Seeking Very Quiet HDD

[Wats]

I'd like some suggestions on quiet, 2TB HDD's. :]

I'm afraid of how slow a Green drive might be and WD Blues don't come in 2TB. I'm open to all brands.

[GoodBytes]

Green are 5400RPM drive, so they are the quietest.

Western Digital Caviar Black are quiet as well. It has a lot of features to make it quiet, and also operates from 5400RPM to 7200RPM, so noise reduction.

The rest comes from you having a mount to absorb vibrations from your HDD in your case. All decent cases have that these days, like a rubber mount system.

[Wats]

Green are 5400RPM drive, so they are the quietest.

Western Digital Caviar Black are quiet as well. It has a lot of features to make it quiet, and also operates from 5400RPM to 7200RPM, so noise reduction.

The rest comes from you having a mount to absorb vibrations from your HDD in your case. All decent cases have that these days, like a rubber mount system.

My brother has a Black, sounds like a wood pecker. As for mounting I'm going to mount 2 or 3 drives in my 2 5.25 bays with a backplane hot swap thing. I don't have room for any hdd sleds in my R4. Right now I have an SSD and notebook HDD behind the MoBo tray, really need to expand.

Thanks for suggesting Greens, I'll be looking for a deal on some. Do you actually have experience with them? Any cons?

[obsidian1200]

As said above, WD greens are going to be your best bet barring any other factors, such as sound dampening measures. The only thing, being that they're 5400rpm drives, is that the read and write speeds are slower than their 7200rpm counterparts (though this should go without saying). Also, they're not recommended for RAID arrays due of their power-saving features. However, I think they're fine for most things despite this. I use an older 3 TB Green (it's about 3 years old now) for backups of my boot drives and my 2TB 7200rpm gaming drive, and it works just fine for that.

Speaking from my personal experience, Seagate's 2TB drive (Model # ST2000DM001) isn't that loud. I don't have any experience with WD Blacks, so I can't comment or compare the noise levels there, but to my ear, even when studying or working in a quiet room, I don't notice it past the initial spin-up (but I also notice the WD Green when it spins up, so take that as you will).

[Wats]

As said above, WD greens are going to be your best bet barring any other factors, such as sound dampening measures. The only thing, being that they're 5400rpm drives, is that the read and write speeds are slower than their 7200rpm counterparts (though this should go without saying). Also, they're not recommended for RAID arrays due of their power-saving features. However, I think they're fine for most things despite this. I use an older 3 TB Green (it's about 3 years old now) for backups of my boot drives and my 2TB 7200rpm gaming drive, and it works just fine for that.

Speaking from my personal experience, Seagate's 2TB drive (Model # ST2000DM001) isn't that loud. I don't have any experience with WD Blacks, so I can't comment or compare the noise levels there, but to my ear, even when studying or working in a quiet room, I don't notice it past the initial spin-up (but I also notice the WD Green when it spins up, so take that as you will).

Hmm.. Thank you. Seems like I am going with Green drives. I only need to store movies and some games on them. Any tips on a 3TB? Like will I have to enable something in my BIOS or something within Windows to be able to see/use them? I remember reading something about problems using 3TB drives.

[obsidian1200]

As said above, WD greens are going to be your best bet barring any other factors, such as sound dampening measures. The only thing, being that they're 5400rpm drives, is that the read and write speeds are slower than their 7200rpm counterparts (though this should go without saying). Also, they're not recommended for RAID arrays due of their power-saving features. However, I think they're fine for most things despite this. I use an older 3 TB Green (it's about 3 years old now) for backups of my boot drives and my 2TB 7200rpm gaming drive, and it works just fine for that.

Speaking from my personal experience, Seagate's 2TB drive (Model # ST2000DM001) isn't that loud. I don't have any experience with WD Blacks, so I can't comment or compare the noise levels there, but to my ear, even when studying or working in a quiet room, I don't notice it past the initial spin-up (but I also notice the WD Green when it spins up, so take that as you will).

