WD5000KS vs WD5000AAKS

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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ryboto
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Post by ryboto » Sun Apr 22, 2007 1:51 pm

zoob wrote: Perhaps the black body design is better than their old silver design in terms of noise? The silver one looks like much less material is used, so perhaps this is the reason it sounds noisier.
I don't think you can justify that conclusion. The KS would look like more material is used because it has more platters, so there's less empty space inside the drive. This is evident from the bottom view of both drives. In theory, the AAKS should be more quiet, with less vibration, right? Fewer spinning platters should generate fewer vibrations.

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Post by zoob » Sun Apr 22, 2007 5:57 pm

Hey everyone,

I do agree that in theory the AAKS should be quieter than the KS due to one less platter. I am merely pointing out that from observation of my particular sample of drives that my AAKS is louder than my KS.

However, since not every variable is kept the same between the construction of the drives, you cannot overlook the fact that the drive body has changed between versions. I am merely positing that the most obvious difference (the drive body change) may be the reason behind the noise difference.

Perhaps someone who has the same model of drive but two different bodies can chime in. For instance a 160 GB KS vs AAKS.

Both my AAKS and KS are mounted in the bottom chamber of my P180 so the very slight difference in noise is negligible once I close my case. My perceived loudness in woosh is from approximately 12" away while it was placed on my lap, powered by an Antec Phantom (every other device in my room off, Windows shut at night time).
ryboto wrote:I don't think you can justify that conclusion. The KS would look like more material is used because it has more platters, so there's less empty space inside the drive. This is evident from the bottom view of both drives. In theory, the AAKS should be more quiet, with less vibration, right? Fewer spinning platters should generate fewer vibrations.

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Post by zoob » Mon Apr 23, 2007 10:07 am

Received my replacement drive from Western Digital today.
They replaced my 500KS with a 500AAKS. Pretty fast turn around.

EDIT:

Attached is an image detailing the differences between body construction between:

WD3200JD 00KLB0 - Manufacture date 14 SEP 2005
WD5000KS 00MNB0 - Manufacture date 20 MAR 2006
WD5000AAKS 00TMA0 - Manufacture date 17 APR 2007 M (The replacement drive, it is recertified, but looks identical to my other AAKS)

Image

ryboto
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Post by ryboto » Mon Apr 23, 2007 2:09 pm

just installed mine. It's formatting right now, hopefully it will be done before I go to bed.

Mari0-Br0s
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Post by Mari0-Br0s » Mon Apr 23, 2007 2:31 pm

I just noticed that they removed the 4pins molex connector ont he AAKS version. This is no big deal, but it is a physical difference. :D

rseiler
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Post by rseiler » Sun May 06, 2007 3:12 pm

porkchop wrote: wd theoretically faster but samsung faster in all actual tests(big files, security scan and offics apps).
seek times samsung 13.9, wd 13.3.

same seek noise but wd has lower idle(something like 25/29db vs 27/29db). this might be because the samsung vibrates more.
400lj(silentpc reviewed this one- good reference) was also in the test and had the same acoustics as the 501lj.
Well...my basis for comparison is limited, but I thought I'd add my 2 cents here now that I have a 5000AAKS.

I really don't have much to say about the idle sound -- it's on par with what I had before, which were Maxtor DiamondMax+ 9 drives (160GB/200GB), and in recent weeks also a brand-new 320GB Maxtor/Seagate 7200.10. By "on par" I mean if it's any louder or quieter I can't tell that it is.

However, the seeks are another story. Without question it's louder than the quite quiet 7200.10, and it's also louder than the DM+9's, believe it or not.

This is on the default AAM -- I haven't tried anything else yet. Is there a command-line tool to do it (HDDScan doesn't work in Vista)? Does it actually help? And what does it do to performance?

So these larger drives apparently raise the bar in seek noise relative to their smaller cousins, even when comparing drives generations apart.

In terms of vibration, the DM+9's (particularly the egregious 200) were so bad that I had to "mount" them on that black rubbery material (mentioned elsewhere here) that I forget the name of now. Thank goodness they're gone now, since the 7200.10 (PATA, the quiet vesion) and WD5000AAKS are as close to vibration-free as possible. I can actually mount them in my Sonata in the normal way. (Update: A couple weeks later now, and I have them back on Sorbothane. Even with drives this low-hum, the Sonata is just too resonant with two of them--even when the Sonata is resting on 1.5" of sturdy foam. Maybe it's my old hardwood floor that's sensitive, I don't know.)
Last edited by rseiler on Mon May 21, 2007 12:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by jhhoffma » Sun May 06, 2007 3:42 pm

rseiler wrote:In terms of vibration, the DM+9's (particularly the egregious 200) were so bad that I had to "mount" them on that black rubbery material (mentioned elsewhere here) that I forget the name of now.
Sorbothane.

I also have a couple DiamondMax 9's (200GB) but I replaced them with a WD5000KS. The DM9's idle wasn't that bad, but the KS is better, but by far the KS is much better with seek noise. Even though I'm only using sorbothane on my KS it's much quieter than the DM9's (now in my gaming machine) which are fully suspended with bungees.

RE: 7200.10 statement

Most people here find these drives to be the noisiest of the current gen of HDDs, so the fact that you find it quiet leaves my head scratching. Maybe you got an unusual sample? Maybe you got a bad sample of the AAKS? Different people's experience with the same hardware is always intriguing...

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Post by rseiler » Sun May 06, 2007 8:44 pm

jhhoffma, that's interesting about how you found the KS seeks (I never tried that one) to be quieter than the 200GB DM9+. That suggests to me that the KS is quieter than the AAKS, as someone found above, though I don't know how or why.

Whether it's on sorbothane or suspended shouldn't affect seek noise, right?

