WD Green 2TB too slow, is 2.8' 7200RPM the solution?

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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axee
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WD Green 2TB too slow, is 2.8' 7200RPM the solution?

Post by axee » Mon Nov 18, 2013 4:17 am

Hi!

I currently have WD20EARS in my system, being the loudest part.. but the main problem - it's too slow. I have about 500GB of files (sample libraries) that need faster speeds than current drive and about 700 GB of files that can be transferred on external hard drive or NAS.

Can you recommend me FAST 2.5' 1TB HDD (preferably 7200RPM), that will not be louder than my current drive? 2TB would be perfect, but no necessary..

Thank you!

quest_for_silence
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Re: WD Green 2TB too slow, is 2.8' 7200RPM the solution?

Post by quest_for_silence » Mon Nov 18, 2013 7:59 am

axee wrote:Can you recommend me FAST 2.5' 1TB HDD (preferably 7200RPM), that will not be louder than my current drive? 2TB would be perfect, but no necessary..


Currently I've several 7200rpm 2.5" notebook drives (Hitachi, Seagate, WD), and IME/IMHO no one is actually quieter than your drive: some are clearly louder (WD), and some are maybe even slower (Seagate), but IME usually their airborne noise is more noticeable than the one belonging to a quiet 3.5" 5400rpm drive.

If I can make an educated guess, perhaps you might try to reorganize your data by short stroking your current drive (and placing your libraries on the inner portions), and then see what happens.

Abula
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Re: WD Green 2TB too slow, is 2.8' 7200RPM the solution?

Post by Abula » Mon Nov 18, 2013 8:16 am

I been happy with my Hitachi 7K1000, its not silent, and i would say its not super quiet either, but in my case it doesnt get a lot of heavy use, as my programs are on my SSDs, now when i watch movies, search for files or even encode on it, i cant hear it. But i did test it outside before installing it and it had some vibrations and there was seeking noise, but not noticeable in my case.

I also bought a couple of Hitachi 5k1500 recently as i wanted to upgrade my download station to have more room to store, and i can tell you very similar noise to the 7k1000 from what i could tell subjectively. Neither is ultra quiet, but neither is a noise monster.

I did try a WD Scorpio black 750gb, and it was decent, but i could hear it more than my 7k1000, again all subjective, no real SPL.

So if you are seeking for a 1tb 2.5 mechanical 7200rpm hdd is to go with 7k1000. The one i bought was HGST Travelstar 2.5-Inch 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache Internal Hard Drive, and the box says 7k1000 (bought it from amazon but from 3rd party seller), seems like there are two skus, there is also the HGST Travelstar 7K1000 2.5-Inch 1TB 7200 RPM SATA III 32MB Cache Internal Hard Drive 0J22423, this one i have not tested nor own, so i cant say how it is, but has good user reviews, i kinda think one is retail and the other is OEM, but i really never bother checking this, as when i bought it there was no 2 skus available, just the one i bought.

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Re: WD Green 2TB too slow, is 2.8' 7200RPM the solution?

Post by MikeC » Mon Nov 18, 2013 9:59 am

My own experience with 2.5" 7200rpm drives is that none are as quiet as a WD Green. The speed improvement will be quite subtle, look at the random access time, which will tell you more about real world performance with lots of smaller files (rather than transferring large files): 2.5" drives are generally not as good as 3.5" ones in this regard. WD Green 2TB measured 17.8ms; WD Scorpio Black 1tb (2.5" 7200) measured 15.8ms. I'm not sure you'd "see" this difference in actual use.

If you can't afford an SSD of high enough capacity, I'd recommend something like a Velociraptor 1tb in an external eSATA enclosure, placed >2M away on a piece of soft foam. Or if you have room for it, suspend it with good elastic it (w/o the heatsink harness) in your case. Perhaps a high performance 2TB 7200rpm drive would give you enough performance improvement, but the VR improvement would be guaranteed.

axee
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Re: WD Green 2TB too slow, is 2.8' 7200RPM the solution?

Post by axee » Mon Nov 18, 2013 10:51 am

Thanks a lot for your answers! It's nice to get some real world info.

