How loud should a typical hard drive be?

[50]

Hello, I saw a deal on a raptor a couple days ago and I was contemplating buying it. However, I remember hearing they were really loud, so I did a little research and at storage review, they rated them at 42.5 dB. I then looked at my current WD 80 gig SE and saw that was rated at 45 dB. I've never really considered my hard drive to be "loud" but I guess I was judging wrong. So whats the typical decibal rating of HD's? What's one of the quietest 7200 RPM drives?

 

[MadMan2k]

If you have more than like.. one case fan, you shouldn't be able to hear the drive over the fan noise. I have 6 (counting power supply), and certainly can't hear the difference between spinning up and idling on my WD SE. A faster/louder drive like the raptor shouldn't make much difference.

 

[Gigante]

Well, I have to turn my music volume up full blast just to drown out the sound of my HD's.

Actually, the Raptor isn't too loud from what I have heard, but I couldn't say for sure.

 

[JBDan]

Originally posted by: 50
Hello, I saw a deal on a raptor a couple days ago and I was contemplating buying it. However, I remember hearing they were really loud, so I did a little research and at storage review, they rated them at 42.5 dB. I then looked at my current WD 80 gig SE and saw that was rated at 45 dB. I've never really considered my hard drive to be "loud" but I guess I was judging wrong. So whats the typical decibal rating of HD's? What's one of the quietest 7200 RPM drives?

The raptor is only audible during read/writes but is dead silent at idle. As far as "loud" its up to the user to infer this. With your case fans running, music playing, t.v. etc... you really can't hear it at all. If your working in a "library" type of enviornment then it would be considered audible, not loud in my opinion. Its a great drive.

 

[lkm]

raptors rock! they aren't that noisy and i hear the case fans more than the HD. The more important thing is your case. Certain cases excel in quieting & dampening noises while others don't. oh, the cpu fan is another thing, if you have a jet/turbine or any of that stuff that sounds like it belongs on a runway then u won't have to worry about the raptor's noise.