Acoustics of Seagate 7200.7 series?

[archcommus]

I have a Seagate 7200.7 series drive and am interested in comparing its acoustics to current drives like the 7200.11 series or the Samsung SpinPoint T166. I'm not sure if my case is a contributing factor or not (Kingwin KT-424), but my 7200.7 is amazingly quiet. Even at full load, I can't hear it making any sort of noise over my the sound of my fans even with my ear directly against the front of the case! I'm afraid I won't be able to find a current generation drive quite so quiet. I can easily find idle/load numbers of these new drives but not for the 7200.7 so far. Can anyone find these numbers or offer direct experience for this comparison? Thanks.

 

[MarcVenice]

Hmz I've got an old IDE western digital HD, and it makes the rattling noise HD's make pretty obviously when booting into Windows for example. It's in a p182, with silicone grommets so that shouldn't be the issue. I've also got a samsung t166 spinpoint 500gb HD, and well, I simply can NOT hear it. It's installed in the same way. I'm dualbooting windows XP and Vista with both drives, so usually only one drive is running and the other one is idling, so it's easy to compare. So if you want a quiet HD, go with the samsung, in anandtech's HD roundup it was one of the most quiet HD's, save for 1 or 2 1000gb HD's, which are of course quite expensive.

 

[JustaGeek]

Hope this helps:

http://www.storagereview.com/ST3160023A.sr?page=0%2C5 (Warning: A persistent pop-up)

http://techreport.com/articles.x/7750/12

No comparison with current drives, but some numbers to work with.

 

[archcommus]

Thanks for the numbers! Higher than I expected to see for the 7200.7 which is a bit confusing considering I can't picture a drive being any quieter than it is.

MarcVenice, you're right the Samsung is a great choice if you're going for quiet, question is is the reliability up to par with Seagate. I've never worked with Samsung hard drives and they're definitely not extremely common.

 

[JustaGeek]

The numbers might be high, but I have had Seagate 7200.7 (could barely hear it), 7200.9 (loud as hell!) and 7200.10, which is relatively quiet, but still audible.

No comparison to 7200.7, which is less than "whisper" quiet.

And for the reliability, I personally only trust Seagate.

 

[archcommus]

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
The numbers might be high, but I have had Seagate 7200.7 (could barely hear it), 7200.9 (loud as hell!) and 7200.10, which is relatively quiet, but still audible.

No comparison to 7200.7, which is less than "whisper" quiet.

And for the reliability, I personally only trust Seagate.

I too like to stick with Seagate, and yes the 7200.7 is about as quiet as it gets. After owning it for over 3 1/2 years, I can no longer tolerate ANY sort of "crunching" sound on a computer. I expect to hear the fans and nothing else, even while installing or launching something. So you can see why I'm hesitant to upgrade. Maybe the 7200.11 could be just as quiet as the .7, but it's not for sure. That's pretty much the only reason I'm kind of interested in the Samsung T166, but I don't want to switch brands. I'm not sure why they would not maintain the aspects of the .7 that made it so quiet in subsequent drives.

What we need here is a direct 7200.11 to 7200.7 comparison from a user. Not sure if we'll find one!

 

[clickynext]

That's interesting, I have 7200.7 and it has tons of the "crunching noise", which I don't mind, but no high pitched whine, which I do mind. So it works out for me, but it's weird that mine would be different...

 

[FeuerFrei]

That's funny, my Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA w/ NCQ has always been noisy. I was perturbed when I first installed it because my old Barracuda IV ATA has always been deathly silent. I could never hear it operate even with my ear up to it. Seagate had the silence thing down back in '02 so I can't see why they'd regress.

Anyway, right now I also am considering buying a 7200.11, although I'll only be able to run it at SATA speeds because my ASROCK 939Dual mobo supports only a single SATA2 drive at 3Gbps or a pair of SATA drives at 1.5Gbps.

 

[IEC]

Originally posted by: FeuerFrei
That's funny, my Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA w/ NCQ has always been noisy. I was perturbed when I first installed it because my old Barracuda IV ATA has always been deathly silent. I could never hear it operate even with my ear up to it. Seagate had the silence thing down back in '02 so I can't see why they'd regress.

Anyway, right now I also am considering buying a 7200.11, although I'll only be able to run it at SATA speeds because my ASROCK 939Dual mobo supports only a single SATA2 drive at 3Gbps or a pair of SATA drives at 1.5Gbps.

These guys must have loud fans, because the 160GB 7200.7 at full seek is easily heard on my system, while the 80GB Samsung Spinpoint I have is quiet...

I've personally never had issues with either Samsung or SpinPoint. WD, Maxtor and IBM on the other hand...

 

[jonmcc33]

Originally posted by: Spartan Niner
These guys must have loud fans, because the 160GB 7200.7 at full seek is easily heard on my system, while the 80GB Samsung Spinpoint I have is quiet...

I've personally never had issues with either Samsung or SpinPoint. WD, Maxtor and IBM on the other hand...

I have nothing but Seagate drives, tons of them to be exact. They vary from drive to drive and generation to generation. Of course nearly all of the Barracuda IV line was completely silent.

I have a 500GB 7200.9 that is noisy as crap. I have a pair of 320GB 7200.10 that are completely silent. I have a 200GB 7200.7 that is noisy. I have a 120GB 7200.7 that is quiet and another 120GB 7200.7 that is noisy. I have quite a few 80GB 7200.7 drives that are completely silent. It just varies so much really.

You used to be able to use Seagate's hard drive utility to go in and change the acoustic mode but not so anymore.

 

[Tiamat]

whatever you do, skip the 7200.9 line. They are absolute shit for quiet and reliability. The newer Western Digital drives are very quiet.

 

[jonmcc33]

My 500GB 7200.9 has been going strong for a year and a half now. Not really quiet but no problems at all and I read and write to it all the time.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

320GB 7200.10 (made in Thailand)...very quiet drives. The made in China SATA version is noisy.

 

[archcommus]

Originally posted by: FeuerFrei
That's funny, my Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA w/ NCQ has always been noisy. I was perturbed when I first installed it because my old Barracuda IV ATA has always been deathly silent. I could never hear it operate even with my ear up to it. Seagate had the silence thing down back in '02 so I can't see why they'd regress.

Anyway, right now I also am considering buying a 7200.11, although I'll only be able to run it at SATA speeds because my ASROCK 939Dual mobo supports only a single SATA2 drive at 3Gbps or a pair of SATA drives at 1.5Gbps.

That's interesting that different drives of the same model would have such different acoustics, unless our cases, fans, and the rubber things my screws go through all play a bigger role than I think. Anyway, I thought the same thing as you - why would they go backwards in noise level? But it seems it's something that's not totally set in stone.

Well I'm looking to buy a new drive real soon probably, so I started another thread for general suggestions. Acoustics might come up again in there.