HDD Recommendations

[General_Pox]

G'day all,

 

First post here, go easy on me.

 

Anyway, I'm looking to purchase a HDD for 1080p gameplay recording and general storage. Not too sure what size I want, thinking 2TB.

The main thing however, is the drive needs to be quiet. My rig is focused on silence and I don't need some rattling beast in there.

 

I've heard WD Reds are fairly quiet/don't rattle as they're optimised for multi-drive NAS setups, but aren't they not meant for general PCs... Thoughts?

 

Also willing to go for a SSHD if there are any "quiet" ones.

 

Cheers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Random note: my IRL name is Linus, it feels weird using this forum.  :blink:

 

[kameshss]

Go for Seagate SSHD ST2000DX001.

According to TechReport, they said its a quite one will fulfill your need.

[General_Pox]

Thanks! I'll check it out.

[Captain_WD]

Hey there General_Pox,

 

Welcome to the forum! 

Basically any regular platter drive should do the job for you. I would recommend you check some drives with higher cache (32 or 64MB), at least 7,200 rpm. and SATA 6 Gb/s with good read/write speed. 

What  you mentioned about WD Red drives is correct - they are designed for RAID and NAS setups. They would work for your needs but might be a bit overkill. I would suggest you look at WD Blue or WD Black (64MB Cache), as they seem great for what you would like to do.

WD Blue series only go up to 1TB, so if you decide to go with a 2TB version, you'd need to look at the WD Black. 

Here are a couple of links:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=770

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=760

 

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask if you have any questions

 

Captain_WD.

[General_Pox]

Thanks for the reply Captain_WD.

 

I am familiar with WD Blue, but would rather have more than 1TB.

 

I was investigating WD Blacks, but everywhere I've looked they are regarded as noisy. Acoustics is my primary concern as my PC is in my bedroom. I can only barely hear my rig in the dead of night when I put my head next to the case.

 

 

 

 

[Theo]

WD green.

Silent and they are more than enough to record gameplay, ive done it

[Dimwitted]

I second the Seagate. It's very quiet.

[DarkFerrary250]

WD green. the Seagate SSHD would make more sense to use it as OS boot drive

[ManWithBeard1990]

If you want it to be quiet my two cents is that the way you mount it is more important than the drive itself. Find something to uncouple the drive's vibration from your case and you'll be alright.

[Dimwitted]

It may or may not. The WD Black armatures are related to the Velociraptor drives. They're very fast and accurate at the cost of noise. You'd be amazed at how much grinding goes on when it's doing a seek. My old Raptor was very noisy especially compared to my 120 gb WD drive. But it was very fast and reliable. Performance has costs.

[Captain_WD]

WD Green is indeed the drive that was designed for running cool and quiet. It is more quiet than the others, but as a power-saving and cool drive, it is designed for secondary storage and you might find it a bit slow for recording 1080p gameplay. If you can calculate how much data you are going to write per second during recordings, you can easily compare it to any drive's read/write speed and see if that would work. 

I would go ahead and agree with @ManWithBeard1990 and say that the way and place the drive is mounted is as important as the design of the drive itself. Also, as @Dimwitted pointed out, usually the drive's rotational speed and overall performance comes with the cost of increased noise. I would suggest you go through the manuals of the drives that you are choosing between and check out the noise levels. They give pretty good insights for this matter. Also, I would search on the internet for videos or people that already have experience with these drives and check their opinions. The more - the better.

[General_Pox]

Thanks for the replies folks B)

[kittsykat]

WD Black