The scorpios are fantastically quiet even the black versions. They are brilliant allround Check out SPCR if you need some real fanatical advice lol
I've looked at the same sort of issues in the past, and I have used samsung drives (3.5") as they have been reliable and the noise very low - usually it is the head seek that is most noticeable and that is very quiet.
I have just built a small machine using 2.5" drives - WD Scorpio balcks (Chosen over the Samsung because thay are 7,200 RPM devices). These are mounted flat on an aluminium plate, and again are nearly silent in operation, only a faint clicking as the head traverses in and out. the only drawback is that at present the maximum capacity is 320GB, if you go for the Scorpio blue (5,400 RPM) there is a 500GB capacity drive available.
I have no experience of the WD 3.5" drives, but I have no reason to think that tthey would be excessivley noisy.
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If I am to go with Storagereview's measurements, then the Scorpio drives are not the way to go:
http://www.storagereview.com/php/ben...4=370&devCnt=5
They do not have the Caviar Blue (which should be neck to neck with the Samsung F1 as one of the faster 7200 drive minus the Caviar Black), or the Samsung F2 EcoGreen (a 5400RPM 3.5" drive competitive with the Green Power), but I see not much going for the Scorpio drive other than much lower power consumption. Granted the Scorpio Black seem to do relatively better in some multi-user environment, but that should not matter much unless you are building a server. When looking at the IO/sec in a single user environment (I think that's more important than sequential transfer rate measurements), the Scorpio are not as impressive. Maybe they are less prone to vibration induced noise, but the EcoGreen F2 I have is inaudible over the Antec P182's fans on low settings already so unless you've modded your Antec 900 with quieter fans, I reckon that a quiet 3.5" drive is a better way to go.
Ok cheers for all the input everyone, I've decided to go for two 320GB 3.5" drives, as as far as I can see, one mounted properly should be pretty quiet, and it saves faffing around with adaptors which may interfere with the A71's quiet mounting system anyway and negate the quieter qualities of a 2.5" drive.
Narrowed it down to this Samsung or this WD. Any reason why I should pay the extra £3 for the WD? From reading around it seems the single platter is pot-luck with both these drives.
Gonna order today ideally, then they'll be here on Tuesday for some Windows 7 fun after my last exam
(On second thoughts I may not be in a fit state to be tinkering with PC hardware on Tue, Wed or Thursday, but I'll see how it goes )
As far as I know, all WD 3200AAKS are single platter, but I'm unsure on the Samsung ones.
OK cheers I'll go with the WD ones then. One last question- I'm going to be picking up an enclosure to use my old HDD as a backup for some of my data. I'm thinking that this Akasa Integral looks pretty good, as I have a few 40GB IDEs knocking about at home that I could use in it as well. Reviews seem OK on the whole, power supply being big isn't really an issue for me.
Any reasons to steer clear of this enclosure or choose another one? There are quite a lot of choices at that price point.
Thats a nice enclosure as i have seen one up close.
A second vote for the Akasa. I have three of them. Their power supply connectors are much better than the IcyDock ones, far less likely to bend pins or for the connector to simply fall out while in use.
Cheers all, done & dusted now. Can't wait to get W7 installed on there, love fresh OS installs, so tidy & fast, pity it never stays that way!
I'm planning on using one (new) drive per OS, and an existing 3rd drive as shared media storage for music + film.
I've just replace my Samsung HD322HJ because the platter wasn't perfectly balanced. This translates to excessive vibration and constant noise which is amplified by the case. Even when the drive was suspended it was still audible. If you touch the drive you can feel the vibration which hardly inspires confidence. I replaced it with a WD 640GB blue and no such problems.
2 out of 4 Samsung drives I have purchased over the last 2 years have excessive vibration. I'm not impressed with the quality control from Samsung. It's not like it's a difficult fault to detect in a drive.
Just on a side note, since the HDDs are already bought - the Samsung F1s are 334GB per platter, which makes the 320 GB'er a single platter drive as well
I wonder when SSDs will start to be mentioned.. couple of years perhaps.
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