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Thread: WD Drive noise

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    WD Drive noise

    I'm thinking about getting a new HDD in the future, probably a WD after a friend told me how good his WD Black was but since then I've realised that the loudest thing in my PC is a 7200RPM drive. IDEALLY I'd want to go quieter than this (it's pretty much just a hum), but I'm not sure if a Black drive will be quieter. Has anyone got any experience comparing Black, Blue and Green drives in terms of noise and/or speed? Also if 2.5'' drives are louder, because they could be a better option if I get a new case and end up removing the 3.5" bays at some point.

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    Re: WD Drive noise

    The bad part of WD Black drives is the seek noise, the "click" it makes from head movement when fetching a file. Apparently that can be turned down with "acoustic management" controls, though I just put up with it. Most don't make much of a hum, or at least they don't if you only have one. My WD Red drives do drone a bit, but I think that is a beat frequency from them being in a pair.

    If I wanted quiet drives in the past I always bought Samsung drives. Not bought one since they got taken over by Seagate though, so don't know if they are still as good. Samsung drives could be hard to tell if they were powered up.

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    root Member DanceswithUnix's Avatar
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    Re: WD Drive noise

    Follow up on this, I just re-built a PC for my mum and chose a 500GB WD Black laptop drive (from ebuyer). It feels pretty quick, certainly on par with the 3.5in WD Black in my wife's PC. The difference is it is far far quieter. Can hardly hear it spinning, and the head movement was only just audible over the CPU fan (Arctic Freezer Pro 7 set to quiet in the BIOS).

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    Re: WD Drive noise

    The observed noise of the drive will vary greatly depending on your case - as long as it is positioned in a standard mounting location with 5.25" bays above it, a solid side panel etc... and without a meshed front panel design you would be unlikely to hear the spinning of the drive over the case fans.

    More important in my experience though is the mounting mechanism and the isolation of the vibration produced when the drive is seeking - usually noticeable as a rumbling sound. My previous case (an Antec P190) was great for eliminating this - it used special mounting screws to secure the drives into their cage with thick silicone pads, which totally prevented the vibration being passed through to the case itself. My current case (Phanteks Enthoo Primo) is actually not as good in this regard - in fact I'm going to fit my storage drive into one of these:

    http://www.quietpc.com/smartdrive-classic

    Expensive, but I've used one before and they are extremely effective at silencing a drive - I used it with one of the old 150 Gb WD Raptor drives (10000 RPM) and couldn't hear it at all once in the enclosure.

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    Re: WD Drive noise

    For less expensive (and almost certainly not as good as the above) this is a good option. I use one on a WD Blue that was driving me crazy, and I can barely tell it's going now

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    Re: WD Drive noise

    If you want to make almost any hard drive quiet, then Bungee mod it. Bit of Shock cord & some cable 'p' clips, job done.
    My Home Cinema (Getting on a bit now )
    www.grimleyplex.co.uk

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