quietest hard drive out there

[Nick Smith]

whats the quietest one out at the moment? looking for around 200gb.

thanks

[Marcvs]

probably a seagate 7200.10 - I have one and its inaudible in my system or a Samsung T series

[Nick Smith]

i have one of them (seagate)....bit noisy sometimes.

[GrahamGarside]

Samsung Spinpoints for 7200rpm drives. I have A couple of Seagate 7200.7's and there idle spin is very quiet, but they don't support AAM so access noise isn't silent and they do some kind of head reset check intermittently if they aren't being accessed which I've solved by having log files written to them every 10 seconds.

Of course if near silence is the priority 2.5" drives are by far the quietest option, again samsung are generally regarded as the quietest.

If you can track down an older Seagate Barracuda IV desktop drive then these are very quiet.

[Dreaming]

silentpcreview I reckon will have the answers you are seeking, they think anything over 2db is noisy :/

[MaddAussie]

Another vote for spinpoints here, tho they tend to be drowned out my my WD Raptors

[doddsy]

Same as above, used to use spinpoints in raid for my system drive, literally couldn't hear except on startup, even then it was pretty quiet. Now my raptors drown out pretty much everything!

[silentphoenix]

Some of the newer spinpoints have some crazy vibration problems (ive got a 250GB sata). They are uber silent if you hold them in your hand, but attach them to a case directly and you'll have a sine wave problem on your hands. If you can get it decoupled it would be much better (mine are in my SilentStar Duall HDD cooler, which does a decent enough job).

And another vote for SPCR

[Nick Smith]

thanks you all

[GrahamGarside]

SPCR is a great resource for computer noise reduction.

As silentpheonix mentioned vibration is a problem with almost all drives. It's also quite random and never the same between two drives. I've two seagates, one barely hums the other can build up an irritating hum that wavers in pitch but goes just by touching it. Samsungs with a nidec motor are the best but it's usually impossible to know what you are getting.

Rubber grommits between the drive and mounting will take the edge off vibrations but the most effective methods are soft mountings, either on top of foam or hung by cord. Both these methods reduce the drives cooling over being bolted to the case so adequate airflow is essential.

[chis]

Western Digital Caviar 500GB SE16 WD5000KS:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article617-page1.html

Quietest 500GB hard disk, most likely.

Otherwise, go for Spinpoint T80s. Avoid Seagates. I don't know about quiet smaller drives though (for boot/apps in music systems, for example)... sadly, Raptors aren't all that quiet.

[Sprite]

Yeah Samsung Spinpoints are nice. And regarding Seagates my parents have one in theri PC (a 7200.9 I think) and it's HORRIBLY loud

[MaddAussie]

Another vote for spinpoints here, tho they tend to be drowned out my my WD Raptors

My raptors are mounted in an antec super lan boy case and with the rubber feet fitted are fairly quiet

[GrahamGarside]

Raptors have a fairly quiet idle noise level, probably a symptom of the more strict quality standards they have. But the head chatter is inescapably loud.

[NightshadowUK]

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=99945

[FrontSideBus]

Another vote for the Spinpoints. I have 2 IDE versions and they are 100% inaudiable but the SATA version I have also is just as quiet but I can actually hear it seeking.