Hard Drives...I cant find any I like. Suggestions

[Gerbil333]

In my main computer I have a Western Digital 40gb 7200rpm, 8mb cache drive (WD400JB). It's very fast, so for performance I'm very happy with it, except it whines (it's loud).

I used a Maxtor 40gb 7200rpm, 2mb cache hd (6E040L0) for a while..it's now in my girlfriend's computer. It was relativelly quiet. No whining. I could hear it access data, but it was very tolerable. It was reliable, not too loud, and of normal performance for a 2mb, 7200rpm drive. I was pretty happy with it.

I just installed a 40gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 in my third computer. It's silent. I cant hear it spinning or accessing data at all. I'm amazed -- I've never had such a quiet drive! It seems to be about the same speed as the Maxtor.

I now need a drive for my last computer. Why can't I get the best of both worlds!?? I want the performance of my WD 8mb cache hd, but the silence of the Barracuda! I doubt that's possible, so I'd like to at least get the performance of my WD and the noise levels of the Maxtor. Whining is bad. I can stand data access. Just not the high pitched spinning noise.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Get another Barracuda

Even better, just find a nice drive with decent performance that has FDBs

 

[StraightPipe]

www.storagereview.com

 

[Ionizer86]

Get a 7200.7 with 8MB cache and you're set. They're both fast and very quiet.

 

[Gerbil333]

Yea, that seems like a good idea. I didnt realize they made them.

The computer this hard drive will be going in is an Abit NF7-S 2.0. And thus, SATA is an option. How difficult is it to get the BIOS configured and WinXP Pro setup on a SATA drive? I've heard of many people having some trouble...then again it takes absolutelly no effort at all with PATA drives, so I bet people are just complaining cuz you have to do something extra with drivers.

 

[suklee]

Originally posted by: Gerbil333
Yea, that seems like a good idea. I didnt realize they made them.

The computer this hard drive will be going in is an Abit NF7-S 2.0. And thus, SATA is an option. How difficult is it to get the BIOS configured and WinXP Pro setup on a SATA drive? I've heard of many people having some trouble...then again it takes absolutelly no effort at all with PATA drives, so I bet people are just complaining cuz you have to do something extra with drivers.

Whatever you do, I'd recommend you stay away from Hitachi/IBM drives . Seagates and W.D.s are great imho.

It shouldn't be too hard to get SATA running on the NF7-S. I'm running such a setup, but I had a PATA install and ghosted it over to the SATA drive. If you're doing a fresh install you'd probably need to press F6 when setup loads to install the third-party SATA driver; after that you should be set. Any problems, just come back here

 

[jdogg707]

Originally posted by: Kai920

Originally posted by: Gerbil333
Yea, that seems like a good idea. I didnt realize they made them.

The computer this hard drive will be going in is an Abit NF7-S 2.0. And thus, SATA is an option. How difficult is it to get the BIOS configured and WinXP Pro setup on a SATA drive? I've heard of many people having some trouble...then again it takes absolutelly no effort at all with PATA drives, so I bet people are just complaining cuz you have to do something extra with drivers.

Whatever you do, I'd recommend you stay away from Hitachi/IBM drives . Seagates and W.D.s are great imho.

It shouldn't be too hard to get SATA running on the NF7-S. I'm running such a setup, but I had a PATA install and ghosted it over to the SATA drive. If you're doing a fresh install you'd probably need to press F6 when setup loads to install the third-party SATA driver; after that you should be set. Any problems, just come back here

The new Hitachi drives see to be quite nice, and ever since IBM's Deathstar days, the drives preformance and quality have both increased. They also include a 3 Year warranty with their OEM drives. As the person above suggested, when you are installing XP, have the SATA Floppy that came with your NF7 in the drive, hit F6, it will ask you to specify a driver, you select the A: drive, it finds it, select the one for Window XP, and it does the rest. Don't take the disk out until the system restarts after the formatting of the drives. If you are looking for a quite SATA drive, I would go with the Seagate's, they seem not to be as fast as the competition according to Storage review, but they are very quite. I have used both the Maxtor and the WD and they both ger fairly loud, though the WD is much quiter than my Maxtor was.

 

[Atlantean]

Get a barracuda with an 8mb buffer then thats what I am using, its sata mind you, but I am pretty sure that they make them in regular ata with 8mb buffers...

EDIT: Just noticed you mentioned something about getting an sata drive... I have the exact same motherboard and I had to go to the abit website to and download the sata drivers, then when installing windows xp pro press f6 right at the beginning and load the second one on the list (thats the one that worked for me anyways). Then it will read the drive perfectly.

