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Quietest hard drives?

R

reitz

Elite Member
I'm overhauling my system over the next month or two, and I'm looking for recommendations on a new hard drive.

Price/performance is definitely a concern, but my real priority is noise.

What are some recommendations on a nice, quiet hard drive? I've used several WD's, and all have been nearly silent. I've also heard Seagates and Quantumns that roared. Problem is, all of these drives (with the exception of my 8.4 WD) are old, less than 4 gig, so I can't really base anything on it. Thoughts?
 
From my experience, IBMs are the quietest drives money can buy. Well, except for Quantums Rushmore Solid-state line. 🙂

Edit: I kan spel gud.
 
IBM or Maxtor, though I can only speak from experience on the Maxtor. I have a Maxtor 10GB 7200rpm (first gen) and it's quieter than the Quantum Fireball LM Plus 30GB 7200rpm I just got. ThoughI paid $32/GB for my Maxtor and $4/GB for my Quantum 😉.
 
I built a system for a friend recently using a Maxtor 7200rpm'er, and I was annoyed because I couldn't tell if the computer was doing it's thing or not by it's HDD noises.. 😉
 
That's the same way my maxtor is(i think the wire for the HD light led is out). There are times where the screen just sits there loading something(usually fs2) and i think its crashed cause I cant' hear the hd going. Then, just before I press reset, a new screen comes up.. 🙂



Mike
P.S. I have a maxtor 15gb 7200rpm drive.
 
My Seagate Cheetahs hardly make any noise at all. I can hear my IBM drives though. I have 4 9.1 gig drives.
 
Quantum LCT15's...muahahahaha...😛

I think IBM make pretty quiet drives and the performance is quite good. I personally prefer The Quantum LM's for their speed, but they are a bit louder than the IBM drives.
 
The quietest drives are without a doubt made by Fujitsu. They won't break any speed records, but they barely make a sound.
 
I have a Quantum LM 30gb drive. It is usually pretty quiet, under very heavy loads (like defragging or loading very large files/programs) it will let out some noise. Guess it is personal preference, it doesnt really bug me much. Can't beat $140 for 30gb ATA66 7200rpm drive though =)
 
IBM or Maxtor, the IBMs have always been quiet, the old Maxtors are kinda loud but the new ones are quieter than ever. The Quantums are quiet as well.
 
Arent the IBMs made with less moving parts or something like that? I have a new maxtor 7200 ,66 20 gig and its quiet but not as quiet as the ibm.
 
IBM made with less moving parts? So I guess they're not fully functional? I dont think so, every hard drive should have equal number of parts moving in order to operate. The only possible reason a hard drive can be quieter is the slower rotations per minute, the less rpm, the low the noise.
 
The WD Caviar 7,200 rpm drive I recently got, has been the quietest I have yet used. The 2nd quietest, is probably a Fujitsu 5,400 rpm.

Far, far quieter than any of my old quantums, including an old 4,500 rpm Fireball TM.
 
I have two IBM 75GXP 20GB and two Quantum LM Plus 20GB harddrives.
The IBM is more quiet than the Quantum and has a higher STR. My Quantum does better with regards to access time.
 
Quantum can be considered the access time king, their flagship hdds always have the fastest access times in the ballpark. But Quantums arent always the quietest.
 
I have an IBM 10 gig, a Maxtor 20.3 and a WDC 20 -- all 7200 rpm. All of them are about equally quiet. Next to soundless!! Nice.

Further, the new 7200s have big cache, and cache use is really quite, lol.
 
I would hardly call my Quantum LM quiet (it's way louder than my CR was), but it's blazingly fast. 🙂
 
Try a search on Samsung hard drives. Go to company website or something. I was shopping for a hard drive, got a Maxtor, but I remember the Samsung ones feature some kind of design that makes their drives really quiet. It is a feature they highlighted. Really quiet.
 
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