New hard drive advice

[Workaholic]

Hi all, basically could you guys tell me which is the better of the two and why?

A quick search returns this thread from 4 months ago saying that the spinpoints were quieter but no actual technical info....
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.p...npoint+7200.10

At the moment, it's a toss up between a 250-300+GB Samsung Spinpoint P120 or a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10, (both are SATA 150/300 connections for a 2nd HDD to stick Windows Vista RC1/RC2 on and for general storage space.)

Cheers

[amjedm]

I did a bit of reading on silentpcreview and IIRC the Spinpoint will be a better option. I believe you can turn on AAM to make them quieter - this option is disabled in the Seagates.

Also, a couple of user opinions - the Samsung 250 got quieter after some use.

I'm thinking of giving the 80GB SATA Samsung another try - I sold the last one because I didn't know AAM could be enabled. It was too noisy for my liking.

[oralpain]

Segate drives in general have very good write performance, in my experience. The 7200.10 line also has very high platter density, and the higher the platter density the faster the drive tends to be.

I do a good ammount of video recording and segates are awesome for this, but they are not the quietest drives.

For general storage/backup price/noise might be more important than speed.

[abeacock]

I have a Samsung SpinPoint P120 250GB and it's nice and quiet (I also have rubber mounting grommets which I'm sure help a lot). I haven't played with the noise reduction tool yet (search for HUTIL on samsung's website).

I give this drive thumbs-up!

[Steyr]

I do a good ammount of video recording and segates are awesome for this, but they are not the quietest drives.

For general storage/backup price/noise might be more important than speed.

How noisy are we talking here exactly? I'm looking for a new hdd to stick in a P180b as the main drive, OS install etc.

[abeacock]

I wouldn't say it was noisy at all, mine is my one and only drive and so is accessed all the time. I'm sure you will be fine. CustomPC gave it a great review some months back and it even sat in their elite list for quite some time.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/custompc/labs...int-p120s.html