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need very quiet hard drive?

U

unarmdragon

Golden Member
i'm trying to build a very quiet pc, but for some reason my hitachi is very noisy when loading or searching. i thought hitachi was suppose to be quiet. 😕 i have the hitachi 80gb 7200 2mb pata. can someone recommend me a very quiet hard drive? i prefer 80gb-160gb.

thanks
 
The hitachi drives aren't known for their quiet operation. 🙂 You might be able to reduce the noise they are making by uncoupling them from the chassis of your computer, and resting them on a piece of foam on the floor of the computer. (The chassis of the computer will amplify vibrations made by the hard drive, sometimes massively increasing the amount of noise you get. Isolating the drive on a piece of foam eliminates this. You might notice a few degrees increase in drive temp if you do this.

I use a Samsung 40GB 2.5 inch (notebook) drive as my OS drive. (You need a little adapter to allow a notebook drive to work in a desktop machine.) It is *silent*, for practical purposes. (I can hear faint noise if I open up the case, put my ear near the drive). It's slightly slower than a 3.5 inch 7200 rpm drive, but the complete silence is (for me) more important than the slight loss of speed. For storage of multimedia, etc. I use Samsung Spinpoint drives, 120GB and 160 Gb. These are really the only acceptable 3.5 inch drives for silent computing, in my opinion. I've experimented with the newer Seagate drives, but the seek noises are worse than the Samsungs', in my opinion.

edit: good place to go for information on making your computer less noisy:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/
 
A lot depends on where your computers are placed. I have two "floortops" and each has 3 Hitachi drives - and no sound is noticed from them.

My laptop has a Toshiba drive backed uo by a Seagate drive. The only one I can ever hear is the Seagate.
 
decided to go with SAMSUNG SpinPoint P Series SP1213C 120GB 7200 RPM 8M Cache Serial ATA150 Hard Drive after all the praise about how quiet these kind of hard drive is.

thanks
 
I vote for Seagate. Switche from an IBM/Hitachi Drive and now I can't even tell if the computer is on half the time :thumbsup:
 
As another said, Samsung or older Seagate are the top 3.5" drive for quietude. Or go with notebook drives if you can live with the drop in performance.

.bh.
 
If it's to be IDE or SATA, then the prime choice is Samsung, absolutely. Quietest idle, and (patented) super quiet seek.

SCSI? Then it's got to be a Seagate Cheetah 10k.7.
 
Dont some HDs (Western Digitals?) have a util to quiet them down by reducing the seek speed? Dunno if that would quite them down more than those listed above.

You can also enclose them. Dont remember who make them but they exist.
 
Originally posted by: CrispyFried
Dont some HDs (Western Digitals?) have a util to quiet them down by reducing the seek speed? Dunno if that would quite them down more than those listed above.
Click to expand...

Yeah, he might be able to turn on the Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) feature, which alters drive seeks slightly to reduce the noise being made. I think the program required to switch this on is called the Hitachi Feature Tool. You have to boot it off of a floppy disc, I think.
 
I just installed one of the new Hitachi 250GB SATA II drives, and I have to say I am impressed with how quiet it is. I also have the Samsung Spinpoint 120GB drive that so many reviews here and elsewhere have generally touted as the quietest drive out there. I've only used it for two days, but I think it is possible that the Hitachi is actually quieter than the Samsung. They both have a very low frequency "rumble" when writing, but my initial reaction is that the Hitachi's may actually be more muted than the Samsung's.
 
Have Hitachi disposed of the whining sound all their drives make for a second or two every couple of minutes, to recalibrate their heads and re-spread the fluid film they glide on? This is why I haven't touched Hitachi drives, IDE or SCSI, for quite a while - although they're otherwise indeed as quiet as the Samsung's.
 
Originally posted by: Peter
Have Hitachi disposed of the whining sound all their drives make for a second or two every couple of minutes, to recalibrate their heads and re-spread the fluid film they glide on? This is why I haven't touched Hitachi drives, IDE or SCSI, for quite a while - although they're otherwise indeed as quiet as the Samsung's.
Click to expand...

Glide on fluid?!

The heads never touch the surface of a disk or you have what's called a head crash and the drive will be damaged.
 
Originally posted by: CrispyFried
Dont some HDs (Western Digitals?) have a util to quiet them down by reducing the seek speed? Dunno if that would quite them down more than those listed above.

You can also enclose them. Dont remember who make them but they exist.
Click to expand...

its not just the seek speed, it can make noise even when idle
then the drive is on, the spinning and friction causes nosie
and when the head moves it make a little noise as well even with noise reduction technology
 
Originally posted by: edjacobson
I just installed one of the new Hitachi 250GB SATA II drives, and I have to say I am impressed with how quiet it is. I also have the Samsung Spinpoint 120GB drive that so many reviews here and elsewhere have generally touted as the quietest drive out there. I've only used it for two days, but I think it is possible that the Hitachi is actually quieter than the Samsung. They both have a very low frequency "rumble" when writing, but my initial reaction is that the Hitachi's may actually be more muted than the Samsung's.
Click to expand...

I've also heard some good things about Maxtors new DiamondMax 10 drives. Nevertheless, the jury is not in yet on these new drives. I'll be sticking with Samsung for the moment. 🙂

People should remember the SPCR forums are a good source of info on silent computing:
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/

See the Silent Storage forum for discussions on quiet hard drives.

Also, see the main web-site for a list of recomendations on quiet drives:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/
(go to the recommendations area)
 
Originally posted by: Zepper
As another said, Samsung or older Seagate are the top 3.5" drive for quietude. Or go with notebook drives if you can live with the drop in performance.

.bh.
Click to expand...

I've not really noticed a drop in performance using a 2.5 inch (notebook) drive. Granted I'm mainly doing fairly non-taxing things, like web-surfing, word-processing, listening to mp3s, etc.

If you are fanatic about silence, I think the best option would be one of the new SATA notebook drives (e.g., by Fujitsu) with NCQ for the OS drive. You don't need an adapter to use with a desktop motherboard (unlike IDE notebook drives) just use standard SATA connections. You could then add maybe a large (120 GB - 250 Gb) 3.5 inch drive for your documents, multimedia, etc.

 
Notebook drives seek slower, but this is more than made up by the smaller diameter. Linear throughput is a lot lower though.
 
Originally posted by: Peter
Notebook drives seek slower, but this is more than made up by the smaller diameter. Linear throughput is a lot lower though.
Click to expand...

I think maybe you might notice the difference in speed when e.g., loading large games, or maybe the time it takes to boot into Windows. But for most tasks, there is no difference in speed that I can discern between one of the newer notebook drives and a 7200 rpm 3.5 inch drive.
 
i have a hitachi 7k400 that i use for data (docs, music, video) ... i never hear any noise from it ... loudes noise from my comp is my nvid 6800 w/dynamic fan control on ... debating whether or not i want to sacrifice a pci slot for a silencer ... ntl the hitachi has been good and silent to me ... no cases of whining
 
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