Quietest hdd <80gb

Messiah Khan · 17 Apr 2006 at 23:06

Quietest hdd <80gb?

As title really. Whats the absolute quietest hardrive available with 30-80gb capacity. Ideally it wants to completely silent. Im guessing its likely to be one of the Samsung Spinpoint drives, but is there much difference between models?

rpstewart · 18 Apr 2006 at 11:53

You'll be lucky to find a desktop HDD of less than 80Gb these days, anything less is into old stock / second hand territory. The Samsung 80Gb is probably the quietest out there at the moment.

The other approach is to look possibly using a laptop 2.5" disk with an adaptor to fit a standard IDE & power cable. From what I've seen lappy disks tend to be quiet but they're slower and more expensive that desktop disks. 30, 40, 60 or 80Gb ones are easy to get.

ChrisLX200 · 18 Apr 2006 at 12:36

New drives with fluid bearings are all fairly quiet, the biggest difference will be caused by the case and mounting you use. A lightweight ally case tends to resonate much more that an older steel case.

Messiah Khan · 18 Apr 2006 at 14:33

I was considering trying to find one second hand anyway. Its intended to go into my download server which is running constantly, so I want it to be as silent as possible. Ive managed to get all the other components silent, including exchanging and 5 volting the PSU fan. The drive im using at the moment is a 27gb Fujitsu, which ive placed in a modified drive caddy(Ive packed it with thick felt to try and dampen the sound) and also suspended the drive caddy with bungee cord. But despite this, its still the noisiest component by far. Thanks for the answers guys.

CaDLoN · 18 Apr 2006 at 15:43

2.5" /latop hard disk will be ok if you get the right one

I gotta Toshiba 60GB 16MB Cache 5400RPM disk in my media/general use PC. It's quite and quick. the cache on these babbies really helps.

Ill dig out the model number and post it up

Messiah Khan · 18 Apr 2006 at 22:52

Thanks, that would be great. Is that close to silent then?

Froggerlog · 19 Apr 2006 at 04:10

Quietness isn't really an issue with ANY hard drive these days

A utility is available for most of them so you can adjust the tradeoff between speed and volume.

Dunno about all of them but my maxtor Diamond max 9\10 and Hitachi TK7s have a dos utility, its pretty straightforward and is permanent (You only need to run the utility again if you need to adjust it)

CaDLoN · 19 Apr 2006 at 09:25

It's a Toshiba MK6022GAX - 60GB 2.5" 16MB Cache 5400RPM

This drive is in my aopen MZ855-II pentium M system, which lives in my bedroom. I have the machine running 24/7 as it primary use is as a TV (running 2 Nebula's). My girlfiend doesnt even complain about the noise and thats saying something

The other benefit is that it runs a hell of a lot cooler than a 3.5" HDD, less heat = less fans to cool the system. My machine only has one 60x10mm fan on the CPU, thats it

ted34 · 19 Apr 2006 at 11:30

Samsung are the quietest drives at seeking but the seagates are the quietest at idle and have 5yr warranty over samsungs 3yr

Sultan of Ping · 19 Apr 2006 at 14:26

I use 2 x Samsung Spinpoint 80GB in RAID, with another 4 x 250GB for storage in my download/server machine, and after using Maxtor and Seagate in my last machine I have been amazed at how quiet these drives are!!

They're housed in an Antec P180, which uses special dampening mounts, and I'm sure that these have a positive effect on noise levels also.

Messiah Khan · 19 Apr 2006 at 16:54

Ive just looke at the Toshiba MK6022GAX - 60GB 2.5" 16MB Cache 5400RPM on slientpcreview, and it seems that several 3.5" drives are nearly as quiet as it. With this the case, I think i'd prefer the 3.5" option due to the lower cost. Due to the lower idle sound, im leaning towards a seagate. What I might actually do, is get a 250gb WD, to replace the 80gb seagate file drive in my main rig, and put the 80gb seagate in my server, which would be killing two birds with one stone.