Nostalgia for noisy hard drives

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Like most people I run a pretty silent system these days, but I still have an old system with some of the noisiest old hard drives (like the old raptors), and you know what: I miss the noise of hard drives cruching away. :D

To me they were a useful second diagnostic tool on the rare occasions that the computer ever slowed down: if you can hear it crunching away, you know it's just busy reading or writing something, and with a little patience it'll probably catch up, whilst if it's silent, you know the system is probably waiting for a program that's stuck.

Comparing the old system with the noisy drives to a modern silent system, I've never found that slight clicking noise at all annoying. Maybe it's just because I grew up with it and am used to that noise being there that it doesn't register at all. At times even sleeping in the room with it didn't sound right unless the fans were whirring and the drives clicking - it's like the noise of birds in the country or traffic in a city: you just get used to it. :)

So it seems strange to me these days how every manufacturer is claiming their drive is quieter, when tbh I never found them noisy or annoying in the first place. In fact I liked the old crunchy hard drives. :D

Anyone else not mind the odd clicks and whirs? :)
 
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No I dont mind it either :) It depends *how* noisy it is. If its a high-pitched 10K SCSI whine then I get annoyed. The arm movement of a 7.2K drive however is, as you said, helpful in diagnosing issues most of the time.
 
For me the crunchy bit isn't the noisy bit and I agree that can be usefull.

It's all the other noises they can produce which is annoying.
 
Just look at the HDD activity LED if you need to know when the Hard Disk is doing anything.

I don't regret ditching my Raid0 Raptors for SSD's one bit, the noise they used to kick out was intolerable.
 
I used to run raid0 raptors on my 2 systems, ditched them on my main rig due to the noise. Still have 2 36gb models in my second rig, though theyre housed in vantec vortex 5.25 bay enclosures which cut the noise down a fair bit.
 
To be fair, I'm still using 'normal' hdd. Never went into ssd. I don't really think that hdd noise was/is annoying. I remember when my drive failed, this kind of noise is really dangerous, my heart stops for a few seconds, as I didn't have any backup. Luckily enough I've manage to recover my data. Since then always make a backup of important files.
 
Whisper quiet for me - I often work from home and my old PC used to drive me to distraction - noise is not amusing or wanted when you have a demanding job that requires precision. I have only recently got rid of the old PC and when I turned it on for the last time and listened to those HD's crunching away I can't tell you what pleasure I got from smashing them with a hammer a short time later. :)
 
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