 

[suklee]

Originally posted by: jdogg707

Originally posted by: Kai920

Originally posted by: Gerbil333
Yea, that seems like a good idea. I didnt realize they made them.

The computer this hard drive will be going in is an Abit NF7-S 2.0. And thus, SATA is an option. How difficult is it to get the BIOS configured and WinXP Pro setup on a SATA drive? I've heard of many people having some trouble...then again it takes absolutelly no effort at all with PATA drives, so I bet people are just complaining cuz you have to do something extra with drivers.

Whatever you do, I'd recommend you stay away from Hitachi/IBM drives . Seagates and W.D.s are great imho.

It shouldn't be too hard to get SATA running on the NF7-S. I'm running such a setup, but I had a PATA install and ghosted it over to the SATA drive. If you're doing a fresh install you'd probably need to press F6 when setup loads to install the third-party SATA driver; after that you should be set. Any problems, just come back here

The new Hitachi drives see to be quite nice, and ever since IBM's Deathstar days, the drives preformance and quality have both increased. They also include a 3 Year warranty with their OEM drives. As the person above suggested, when you are installing XP, have the SATA Floppy that came with your NF7 in the drive, hit F6, it will ask you to specify a driver, you select the A: drive, it finds it, select the one for Window XP, and it does the rest. Don't take the disk out until the system restarts after the formatting of the drives. If you are looking for a quite SATA drive, I would go with the Seagate's, they seem not to be as fast as the competition according to Storage review, but they are very quite. I have used both the Maxtor and the WD and they both ger fairly loud, though the WD is much quiter than my Maxtor was.

I am currently running one of those new Hitachi 80G SATA's with my NF7S 2.0. Reason I don't recommend them is the drive exhibited near-death symptoms a couple of days ago. The drive was only 2 months old. For no apparent reason, during a zip file extraction it made a loud and strange "hammering" noise... my guess is that the drive head was going back and forth between two points). It did this REPEATEDLY. Of course, I was quite scared of losing data so I rebooted (seemed to take 1-2 mins longer than usual) and backed up important stuff to a CDR. It's strange , but now it looks like it's calmed down a bit.

I've also been a previous owner of an IBM 40GB 60GXP that failed... ended up RMA'd. So needless to say I won't consider Hitachi/IBM drives for myself or friends, ever.

If I had to do it all over again, I'd still take a Seagate 7200.7 SATA...

 

[Salvador]

Here's my take. The WD's are weird. I have two WD1200JB drives at the moment. They are almost identicle, but one is whisper quiet and the other is loud and nasty. I also have Seagate drives and the one WD drive is actually quieter (same motor noise -- both are silent), but the WD is a tad quieter for seek noise. The other WD drive.. Forget it. The thing rings and whines like a nasty old scsi drive.

Should I RMA this loud WD drive? It works fine, it's just super noisy. It didn't start out that way either. It was quiet when I got it and just got loud one day.

Sal

 

[Bovinicus]

Get two Seagate drives and put them in a RAID 1 array. The setup will be quiet, and the performance will surpass that of any single drive.

 

[JimRaynor]

you mean raid 0? raid 1 would just mirror the drives, performance would be the same as a single drive..

 

[Blastman]

WD now makes drives with FDB?s.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-144-331&depa=1

 

[InlineFive]

Get a Maxtor DiamondMax 9+. It's very fast and only has a little whine which is completly deadened by the case.

 

[poppyq]

Originally posted by: JimRaynor
you mean raid 0? raid 1 would just mirror the drives, performance would be the same as a single drive..

Actually the performance in RAID 1 would be LESS than that of a single drive since it has to take the time to mirror everything to the other drive.

 

[Gerbil333]

Originally posted by: PorBleemo
Get a Maxtor DiamondMax 9+. It's very fast and only has a little whine which is completly deadened by the case.

You must not have used any Barracudas. I even ran it outside of the case and I still couldn't hear it!

I think I'm going to go for a Barracuda 8mb SATA drive. BTW, it will be replacing an IBM 20gb Deathstar! I'm only replacing it because 20gb's is starting to seem a bit small (lol), and because of the reputation of the drives...this one has been working perfectly for two years, but I've heard so many bad things about IBMs that I don't trust it.

 

[beatle]

Any new Maxtor will perform very well and be silent (when idle).

If you've got the bucks for a 74GB Raptor, they're also supposed to be very quiet since they now sport FDB motors.

 

[WobbleWobble]

Originally posted by: PorBleemo
Get a Maxtor DiamondMax 9+. It's very fast and only has a little whine which is completly deadened by the case.

Yup! I got a couple of these babies.