Urgently Need a (quiet) Storage Drive

TBSN

Senior member
Nov 12, 2006
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I've been reading about some of the relatively well-priced HDD's that have come out recently.

I was almost set on a WD 640GB Caviar "Black," it seems to perform well, but I hear it is loud. That's no good for me, I like my PC nice and quiet.

How about the well-liked WD 640GB Caviar "blue"? (the one with 16mb cache) I would assume that it is essentially the same drive as the black, but with less cache, does that mean it is loud too? Would anyone with these drives care to comment?

My main HDD now is a 250GB WD Caviar with 16mb of cache. Would I see any performance benefit if I used the 640GB drive as my system drive and used the 250GB as storage? I would assume that it is impossible to put my Program Files directory on the storage drive, right?

Thanks!
 

California Roll

Senior member
Nov 8, 2004
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WD Black's are their fastest, best performing drives. They're also indeed the loudest.

Blue's perform slower than Black's. They're very quiet.

Green's perform even worse than the Blue's. They're the quietest.

If your new drive has 32mb cache, it would be better than your old 250gb as a system drive.
 

Denithor

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2004
6,298
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81
1) Buy the WD6400AAKS
2) Install in your system
3) Use the WD lifeguard tools to copy your current system intact onto the new drive
4) Thank us when you don't hear your new drive running faster than your old one
 

Zap

Elite Member
Oct 13, 1999
22,377
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Originally posted by: California Roll
WD Black's are their fastest, best performing drives. They're also indeed the loudest.

They don't seem very loud to me, except perhaps the seeks (which makes the drive faster too). You can also make any drive quieter by decoupling it from the chassis.
 

tynopik

Diamond Member
Aug 10, 2004
5,245
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suspending your hard drive will make a tremendous difference in the noise

see silentpcreview.com
 

TBSN

Senior member
Nov 12, 2006
925
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76
Originally posted by: Denithor
1) Buy the WD6400AAKS
2) Install in your system
3) Use the WD lifeguard tools to copy your current system intact onto the new drive
4) Thank us when you don't hear your new drive running faster than your old one

Great, thanks!

Just to check, is it possible to have one's Program Files directory on a HDD other than the one that the operating system is installed on?

Thanks again!

 

California Roll

Senior member
Nov 8, 2004
515
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Originally posted by: Zap
Originally posted by: California Roll
WD Black's are their fastest, best performing drives. They're also indeed the loudest.

They don't seem very loud to me, except perhaps the seeks (which makes the drive faster too). You can also make any drive quieter by decoupling it from the chassis.

I'll edit that by saying the 1TB Blacks, the only ones I've heard in person (I have 2). Don't know how loud/quiet the smaller capacity Blacks are.

These may be loud for hard drives but by no means are they the loudest component in my computer, so it's a moot point for me. Mounted in an external esata case, they are definitely louder than my Samsung 1TB and Seagate 7200.11.