My hard drive noise is driving me NUTS!

[rommelrommel]

This drive absolutely SUCKS! It's a Maxtor D740X 40 Gig, which is actually waiting for a RMA replacement, but I was never really happy with it in the first place. What would be the quietest 7200rpm 8M cache drives around? If there is a quiet SATA drive I might be down for that too. I don't wanna use this replacement drive at all so I can sell it as such.

 

[cheapgoose]

i have one word for ya

SEAGATE

 

[Vonkhan]

Use rubber gromets and wrap the drive with Akasa

 

[rommelrommel]

Originally posted by: Vonkhan
Use rubber gromets and wrap the drive with Akasa

What's Akasa???

 

[cheapgoose]

akasa

 

[Sabreguy]

I have 2 Seagate braccuda 7200rpm drives, and I can't hear them access at all even if I open the case.

I think fujitsu also make some quiet drives.

 

[mindwreck]

whats with all this bad mouthing about maxtor??

i have a 7200 rpm maxtor drive and i don't hear anything. bro has the 160gb 8mb special edition one from maxtor running in a external cd drive thingy,( he replaced the burner with the hdd so he can carry it around) that thing is really quiet. his comp only has a ps, a whisper fan from enermax, and stock amd fan (i wish my comp ran as quiet as his)

. i dunno about u guys but i've liked maxtor's hdd and still do

 

[amcdonald]

Mindwreck, I'm going to assume that your standard of "quiet" is not as picky as mine. A stock amd fan is annoying to me.
And I don't know how the external drive sounds, but I'm also not going to spend the ~$300 to find out.
Maxtor makes fine drives, and I use them at work... but if you are looking for silent go with a seagate barracuda V.
Thats what I use in my silent system, and almost everyone else into quiet systems would agree.
For further reduction of vibration/noise, buy thin elastic rope and suspend the drive(s) in the 5.25 bays as shown HERE.

 

[mechBgon]

It would be interesting to see some comparative benchmarks of a suspended hard drive versus rigidly-mounted. Seek times in particular may be affected a bit, if I recall correctly.

 

[mindwreck]

maybe.. but the external thing(if u read clearly) was a cd burner than my bro took apart and replaced with the 160gb hd. rans about the same level as my comp. i have panaflos in my system, soo.. iunno how much quieter your computer is. but.. o well i like them. my WD is starting to piss me off. watever u do. don't buy a WD hdd..

 

[rommelrommel]

I think the noise is related to it going bad, because it wasn't originally this obnoxious. However, it has been the loudest thing in my case for a while, and now with it worse... let's just say it's time to move on. It isn't so much the level of noise as the pitch, this is a real high annoying pitch.

Found a heck of a deal (I think) on a 80 Gig 7200 rpm 8m 7200.7 locally in stock ($100 CAD) so I think that's the way I'll go.

I'm not crazy about wrapping a drive with sound deadening... that seems like one heck of a bad insulator for temps to me.

 

[HiTek21]

I have a Seagate Barracuda IV drive and its so quiet I don't even know its on. Even my Western Digital SE is fairly quiet. I would stay far far away from Fujitsu hard drives. I had one on my laptop and one on my moms desktop, they make this awful loud whining sound.

 

[beatle]

Anything with fdb (fluid dynamic bearings) will be pretty quiet @ idle. This is the most annoying sound to me, not seeks (except for those old 7200 rpm scsi drives)! :Q I had a 120 gig, 7200 rpm, 8meg cache maxtor diamondmax 9 which was silent @ idle. Seeks were a little on the loud side, about on par with my raptor (which replaced the maxtor). I've never heard a seagate barracuda IV make any noise.

 

[bandana163]

The new DiamondMax (Plus) 9 series for example 6Y080P0 (GB) are extremely quiet even though they are 7200 RPM.
I can hear no noise at all coming from my HDD. The older D740X drives are a bit louder, but still barely noticeable in my opinion.

