Quiet Harddrives for Storage?

[Revan654]

I'm going building a PC for the first time. I will be needing some storage drives between 4 to 6 tb. What are some good reliable and quiet harddrives to buy?

 

No Seagate drives Please, I had a bad experience with them awhile back.

[RollinLower]

http://www.amazon.com/Green-6TB-Desktop-Hard-Drive/dp/B00LO3KMK0

 

these are supposed to be pretty good!

[Guest]

hgst's are good.however they are on the slow side

[Analog]

Anything that is from the WD Green or Red Series would suit your needs. 

[Toughasdirt]

Go with Western Digital Red's. They are made for NAS's. If you want performance out of the drive go for Western Digital Black. Or get a smaller SSD (Samsung 850 Evo) and then get Western Digital Black or several Blue's. Try and stay away from Green's they are slow.

[Sakkura]

WD Green has issues with head parking, though it's probably fine if it's just an infrequently accessed storage drive.

[Altecice]

WD Greens. 

[Revan654]

Go with Western Digital Red's. They are made for NAS's. If you want performance out of the drive go for Western Digital Black. Or get a smaller SSD (Samsung 850 Evo) and then get Western Digital Black or several Blue's. Try and stay away from Green's they are slow.

 

Heard Blacks can get Loud, Red's are even louder. Is this still true? I wouldn't touch greens due to the parking issues.

[Blake]

<oops double post>

[Blake]

I'm going building a PC for the first time. I will be needing some storage drives between 4 to 6 tb. What are some good reliable and quiet harddrives to buy?

 

No Seagate drives Please, I had a bad experience with them awhile back.

For loudness, look at RPM.

5400rpm is quietest.

7200rpm is normal.

10k rpm is loud

15k rpm is really loud.

SSD is silent

 

As your building a computer and not a server/NAS/SAN your options are:

Green Fine, has the same burst read/writes as blacks as cache is the same. expect lower sustained transfers (100MBPS versus 120MBPS -> don't take this as final as there are other factors i.e. single large file or multiple small files). These drives will park the heads when not in use, and spin down the platters. During normal use you wont notice anything, however if you walk back to your system after a few mins you will have a noticeable lag (2-3 seconds) before the drive becomes responsive (i.e. you open explorer and go to browse your c:\).

 

Blue are like green but not available (or rarer at least) and don't park the heads.

 

Blacks are like blues but run at 7200rpm.

 

Reds are like Blues but have features that make it a better performer for RAID. if your not raiding there is 0 reason for getting these.

 

Red pros are like reds but designed for 8+ raid arrays.

 

Purples are for constant writes.

 

RE drives are for enterprise.

[Sakkura]

Blue are like green but not available (or rarer at least) and don't park the heads.

 

Blacks are like blues but run at 7200rpm.

 

Reds are like Blues but have features that make it a better performer for RAID. if your not raiding there is 0 reason for getting these.

 

Red pros are like reds but designed for 8+ raid arrays.

 

Purples are for constant writes.

 

RE drives are for enterprise.

 

That's not how it works. WD Blue runs at 7200 RPM just like Blacks, they're essentially cheaper Blacks with a shorter warranty.

 

Reds run at 5400 RPM like Greens, but are more durable and meant for NAS use. Not particularly for RAID.

[DirkW]

Heard Blacks can get Loud, Red's are even louder. Is this still true?

 

WUT? Red louder than Black? Nope. Reds are among the most quiet drives in WD's line.

 

That's not how it works. WD Blue runs at 7200 RPM just like Blacks, they're essentially cheaper Blacks with a shorter warranty.

Reds run at 5400 RPM like Greens, but are more durable and meant for NAS use. Not particularly for RAID.

Well some stuff about the Reds (TLER) is actually only important in a RAID, so they are indeed optimized for RAID. However, they work just as fine as a single drive in a desktop, as they do in a RAID array on a NAS or server.

[SnafuPossum]

Unless you are cheaping out on a case, any modern hard drive should be very quiet unless a head is messing up. I only really hear my 3tb reds during spin up and sometimes when I access a folder with a bunch of small files which is to be expected with ANY spinning drive. I would be more worried about getting DOA drives or ones that are known for short life spans then how quiet they are.

[Captain_WD]

I'm going building a PC for the first time. I will be needing some storage drives between 4 to 6 tb. What are some good reliable and quiet harddrives to buy?

 

No Seagate drives Please, I had a bad experience with them awhile back.

 

Hey Revan654,

 

As the guys sugested, you can check out WD Green as they are designed for cool and quiet secondary storage. WD Green is your energy-efficient drive that works cool, quiet and saves a lot of power. It is designed for backups and secondary storage. Its features allow it to be a great choice for quiet backup builds or for archiving. It is mostly chosen for massive media storage (up to 6TB) in builds that have another drive for the OS and active programs and games. http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=74jIhy

 

WD Red is also an option, but in regular desktop usage, it should perform similarly to WD Green as the additional NAS/RAID features won't be utilized. 

 

Another option that you can consider is WD AV as it also works really quiet: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=q0Y3Fp

 

Captain_WD.