Seagate 7200.10's are noisiest drives EVER!

It's nice to know what happens in the real world.. but when considering the drive I will look at it's size (750gb is the one I want!), it's published specifications, the benchmarks and finally user opinions.

But what I certainly should not expect is a manufacturer to change a crucial part in the drive such as using an alternative to FDB. Yes they may cover there arses with a "We reserve the right to change whatever we damn please" but it certainly doesn't help confidence in a purchase does it?

Now should I order one or not. I demand silence and I demand capacity.. if Seagate cannot offer this with confidence then I guess I won't purchase it.

Guess I will have to get a 500gb model instead. I have a 300gb Maxtor (storage) as well as a Raptor 150gb (boot). The Raptor is naturally, a noisy beast.

At least Maxtor lists exactly what type of motor each drive has with different product IDs, something that Seagate doesn't seem capable of. :mad:
 
Just to let you know, my 250gb 7200.10 from ocuk is very quiet, I dont know the colour of glue as I didn't look, when I 1st installed the drive and booted up there was a chugging noise but after that none at all, its completly silent.
 
got mine yesterday. no noise at all, (and its sitting in an antec sonata II with low fan speed) i got a wd 160G and its quiet as well. i`m happy with both ;)
 
Current Fluid Bearing drives whilst generally being very quiet from a high-frequency vibration standpoint seem significantly more prone to low-frequency vibration compared with older ball-bearing based drives.

I've no real evidence for this other than my own experience, which is that every single new FDB drive I have come into contact with over the last couple of years exhibits a distinct lower frequency hum when fitted into a case, and is even noticeable just holding the drive in your hand.
The drives include Maxtor DM10's, new Samsungs, Maxtor Maxlines, Hitachi 7K250's. All of them to a greater or lesser extent seem to suffer in this way compared with the older generation of drives.

For example, I have several old 4.3G IBM deskstars which emit a pretty nasty whine, but hold them in your hand, fit them into a case ... there's virtually no low frequency/large amplitude vibration comparatively speaking.
The same holds true for several ball-bearing based WD400BB's and a 40G IBM deskstar 60GXP.

A friend who bought a pair of FDB Samsungs last year for a Home Theatre PC had no end of grief trying to stop his Thermaltake case from vibratiing with them fitted. Recently he wound up buying an Antec case supplied with rubber suspension bands which has sorted his issue out.

Perhaps FDB technology will improve further and this aspect of their behaviour will lessen, but at the moment, from personal experience at least, its not the panacea it might initially have seemed.
 
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Thankyou for that post, that's exactly what I'm talking about. My current drives that I was trying to upgrade from when I bought the Seagate are Maxtor DM10 and Hitachi 7k250 and they do give off a very slight low-frequency hum but it's so slight I can only hear it late at night when there's no other noise and my PC is running virtually silent.

The Seagate 7200.10's that I had are just horrendous and the low frequency hum they make can be heard constantly, any time of day regardless of ambient noise. It's so loud I can hear it downstairs.

I had the Seagate in my hand, powered it up and the noise starts after about 1 second. It makes no difference wether or not it's in the case :(
 
you can get around the humming noise by buying an akasa elipse case and buying silentmaxx hdd enclosures and then getting hold of some foam and resting the enclosure (with the hdd in it) ontop of the foam on the bottom of the case.

I have done this and have got rid of the humming noise. Sometimes when you have more than 1 hdd in a case near each other the humming can collide and be higher pitched.

Other way is to suspend the hdd's.

But the eclipse is a great case with plenty of room in the botom to rest two enclosures on which gets rid of the problem.

head over to SPCR forums for more tips.

You can improve quietness by activating the silent mode in some of the latest drives (think its accoustic management) but that does have an affect on performance.
I have turned accoustic management on my 300gb sata maxtor and its virtually silent (its also in an enclousre which blocks out noise and cools it also). Its at 32*C with no fan over it
 
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My 320gb is constantly making a tapping sound, when i start accessing it starts to make a loud cruching sound instead :rolleyes:
 
Just thought i would post to say that i managed to get a Pink Seagate 7200.10 320GB and it is a quiet drive, massively quieter than the Western Digital 120GB it replaced. It even passed the Girlfriend noise test, which is a first.
 
Seagates use to be good but I think its just luck of draw getting a quiet one, think ill go with the Samsungs with there spinsoft tech.... there 500gigger 16meg SATA2s@ £123 quid make that too temping !
 
how does one go about swapping these drives at OCs... i have one in my new Core2 rig and its as noisy as hell, if i ghost it, then take the drive down there do you think they will swap it?
 
tehgazza said:
how does one go about swapping these drives at OCs... i have one in my new Core2 rig and its as noisy as hell, if i ghost it, then take the drive down there do you think they will swap it?
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Hard to say. It's not actually faulty. Certainly if the retailer refuses it'll be difficult to arque your case. Reason why I didn't get two 7200.10's instead went for two 3200KS's. Seagate 5 year warranty is great though, but if it's going to fail, it'll fail within the first couple of months, after that it should last years (still have a couple of 500MB still ok) Rather not risk noisy drives.
 
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