The usual suggestion among audio production crowd is WD Black, but I installed that drive (2 TB version) in some friend's system and the noise is outrageous! Maybe I'm just spoiled, but I can't imagine having that drive in my system.

We'll see, I still have Scythe Quiet Drive (no real need to use it on current drive), maybe I can make DIY eSATA external drive.

quest_for_silence
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Re: WD Green 2TB too slow, is 2.8' 7200RPM the solution?

Post by quest_for_silence » Mon Nov 18, 2013 11:11 am

axee wrote:We'll see, I still have Scythe Quiet Drive (no real need to use it on current drive), maybe I can make DIY eSATA external drive.


Those Scythe Quiet Drive enclosures (I've several ones) doesn't help very much with a 7200rpm disk (either 2.5" and 3.5" flavour), particularly outside an ATX case: you do need also to suspend it, if a WD Green is noisy for you (and even suspended, with a 7200rpm drive inside, such a DIY enclosure will sound louder, IMHO).

For internal use only, among the 3.5" drives, personally I would give a try to the Seagate SV35, while among external enclosure, I can stand the old Seagate GoFlex 2.5 drives, but I can only hope that their newer enclosures isn't worst sounding than their former products.

axee
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Re: WD Green 2TB too slow, is 2.8' 7200RPM the solution?

Post by axee » Mon Nov 18, 2013 11:42 am

I actually still have DIY suspended Quiet Drive, using case of old optical drive and some rubber feet. It's big but it silenced some 7200 RPM Samsung few years ago. Vibration problems were solved, idle noise too (mostly).

I don't use it any more, since current HDD is quiet enough for me not to hear it. Sometimes I can hear seek noise, but it happens rarely.

Well, as I've learned here (and other audio forums) faster drives don't help that much with sample libraries, well at least not that much that I wold trade it for extra noise. Any possible change will worsen my acoustical situation, so I will stay on WD Green.

Thank you all for your help!
Last edited by axee on Mon Nov 18, 2013 11:52 am, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: WD Green 2TB too slow, is 2.8' 7200RPM the solution?

Post by MikeC » Mon Nov 18, 2013 11:43 am

axee wrote:The usual suggestion among audio production crowd is WD Black...
Just checked a WD Black 2TB, random access time is 12ms, which is a nice jump over the WD Green or most any other 2.5" drive... but a Velociraptor 1tb is 7ms. I still think one of these w/o icepack & suspended in a 3.5" bay would probably be quieter than anything else fast you could try, at least at idle. Of course, noise during seek is another matter altogether... lol! We found it's some 10 dBA noisier in seek compared to the 16-17 dBA@1m at idle.

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Re: WD Green 2TB too slow, is 2.8' 7200RPM the solution?

Post by MattHelm » Mon Jan 13, 2014 3:27 pm

axee wrote:.... with sample libraries ...
What do you mean by sample libraries???

jpeg libraies, mp3 libraries, code libraries, video libraries???

My input on this. Unless you are talking super fast drives, with large files (>250MB), the drive speed isn't that big of deal. It's when you have lots of small files (like 500GB of 4K-64K files) that the faster drives really makes a difference.

Have you tried defragging the drive with a "real" defragger (not the POS that is built into Windoze)? Heck, just defragging the directory structure can speed up a slow HD.

I find it is the interface that slows things the most. SATA to SATA the fastest (any version), then USB 3.0, then Gb Ethernet, then 2.0. (Ethernet and slow USB are a toss up. When moving files Gb Ethernet is faster, when doing LOTS of small transfers, USB is faster.)

I just backed up some files onto a 1st gen green drive, and was getting slightly more than 90MB/s (~100gb/s) on large files (system backups) and slower ~40-50MB/s on large numbers of small files (audio books). Also, are you using a full copy, or incremental (copy newer)? I can back up incrementally of LOTS of small files (no copies, just check date stamp on both files) about 600GB RED to slow laptop in about 12 minutes. Full copy is a LOT longer (hours of large parts of days)!

The above statement excludes SSDs, cd/DVD/bluray or slow laptop drives. When coping/ripping to/from optical, you HD won't make 1 bit of difference and slow laptop drives are just slow.

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