 

[zobskyX]

i've had / installed most of the newer 7200rpm drives and recommend the seagate baraccuda (sp ?) over any of the others (ibm, wd, maxtor). these things are SILENT, RELIABLE, and run fairly cool. I've seem them running in various computers i built for the past 3 years and they have had no problems (unlike my old IBM deskstar drive which I've had to RMA 4 times in 3 years)


i've also had a couple of lower rpm fujitsu drives and they are nice, ..though i suspect you would be looking at a 7200 rpm drive. they are fairly cheap over the www and seem a lot more practical than

bottom line: get the seagate: ...i am 110% sure you are going to love it.

ps. don't worry about the ATA100 vs. ATA133, ..just get an ATA100 seagate IDE drive

 

[Jeff7]

Or buy more/louder fans to drown out the sound of the drives. Some Vantec Tornado's should do the trick.

I use Western Digital drives in both my PC's - 3 in my secondary PC, and one in my main PC (the main PC also has a Seagate and an IBM). I can't ever hear the hard drives making any noise. But that could be from all the fans in the systems.

 

[render]

I have two WD SE drives, which are making the most noise(high pitch) out of my computer.

 

[bergenvr6]

I had two WD hard drives that whined like crazy, drove me insane. I just bought 2 Seagate Barracuda IV's to replace them, and they are silent. The only way I know they are seeking is by the HDD indicator light.

 

[rommelrommel]

Thanks so much guys, I can finally tolerate my computer again. In the process I also found a bad fan that was contributing maybe 10-15% of my headache.

What a joke that Enermax power supplies use el cheapo Globe fans...

 

[Bookie]

maxtor and western digital will be silent when you first purchase them but over time will continue to whine more and more. I replace my main computer with the Seagate Barracuda V 120gb and it is more silent that I could have ever imagined.

I have a question for those in the know. What's the difference between the barracuda IV and V? I have been shopping for the best prices so I can replace my wife's hdd and my server's hdd and the IV's are cheaper, but I can't seem to figure out what the difference is.

 

[NokiaDude]

My Western Digital 80gb SE is extremely quiet.

 

[amcdonald]

Loud and quiet are relative terms...

 

[Naruto]

Originally posted by: rommelrommel
This drive absolutely SUCKS! It's a Maxtor D740X 40 Gig, which is actually waiting for a RMA replacement, but I was never really happy with it in the first place. What would be the quietest 7200rpm 8M cache drives around? If there is a quiet SATA drive I might be down for that too. I don't wanna use this replacement drive at all so I can sell it as such.

Same hard drive as u rommel but I got the 80gb version and it should be a FDB drive. Its a D740X-6L. There is something wrong with these D740 hard drives, since Maxtor stopped it pretty fast and made the 8mb DiamondMax 9 series drives. But god its loud like a mother! If i were you, take out the drive and lie it on some books or something. It will be much more quieter, nearly silent even. I tried using grommets or rubber washers to pad the harddrive to the cage, but it was still pretty loud. Can you tell me how RMA the drive? I would gladly rma this drive for a newer maxtor series drive. Even if the drive is slower, it will just feel better if it was quiet. I also have a 40gb Barracuda IV, its totally silent. Boy I can't wait until I RMA this sucker. Don't even bother with rubber grommets or sound dampening pads to wrap around the drive. Grommets are not very effective with this and sound dampening pads will cause it to overheat.

 

[Tab]

Using a WD400JB, very whiney! I wonder if Akasa. I cant belive everyone wants to use rubber groments. Its most logical to think someone is going to check their screws to make sure they are tight before they accuse their hd of making nosie. Now we only need Western Digital to switch for quieter bearings and S-ATA. Maybe a consumer version of the Raptor Drive.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
It would be interesting to see some comparative benchmarks of a suspended hard drive versus rigidly-mounted. Seek times in particular may be affected a bit, if I recall correctly.

The guys at SPCR made no mention of that, only that suspending bumps up the temperatures about 5-6 degrees C. No word on performance.

- M4H