cheapest, quiet hard drive?

Schlotkins · Post by **Schlotkins** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 4:52 am

I'm building a couple PCs and I'm looking for really quiet HDD. Samsungs seem to be the one, but it's getting hard to find the T166 series drives and the F1s aren't really available yet. In both cases, the users are currently using only 20gigs of data. I'm buying 2 for each box so I can run them ina RAID 1 configuration.

Any suggestions? Perhaps I'm missing a 160gig Samsung version or some vendor.

I should note I do want half way decent performance and am not interested in going the 2.5" route.

Thanks,
Chris

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 4:57 am

Hello Chris,

I would look at the Western Digital SE16 line -- I have used the 320GB and it is one of the quietest drives I have used. They have been tested by SPCR, so you can listen for yourself.

Schlotkins · Post by **Schlotkins** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 5:47 am

Thanks for the recommendation! I assume the 320 uses 2 platters with 160 gigs per platter correct? There's a 250gig drive, but I assume that's probably a 2 platter configuration as well with only 125 gigs per platter.

Thanks,
Chris

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 10:58 am

"Cheapest", "raid1 with 2 drives", "160GB for 20G data" and "want decent performance": the last 3 don't seem to go with "cheapest". If you want cheapest, you don't seem to want it very much. Understand, you set your priorities; I'm merely pointing out an inconsistency.

If you truly want cheapest and decent performance in a quiet HDD, I wholeheartedly recommend either the PATA or SATA version of the Hitachi 7K160, the 80G version, and lose the raid1.

Schlotkins · Post by **Schlotkins** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 12:17 pm

You know, I did think about that when I posted. I guess what I mean is I didn't want to buy the 500gig Samsung or 1TB drives when I'm just looking for something to hold 20gigs of data. The 320gig WD drive at around $80 seems like a good choice.

Thanks,
Chris