Quietest SATA drives?

[Civic2oo1x]

Anyone know which are the quietest SATA drives on the market? I want to run 2-4 SATA drives in my computer and want to keep the drive noise to a minimum. I'm definately going to get 2 Raptors, but I'm looking for 2 120GB SATA drives as well. In the past I've heard that Seagate Barracudas are quiet (for ATA100 drives). Does that statement hold true for SATA drives as well? I'm looking at Seagate, WD, and lastly Maxtor, but I'd like to stay away from Maxtor if possible. Thanks guys.

 

[Dug]

Seagate.

SATA V will be the quietest.
SATA 7200.7 will be a little louder, but very fast.

Both quieter than the wd.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Seagate would be the quietest.

The raptors will probably be loudest though.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Where does Maxtor fit in?

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

WD (performance),

Maxtor (mixture),

Seagate (quietness)

 

[imported_Phil]

Yeah, the Seagates are great for low noise, I have real problems hearing if they're working when I'm testing a system out of its case!

 

[MDE]

Seagates are the quietest, then Maxtor.

 

[lazybum131]

I'm not sure if they're out yet in SATA form,

but the new Samsung drives are quieter then the 7200.7 seagates and faster.

 

[Dug]

Originally posted by: lazybum131
I'm not sure if they're out yet in SATA form,

but the new Samsung drives are quieter then the 7200.7 seagates and faster.

According to storage review they are neck and neck.
Noise is neck and neck too.

head to head

 

[Nebor]

If you're going to get 2 Raptors, there's no point in getting silent drives in addition. May as well get all screamers if you're gonna get 2 already...

 

[Civic2oo1x]

I want fast drives as my primary drives, but the rest of the system I'm going to try to maintain a quiet setup. Going with Panaflo quiet fans, etc. so I want to keep the noise to a minimum.

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: Civic2oo1x
I want fast drives as my primary drives, but the rest of the system I'm going to try to maintain a quiet setup. Going with Panaflo quiet fans, etc. so I want to keep the noise to a minimum.

You don't seem to understand... If you get everything quiet but one thing, then you'll hear that one thing. And in this case, you'll hear those raptors whining. It's silly to invest in quiet computing, then put a couple of screamers in there.

 

[MasterFlash]

Your noise is primarily a function of the loudest component you have. A 40 db hard drive or fan in a system with 20, 10 db components will still sound like 40 db's. If the noise levels of many components are similar, then there is a small additive effect in noise increase, but it's still governed by the single loudest component. No matter what you do to any other part of your comp, the noise will be dictated by those screaming Raptors...

 

[DarkKnight]

found that out the hard way. bought a fan controller to control fans when the noise was coming from my harddrives (didn't know that harddrives could be screamers back then). Even with all the fans off i can still the HD.

 

[Bregor]

Just how loud is the Raptor? I'm looking to build a quiet system, but I'm not obsessed with eliminating all noise. Would the WD Raptor make enough noise by itself to be annoying?

 

[Soulkeeper]

i thought samsung had some quiet ones out, ahh guess those are just their regular ide drives that are quiet