Quiet Enterprise Class HDDs

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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Moon GT
Posts: 96
Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2008 3:29 am
Location: Edinburgh

Quiet Enterprise Class HDDs

Post by Moon GT » Thu Nov 13, 2008 12:30 pm

Is there any such thing as a quiet enterprise class HDD? I'm going to need a couple of good, reliable drives for some upcoming builds. They'll need to store important data, and will be left on 24/7, in a business setting, so reliability is very important. Quietness probably not so much of an issue for the client, but it's an issue for me and I'm the one building them!

LobStoR
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Joined: Sat Nov 08, 2008 7:50 pm
Location: United Kingdom

Post by LobStoR » Mon Nov 17, 2008 2:30 pm

I assume that you're setting this client up with a RAID array, since you said that this will store important business data for them.

The first drive that I would recommend for this setting would be a Western Digital RE3 series, with a 5-year warranty. It is a 7200rpm drive, which isn't the greatest for silence, but I would consider them to be pretty quiet for an enterprise drive (very soft seeking noise, and some vibration reduction features). These are basically the same as the WD Black series drives, but with a few features tweaked for enterprise use - namely RAID arrays, involving timing and errors. I would never use a drive with less than a 5-year warranty for business (pretty much standard on enterprise drives, though).

Moon GT
Posts: 96
Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2008 3:29 am
Location: Edinburgh

Post by Moon GT » Tue Nov 18, 2008 5:55 am

I've yet to discuss exactly how important the data is... I'm hoping to be able to convince them to get a central file server, rather than big drives in individual machines, and set it up in RAID5. Installing RAID arrays in multiple machines will start getting expensive.

NyteOwl
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Joined: Wed Aug 23, 2006 7:09 pm
Location: Nova Scotia, Canada

Post by NyteOwl » Wed Nov 19, 2008 7:22 pm

I have four 500GB Seagate 7200.10 ES drives in RAID in a P182. There is a faint seek noise with it on the desk top a foot or so away but under the desk they are inaudible. The ES seem much quieter than the desktop AS drives.

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