SPCR

I ordered a spinpoint t 300gb drive a couple of days ago, after reading here that it wa pretty quiet, but i got an email today saying that the shop has dispatched a barracuda 7200.10 320gb instead, as the samsung is out of stock. The barracuda is a more expensive drive, but they're charging me the same price (£68 instead of £74). Does anyone know how the noise levels of these drives compare? I ordered the samsung because I wanted a quiet drive, so if the seagate is noticably louder then I'll send I back.

It really depends on the other parts of your system. If your system is mostly made up of low speed fans such as Nexus/Globe Win/Yate-Loon at 7v-5v it will definitely make a huge difference.

The 7200.10 is definitely not a quiet drive. I have the Samsung 400 GB and the 400 GB 7200.10 as backup storage. The idle noise is pretty loud on the Seagate and on I can definitely tell when mine has spun down. Subjectively speaking I would say the idle noise is about 2-3x louder than the Samsung. The seek noise is very much louder, especially if you enable AAM on the Samsung. On the Samsung it is very quiet and I have to focus to hear it, but the Seagate comes close to my old Raptor with AAM.

I'm actually considering moving it out of my system as an external drive to make weekly backups of my main drive or just replacing it with another Samsung. The drive is fine when it is spun down but it will spin up on occasion due to some programs needing to scan the IO devices.

Based on my sample size of one, I'd agree the 7200.10 is really unacceptable - the idle whine is louder than anything I can remember*, even worse than my old Maxtor DM9+. Seeks are quiet, but it's a PATA drive and I gather SATA versions will have AAM set to performance and will make even more of a racket.

Very disappointing, especially as it's a stormer in performance terms.

*edit: actually, not quite true, I once had a couple of Micropolis Tomahawk SCSI drives whose bearing whine could drill holes in solid concrete...

That was a real nice offer to give you a more expensive drive with slightly higher capacity. Most people would probably be very happy, but then, most people arent SPCR members.

So I'd thank them for their customer service, but try and explain the situation and see when they're getting the Spinpoint T's in, or ask for the WD 3200 or 2500KS.

steer away from Barracudas ! 500 gb model could make you hearing imppaired person ;p
im waiting for 2 spinpoints also

ok, just as I feared
i think ill just upgrade to the 400gb model instead, or try and be patient and wait for the 300gb to come back into stock

thanks for the advice everyone!