Quiet HD's - is there any around?

ihatelag

ihatelag

ihatelag

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I am getting fed-up of waking up in the middle of the night with the sharp squeak of the hard drive (comp a few meters from by bed) and I really want to know, if there are any Hard drives, which have any type of "silent running" feature or something as close to silent as possible?

I would sound proof my case, but with the heat it produces I want to try and avoid that option. (not interested in sound proofed, water cooled system).

Any ideas would be most appreciated.

(Also I did a forum search and all the info I could find is about noisy HD's rather than the non-noisy ones)
 
The Antec P180 has rubber mounts for the hard drives. I have a western digital 120Gb IDe, a samsung spinpoint 200Gb and a 250Gb Maxtor diamondmax (which is supposed to be a noisy type), and I dont hear any hard drive spin up (whiring).

I would agree that the spinpoints are supposed to be quietest but even the noisiest can be tamed in a good case.

Using speedfan I can get some statistics about my drive and in my case its at the minimum temperature of all comparisons:

http://www.hddstatus.com/hdrepshowreport.php?ReportCode=1089195&ReportVerification=720D3A1D
 
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get a Samsung T-Series SpinPoint drive. They are the quietest on the market.

I think they run at 18dB.

You can make it even quieter by putting it in a silentmaxx enclosure and attaching that with rubber screws

This should bring it down to 16dB

You might even get rid of another 0.5dB if you totally isolate it from the case (by placing it on some foam at the bottom of the case)

The enclosure keeps mine under 37*C at all times which eliminates the need for a fan in the case.
 
Try a Silentmaxx enclosure. Can't hear any whiring/spin up on my Seagate 7200.10. My Raptor is in one also and is quiet as a mouse apart from slight seek noise.

I got them for £24.01 brand new from the net.
 
Thanks everyone, your input has been greatly appreciated! Thanks!! :)

I will invest in the Samsung T-Series SpinPoint as per the suggestion. Also I will pick up a silentmaxx enclosure too.

So..my plan is to get this done by next weekend, so I will get on with purchasing those suggested parts this weekend. :D

I will keep you posted on the specific type/model etc I choose and how silent it is :)
 
squiffy said:
Or you could look into 2.5" hard drive, use downloading path to that. The boot drive (3.5") should switch off?
Click to expand...

I never would have thought of using a notebook HD for this? Seems a bit too tricky for me I think.

Anyway, I am getting 2 x Samsung SpinPoint T HD501LJ 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM - hopefully this will be quieter than my 4 HD's atm :)

As for the silentmaxx, I can't seem to find any in OcUK (unless I completely missed this) - I guess my trusty search engine will need to look for that one.
 
Why is it "tricky" it's no different to a normal PATA drive, just need a adaptor. My HTPC uses a 2.5" for boot and it's great, pretty fast (RAM helps here and as long not doing heavy HD I/O processes) just need a 2.5" to 3.5" adaptor. Totally silent during idle and seek, unlike 3.5" drives. Around 35MB /sec

Or you could buy a SATA 2.5", they have the same connectors.
 
if you use these as backup drives or just storage drives then why not consider getting external caddies?

Purchase those 2x500gb samsung drives and some icebox external enclosures and use it them as and when you need to.....

Atleast then you can turn them on when you at the pc doing stuff and whilst your sleeping and there is no activity on those HDD's they can be switched off which will eliminate the noise.

My plan is to buy 2x 400GB SATA Samsung's with some Icy Box External Enclosure IB-360AStUS SATA + USB Combo - Black/LED and using them as and when i require them.
I will only be using them as storage/archive drives and download paths so they wount need to be on all the time, wount need them to be fast, and wount need to worry about cooling either. Win Win situation in terms of heat and noise
 
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Why not use caddies instead of enclosures? No PSU or USB cable required, and not going through USB bus. Just slot in the cage into the case.
 
photoshop said:
sloting them into the cage will cause resonance and unwanted vibration.
Click to expand...

USB enclosures aren't exactly quiet either, I have used quite a few and all suffer from noisy fans, and bad HD/case fixings. Caddies offer superior performance, and more security (USB doesn't always work, and have suffered data loss) some of the enclosure chipsets are buggy.
 
squiffy said:
USB enclosures aren't exactly quiet either, I have used quite a few and all suffer from noisy fans, and bad HD/case fixings.
Click to expand...

The Icy Box external caddies dont use a fan nor do they need one.
Paired with a quiet samsung drive they will be quiet.

The advantage is that you can switch them on/off as you please.
Like i said, if these are just going to be used to store/backup or act as download boxes then they dont need to be on 24/7 anyway. They can be used on demand.
 
carlazai said:
Both my Spinpoint and the 320bg seagate are quiet. The seagate i can hear if i defrag the drive, only time i ever hear it
Click to expand...

quiet in reference to what?

You probably cant hear them because your CPU/PSU/GPU fans all drown the noise out which doesnt mean they are quiet. Your system must be pushing out atleast 25dB of noise.

Its when you start going fanless and watercooling you will trully realise how noisey HDD's are and can be. I only have 1 fan in my PC and that is on the tagan power supply. The only things which are producing noise in my rig are HDD's as the tagan is quieter than the hdd's so i only hear hdd's
 
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