HTPC, 10,000 rpm hard drive too noisey

[sare^baw's]

i just bought a htpc second hand recently which has the following hard drives installed.

35gig western digital 10,000rpm raptor running os and apps

160gig seagate barracuda 7200rpm for storage

now the pc is quite noisey, is this due to the o/s hdd being 10,00 rpm? The noise is like i remember on an old cráppy hdd that you could hear working away, its not the spinning noise that is loud. I want to make the pc a bit quieter so what is the best thing i can do here?

I have another pc which has an 80gb seagate hdd and a new maxtor 250gb hdd. Should i just install the o/s on a 7200 rpm drive and just use whatever other drive i want for storage.

so would it be ok using the 80gb seagate for o/s and storage and the 250gb for storage?

 

[sare^baw's]

thanks

i have unplugged the drive and all components are silent, its noisey as windows loads and when you open a program etc so i would say its defo the hdd.

does this hitatchi feature tool work on any drive and what does it do and is it simple to use?

 

[sare^baw's]

cheers for that, not that i fully understad it all but it does not seem too difficult, will i be able to get this quiet enought for a living room enviroment, i dont really like the rattling noise the drive makes, if i tweak it will it still make some amount of noise?

i suppose i would like to keep the fast drive and have it quiet if possible.

im not clued up on how much difference there is going from 7200 rpm to 10000rpm, how much does it improve performance?

 

[sare^baw's]

its seems that the problem is defo the problem and i will need to try the tool to se if i can make the drive quieter, if i dont get any joy i will just need to use one of the 7200rpm drives i already have.


could i use an spl meter to gauge how much noise each hdd is making to make the quieter choice?