For movies and some games, I think the Greens will work well for you. Also, what tinkering you'll need to do to get it to work depends on your hardware setup. If you're using newer hardware that supports UEFI and Windows 7, and are using a GUID Partition Table (GPT) install of Windows 7, then there shouldn't be a reason that you couldn't get the drive to show up. However, if you installed Windows 7 using a Master Boot Record (MBR), then you will have to do some tinkering. I'm tempted to suggest a somewhat Linux solution here, as it's what I've done, but I don't want to overcomplicate things. Here's a forum article that helps describe the process: http://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/252871-windows-7-install-seagate-barracuda-3tb-hdd-how-i-finaly-did.html

[Wats]

Ahhh, Alright. Seems easy enough.

Thank you again obsidian.

[Guest]

Green are 5400RPM drive, so they are the quietest.

Western Digital Caviar Black are quiet as well. It has a lot of features to make it quiet, and also operates from 5400RPM to 7200RPM, so noise reduction.

The rest comes from you having a mount to absorb vibrations from your HDD in your case. All decent cases have that these days, like a rubber mount system.

Yeah I was about to say, WD Blacks are some of the noisiest.

[Guest]

You may also want to have a look at Samsung drives. I can't remember the exact details but I've used a few of their 5400 and 7200 drives and I must say they were quite quiet. Otherwise Seagate Barracudas aren't incredibly loud though as suggested, green drives will probably be your best bet.

[Wats]

You may also want to have a look at Samsung drives. I can't remember the exact details but I've used a few of their 5400 and 7200 drives and I must say they were quite quiet. Otherwise Seagate Barracudas aren't incredibly loud though as suggested, green drives will probably be your best bet.

Samsung HDD's.. I don't think I have ever used one. I think I'm going go find some reviews on w/e is their latest model.

Thanks windspeed.

[Wats]

You may also want to have a look at Samsung drives. I can't remember the exact details but I've used a few of their 5400 and 7200 drives and I must say they were quite quiet. Otherwise Seagate Barracudas aren't incredibly loud though as suggested' date=' green drives will probably be your best bet.[/quote']

Lol.. I don't think Samsung is making HDD's anymore... That took a second to sink in.

[GoodBytes]

Really W.D Caviar Black are noisy? Man they must have changed then. Mine (I have 2, from completely (4 years apart) different years) are really quiet. No motor noise, no seek noise, no nothing.

I guess W.D got cheap. :/

[Guest]

You may also want to have a look at Samsung drives. I can't remember the exact details but I've used a few of their 5400 and 7200 drives and I must say they were quite quiet. Otherwise Seagate Barracudas aren't incredibly loud though as suggested' date=' green drives will probably be your best bet.[/quote']

Lol.. I don't think Samsung is making HDD's anymore... That took a second to sink in.

Haha - I have to admit the Samsung drives I've got here next to me are at least 2-3 years old. Times change I guess.

[parashpa]

Really W.D Caviar Black are noisy? Man they must have changed then. Mine (I have 2, from completely (4 years apart) different years) are really quiet. No motor noise, no seek noise, no nothing.

I guess W.D got cheap. :/

Some aren't it seems and some models are. I have a WD Black 500GB and it barely makes noises and my WD Black 1TB makes loud noises.

[Arndroid]

I have had a 500GB Samsung HDD, back from 2009 I believe.

It sure wasn't quite, but neither loud.

 

Then I got a 320GB Seagate barracuda 2009-2010 ish I think, that one was really making noise.

And a WD Blue Caviar 640GB 2010-2011ish,  this one was not to quite either.

 

Now I have a Seagate barracuda 2TB and it is really quiet!

That said, I use it in combination with an SSD (Samsung 840 Pro 128GB).

But when I try accessing files on it, it's really fast, and still quite. :)

HDD's have changed now that they can fit 1TB on one platter, hehe.

 

Here is a benchmark picture I took: (ST2000DM001 is the Seagate 2TB barracuda HDD)

 

I was just trying the Samsung tools out that came with my SSD.

As you can tell from the most upper benchmark numbers, that is my SSD, I only have SATA II ports. :)

(Still that SSD is rocking!)

[Hyp0xia]

The guy who said Western Digital Caviar Blacks are quiet is out of his mind. I love my Western Digital Caviar Black storage drive, but it's anything but quiet. I had to invest in FrozenCPU's HDD noise reduction system to make the thing tolerable.