottery unfortunatly on how quiet they are - about 1/3rd are NOT quiet at all - they have a different color glue to the quiet ones so I'm guessing different batch/production line. If you do get a quiet one tho its as quiet as the samsungs

For fast and quiet tho you really ought to be looking at SSDs unless you need TBs of space.

icedbullet · 3 May 2010 at 07:58

timmymeuk1 said:
I noticed there is a £1000+SSD somewhere lol

Ive used the f3 series before and its pretty quiet and quick. 45 seconds for system to boot? to me thats a long time.

45 seconds including choosing the OS (either vista or win7) from the boot menu and typing in my password. To me that is very quick.

Whats your system spec and how long does it take you to boot into windows?

nayenshah · 23 May 2010 at 07:52

F3 or the other spinpoint range. I have a 500GB running all day (not at night) and I can never hear it behind my one 80mm case fan.

fobose · 23 May 2010 at 08:50

I have been buying WD Blue hard drives for all the recent builds I have made. 3x 320GB drives and 2x 500GB drives and they are dead silent. Plus I have 2x 640GB WD blue in RAID 1 on my main PC and they are also silent.

DIABLO · 23 May 2010 at 10:56

He said quiet guys the Raptors are far from quiet. F3's are one of if not the fastest non raptor drive and cheap too.

Relentless81 · 23 May 2010 at 11:03

I just bought a Spinpoint F3 500GB for my new build, its £40 compared to the VelociRaptor £130 which is 150GB and roughly the same performance

The new VelociRaptors are quicker but at over £200 whats the point

Bang for buck F3, hopefully SSD will come down over the next 12 months