quiet hard drives...?

[shiato storm]

can anyone recommend a quiet hard drive that doesn't sound like an archeologist's pick-axe when ever I turn on my computer please!
Have budget of £50-60 so been looking at seagate barracuda (120GB, £52 from scan.co.uk), western digital caviar and maxtor diamondmax...all seem to have the same sze and rpm at similar price point but just wondering if there's one I've been missing that I could get thats pretty quiet...or which id these here are quiet?
cheers

[myth]

Samsung are quiet, but seagate is regarded as the quietest...

[mike_w]

I've got three Seagates, all are quiet - with the fans going in my PC, I can't hear the hard drive. I've also found them reliable, and they have a five year warranty.

[Hans Voralberg]

Samsung are pretty quiet, but I recommend a Hitachi, OCUK has the Hitachi 7K250 160Gb for 60 quids. And it's whisper quiet (using it and barely hear a noise).

[Timmy!!!]

The quietest seeking hard drive is the samsung, however the quietest idle hard drive is definately the seagate. I have both seagate and samsung drives.

i would personally go for the seagate barracuda, they are dam quiet!!
The samsung I have produces a faint but very high pitch whine which is driving me crazy!! Im thinking about replacing it with a seagate one when i have some spare money.

[Feck]

Id recommend Seagate Barracuda. Very reliable and as mike_w stated, they have a five year warranty. The Samsungs are also very quiet, unsure about their reliability tho.

[Furton]

Another vote for Seagate drives here.

[SilentDeath]

If you can eliminate viabration from a FDB-HDD then you remove 90% of the niose.

Its the IDLE HDD niose that really pisses me off. The clicking andstuff doesnt bother me at all.

To get rid of it I have mounted my hdd on foam and bubblewrap. There is NO viabration atall. However this isnt always a good idea unless you know your drive wont overheat - a fan should do, but Ive water-cooled mine and its about 35°c
If you do, check with the built in temp sensors using SMART. MBM5 and sisoft sandra should be able to read it, though it needs to be on in bios.

To sum up, I dont think theres that much differnece in performance between most of the recent drives, however I think there is for niose. I havent bothered reading this site atall, but its suppost to be good:

http://www.storagereview.com/article...SP1614C_6.html

[poolking]

I have had two seagate barracudas and they have been really quiet.

[Dragonb4llz]

The Seagate barracudas with NCQ are pretty good apparently.

[myth]

The Seagate barracudas with NCQ are pretty good apparently.

Yea if you have sata 2...