HDD for laptop

dimitris89gr · 11-03-2012, 01:30 PM

Hello all,

I currently have a Western Digital Blue Scorpio 320GB 5400rpm in my laptop. I wanted to upgrade it so I bought a Western Digital Black Scorpio 760GB 7200rpm. However, the disk vibrated the whole laptop too much for me, so I put it in my desktop. Now I have the following options:

1)Western Digital 1TB Scorpio Blue
2) Toshiba 1TB
3)Hitachi Travelstar 1TB
4)Seagate 1TB Momentus

All four drives are rated at 5400rpm. In your opinion, the difference in vibration is due to the 7200rpm instead of 5400?
Which of the previous four drives is considered quieter?

Thank you for your time

dave_the_nerd · 11-03-2012, 01:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dimitris89gr

Hello all,

I currently have a Western Digital Blue Scorpio 320GB 5400rpm in my laptop. I wanted to upgrade it so I bought a Western Digital Black Scorpio 760GB 7200rpm. However, the disk vibrated the whole laptop too much for me, so I put it in my desktop. Now I have the following options:

1)Western Digital 1TB Scorpio Blue
2) Toshiba 1TB
3)Hitachi Travelstar 1TB
4)Seagate 1TB Momentus

All four drives are rated at 5400rpm. In your opinion, the difference in vibration is due to the 7200rpm instead of 5400?
Which of the previous four drives is considered quieter?

Thank you for your time

I've never noticed any vibration from my 7200 rpm laptop drives. I have a 500GB Momentus in my laptop (and a 320GB Momentus in my desktop) and they're both pretty quiet.

Then again, I have no idea how much "too much" vibration is for you, so... yeah.

Coup27 · 11-03-2012, 01:45 PM

What about re-looking at your requirements? Why do you need so much space in a 1 drive layout? Could you not put in a small SSD (64/128GB) which would be a lot faster and vibration free and use an external drive for the bulk storage? If you weren't keen on wires, you can get WiFi enabled external drives like a Seagate Satellite.

If you have to have a large single drive then I would get another blue. Not only do I think WD make the best drives but you also know what to expect from a blue so won't be disappointed.

corkyg · 11-03-2012, 01:48 PM

I have had nothing but 7200 rpm HDDs in my laptops until I recently changed to SSD. I never had any vibration from the HDDs. Sounds like you got one that was out of balance slightly. I strongly recommend the Seagate Momentus XT. The 500GB is excellent - never used anything bigger. I think that in a laptop, 500GB is a sweet spot.

The Momentus XT really gave me a noticeable performance kick as well. Boot/load time was only about 10 seconds slower than a SSD.

Coup27 · 11-03-2012, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by corkyg

I have had nothing but 7200 rpm HDDs in my laptops until I recently changed to SSD. I never had any vibration from the HDDs. Sounds like you got one that was out of balance slightly. I strongly recommend the Seagate Momentus XT. The 500GB is excellent - never used anything bigger. I think that in a laptop, 500GB is a sweet spot.

The Momentus XT really gave me a noticeable performance kick as well. Boot/load time was only about 10 seconds slower than a SSD.

The XT is also 7,200rpm. Unless he did get a bad WD Black (which would be easy to diagnose actually) the XT is likely to be ruled out for the same reason as the Black he purchased.

dimitris89gr · 11-03-2012, 02:28 PM

I need the high capacity cause I run multiple OS on my laptop (Windows 7,8 and 2 linux distros)

Coup27 · 11-03-2012, 02:37 PM

Fair enough. Have you placed the Black on a flat surface via an adapter to see if it jumps about? It might be an unbalanced drive as I have never seen or heard of a hdd causing that much vibration.

dimitris89gr · 11-03-2012, 02:40 PM

I tried it but it does not jump about. If i place my hands on the desk I can feel the vibration

dave_the_nerd · 11-03-2012, 03:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dimitris89gr

I tried it but it does not jump about. If i place my hands on the desk I can feel the vibration

Like, a little tingle in your fingers? Or like, OMG MY LAPTOP IS MOVING!

Because a little tingle is kinda normal.

Also - is the HDD the only moving part in the laptop, or are there fans, optical, etc., that are contributing?

Tom · 11-03-2012, 03:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by corkyg

I have had nothing but 7200 rpm HDDs in my laptops until I recently changed to SSD. I never had any vibration from the HDDs. Sounds like you got one that was out of balance slightly. I strongly recommend the Seagate Momentus XT. The 500GB is excellent - never used anything bigger. I think that in a laptop, 500GB is a sweet spot.

The Momentus XT really gave me a noticeable performance kick as well. Boot/load time was only about 10 seconds slower than a SSD.

I agree wholeheartedly. I can't compare to a full ssd but the 500gb Seagate Momentus XT boots up and runs my usual programs a lot faster than the previous regualr hard drive.

btw, its on sale for $68 at Amazon.

C1 · 11-03-2012, 04:18 PM

Ya, I noticed this (ie, vibration variation among drives) particularly mess'n with 3.5" drives.

For example, a friend and I bought the same Hitachi's. He loaned me his so that I could put some some stuff on it for him. His 7200 rpm drive was so balanced that you couldnt tell it was running while mine you could easily feel the vibration. So I think that there is a tolerance allowed for noise/vibration.

Finally, check to see if your drive features an anti-noise setting option in its firmware. Usually a utility is needed to access any available firmware switches, but such utility might be available on any disk that came with the drive if it was boxed, or could be downloadable from the drive's manufacturer.

Download HDDScan and see if your drive supports Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM). If so change the value from 254 (default) to 128 (minimum).