HDD sweet spot? - capacity, performance & noise

[BadOmen]

Greetings
Which HDD nowadays would offer the best combination of:

- low noise (a reference: I have a Seagate 7200.11 500gb that sounds like a fridge on idle, that's not good at all. But I have a Caviar Green that sounds nicely)
- good capacity (to receive a good old combination of system partition + data partition)
- good performance (to run an OS evidently not as great as an SSD, but still decently)


I know the best answer is always SSD+large HDD, but I cannot consider that affordable yet.

I personally like massive capacity drives, as space will always be filled at some point, but I'm willing to listen to different opinions)

Caviar Blue was created to be that sweet spot, but I don't know if it is really that different from a Green.

Any tips?
thanks

EDIT: I've read the article about Momentus XT. I just don't have an idea about its cost, as it is *ETERNAL SIGH* not available in Canada.

 

[EarthwormJim]

I'm curious as to how you have the Seagate drive mounted. It should not be that loud. I have 3 7200.11 drives and they're not audible over my water pump which is the loudest item in my case (it's really inaudible too).

As to your question, Samsung drives have always been the quietest in my experience; even going back to my 500gb Samsung drive.

The 1TB Samsung F3 has been going on sale lately for $70 (USD) or so shipped.

 

[BlueWeasel]

The 1TB Samsung F3 has been going on sale lately for $70 (USD) or so shipped.

Samsung F3 all the way -- 500GB platters, 32MB cache, super fast, quiet. :awe:

 

[BadOmen]

Good to know about the Samsung. I had problems with Samsung in the past, but well, "past" here means 12 years ago. That's great that you guys recommended it, as I wouldn't have even considered it before.

About mounting: that Seagate HD used to be mounted horizontally on my old case. Since I got the P183, it's mounted on its side, at the lower cage, on those rubber grommets. I read a lot about suspending HDs, but as the annoying noise is when idle, I thought suspending wouldn't have that much effect.

 

[RebateMonger]

I'm curious as to how you have the Seagate drive mounted. It should not be that loud. I have 3 7200.11 drives and they're not audible over my water pump which is the loudest item in my case (it's really inaudible too).

Yeah, I see a pretty broad range of hard drives and I can't say that I've found ANY of them to be particularly loud or hot. Recent personal purchases include several 7200 rpm Hitachi 1 TB disks, a Seagate 5400 rpm 7200.11 1.5 TB disk, a WD 5400 rpm 2 TB disk, and a WD 7200 rpm 640 GB disk. The loudest things in my current servers and desktops (all stock Core2 chips) are the fans.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

I would say the 1TB drives are the sweet spot right now, in any of the models that have 500GB platters. I've been running 2x 7200.12 drives for over a year now, I think, and I cannot hear a whisper from them.

For our dev computers at work I'm trying to get them to buy 1TB F3s for us, so I obviously think those are good too.

 

[BadOmen]

I have this Seagate drive for about 4 years now. When I disconnect the Seagate and boot with the Caviar Green only, the noise difference is quite high.

I may move it to backup (as my old Maxtor backup unit freezes every time I try to copy something large to it) and get a F3.

Thanks a lot for the tips!

 

[EarthwormJim]

I have this Seagate drive for about 4 years now. When I disconnect the Seagate and boot with the Caviar Green only, the noise difference is quite high.

I may move it to backup (as my old Maxtor backup unit freezes every time I try to copy something large to it) and get a F3.

Thanks a lot for the tips!

Check to see if it's under warranty (the Seagate drive). No consumer hard drive made within the past 10 years should be that noticeably loud.

No sense using a drive on its way out as a backup drive.