How loud is too loud for mechanical HDDs?

[GoStumpy]

That is a great link! Still didn't hear anything that sounds like the crunching that I always hear... Just realized it reminds me of my OLD computer HDD's sitting around, crunching away as they think... Just irked me that my brand new WD is making those noises.

Come to think of it my WD 1TB Green drive makes the same noise... I suppose it is quiet enough to be considered normal operational noises, I must have especially good hearing

I'll give the suspension method a try perhaps, seems like a good idea!

 

[thelastjuju]

To those others with the noisier WD drives.. can you check your label too?

So far I have like 6 WD's.. 5 of them silent, all from Thailand. 1 of them quite noisy, very "crunchy" while seeking, from Malaysia.

If its going to be quite a while before the prices to come down, I'm going to get at least one WD1TB off ebay.. and I'll look for a Thailand model if this is the case.

But to be perfectly honest, I keep my case tucked underneath the desk and I barely hear it anyway.. my only main concern with its seeking so loudly is if this correlates with reliability. So does a nosier, crunchier drive necessarily even mean lower life expectancy?

 

[GoStumpy]

All I know is that the only drive I had fail on me did loud CLICKING for a week or two prior to completely dying... It was a Maxtor. Haven't had another drive fail on me ever though! :thumbsup:

 

[thelastjuju]

eww, a Maxtor D:

Clicking sounds are the clicks of death though.. these louder seeking sounds that me and others are experiencing are a much different sound.

But it is a noise that other hard drives don't make, nonetheless.

 

[Puppies04]

When I was running 120mm fans they didn't bother me as much now i'm on 200mm ones i'm kind of wishing I could buy a whole bunch of SSDs without the "mrs" castrating me.

 

[RU482]

I had a Maxtor Fireball something or other 10GB drive in the first PC I built. It ran louder than when I use a grinder to sharpen my lawnmower blades. I think it is still out there in one of my relatives machines, probably still running Win98

 

[GoStumpy]

I moved the tower to my desktop, and the noise is driving me nuts... Almost like it's shaking around some ball bearings inside itself when seeking...

I think a SSD is in my very near future This will turn into my storage drive

 

[ctk1981]

Samsung was known for the click of death also. Worked on two computers that both did it. Quite annoying. One survived for quite a while that way, the other I recommended they replace it with a WD caviar black.

My worst drive in my system is my hitatchi enterprise drive. Hopefully I can afford to upgrade to a 2TB drive soon and eliminate that drive and another and keep things quiet again.

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

Seagate Click Click Click boom firmware upgrade ooops data gone

 

[coffeejunkee]

Wow, I don't know how I never noticed that before .. but the newer and nosier drive was manufactured in MALAYSIA, while all my other ones were from THAILAND! I even have a few WD 640GB's (6401AALS) and they too are silent and made in Thailand..

It can't be just the country of manufacturing, since my drive from Thailand is noisy as well.

A lot of drives are single platter now which can produce more seek noise I believe. I noticed the recent WD blue drives are much noisier and have a high pitched whine that gets on my nerves!

I had 2 single platter 500GB AAKS drives before my current drive, both were quite silent and surely produced a lot less vibrations.

It's just worth mentioning that suspending or rubber mounting a hard drive could potentially affect its performance.

The drive actuator mechanism is balanced for a rigid mounting. If the actuator can cause the drive to swing around, it can potentially degrade the seeks by making them go marginally off course.

RAID edition drives incorporate gyroscopes and vibration sensors which are used to compensate the actuator mechanism in case the drive rattles around (12 drives in RAID seeking together can shake even the stiffest of cases). However, these expensive components are omitted in desktop drives.

If you're going to suspend a drive, it would be sensible to benchmark it before and after to be sure that you aren't degrading performance

Oh well, perfect solution isn't perfect I guess. Think I'm just going to stay with the green drives from now on, they're pretty much fast enough anyway.