On the 7200.10's, do you mean across the line? Because there should be a large difference between a hot, noisy beast like the 7200.10 750GB and the relatively cool and quiet 2-cylinder 320GB (the one I have).

I think we're looking for zebras if we're to assume that I got a really bad AAKS and a really good 7200.10.

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Post by Mari0-Br0s » Mon May 07, 2007 4:58 am

I'm one of those who find the 7200.10 320GB pretty noisy. Temperature is good, the drive is always around 35C, but damn it is noisy!!! I can hear it in front of my Raptor and two WD2500KS all together in my P180.

If you'd ask me, I would definatly go back and get a WD3200KS instead!

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Post by rseiler » Mon May 07, 2007 6:21 am

Mario, how old is your 7200.10 320GB? Note that I have one of the Maxtor-branded ones, a STM3320620A with the AAE firmware. It dates to March or so of this year.

I can only conclude there are variances within the line, since on no system -- regardless of how quiet a system you have -- could this be considered loud in either hum or seek.

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Post by jhhoffma » Mon May 07, 2007 6:45 am

Sorbothane is good; but true suspension is better. Sorbothane doesn't completely eliminate all vibration as it's pretty dense. Suspension is easily the best and cheapest method of reducing/eliminating seek noise if you have the room to do it (which I don't in my HTPC).

rseiler
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Post by rseiler » Mon May 07, 2007 12:30 pm

I'm just confused by what the mounting method has to do with reducing seek noise. I thought it was purely to solve vibration.

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Post by jhhoffma » Mon May 07, 2007 1:38 pm

Vibration is usually caused by the seeking of the drive (the armature swinging back and forth). The noise is usually amplified by being hard mounted to a cage which, in turn, vibrates a chassis and case panels.

Suspending the drive decouples it from the cage and in turn eliminates (mostly) the transfer of vibration between HDD and cage/case. If you want a tactile demonstration, you can place the drive in your hand (NOTE: I don't recommend doing this as it's possible to damage your drive) and do some disk-intensive task. You'll feel the vibrations...

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Post by silence_seeker » Mon May 14, 2007 10:26 pm

Edirol wrote:WD5000AAKS idle is annoying louder than a Samsung P120 250GB. There's some kinda high frequency whine.
Can others confirm this as well?
I plan on buying a WD5000AAKB (the IDE version of the WD5000AAKS), but I can't live with anything that makes a "whine".

rseiler
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Post by rseiler » Mon May 14, 2007 10:49 pm

silence_seeker, I don't think you'll find many more people (if any more) who say that it whines. That sounds like a drive with a problem to me.

BTW, just so it's added to the thread, here's a rare review of the WD5000AAKS, from PC World Australia:
http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php ... ;pg;1;pa;2

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Post by zoob » Fri Jun 08, 2007 11:53 am

Welp, my 500 GB AAKS recertified drive is failing after just over one month of use. I just received the replacement drive today which I plan on selling off :|

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Post by mshan » Fri Jun 08, 2007 12:03 pm

The WD5000KS is back in stock at Newegg, but it's over $20 more expensive than the comparable WD5000AAKS:

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.a ... 6822136014

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Post by jockeleu » Mon Jun 25, 2007 1:14 pm

Look guys, i got my WD5000AAKS yesterday...

It replaced my WD Raptor 74GB ADFD + Seagate 7200.10 320GB combo and i have to say i am miiiiighty pleased.

I have the Arctic Cooling Silentium T2 Case, which incorporates an HD-Muffler... the thing with this one is that it dampens the idle noise by just a tad, but really enhances seek vibration and noise because it sits on a plastic PSU and the drive is attached to a big aluminium sheet that acts like a giant tuning-fork!

The Raptor felt and sounded like a stonecarver in a cave, the Seagate 7200.10 like its aprentice (likewise charecteristic of noise,but less vibration/volume)... really awful and that short exposure got me allergic to anything that resembles seek-noise or vibration. The temperatures of the two weren't exactly pretty either. One thing I got to give the raptor credit for is the lack of disturbing idle-noise... which i can't really say about the Seagate.

I had this combination for two weeks and grew tired of it, got my AAKS yesterday. Well one thing is for shure, the idle noise was a bit more present, but only at close distance when fiddling with the drive... the "whoosh" is quiet and I could only distinguish it at a close (10-20cm or so).... But with a completley silent system, or near-silent you probably could hear the idle-whoosh.

Now to the good stuff, even in the vibration/seeknoise amplifier Arctic Cooling calls an HD-Muffler, at WORST i can barely hear the drive make a low pitched seek. Vibration can not be felt on the case, where the Raptor could be felt through the floor.

My Subjective ranking, (based on sound characteristics and loudness.)
Higher = Better, more quiet/pleasing.
  • Idle Noise:
    1. WD Raptor
    2. -
    3. Seagate 320GB
    4. WD 50000AAKS
  • Seek noise/vibration:
    1. WD 50000AAKS(With AAM @ 128)
    2. -
    3. -
    4. WD 50000AAKS(With AAM @ 254, essantialy AAM Off)
    5. -
    6. -
    7. Seagate 7200.10 320GB
    8. -
    9. -
    10. -
    11. -
    12. -
    14. -
    15. -
    16. -
    17. WD Raptor
And BTW! I did an HD-Tune benchmark, and got practicly the same results as the RAPTOR!, only minimum transfer rate dipped a couple of MB's lower but suprisingly, the rest of the testresults were pretty much on par :shock: , except of course the access time! (With AAM 128 20ms, AAM 254 gives 13ms).

Temperatures of the seagate in the HD-Muffler where at 54 degrees idle, and could go up to 65+ at load, the raptor was at 50 degrees idle and went up to 58-60 at load.

The 5000AAKS holds itself at 42 idle, and maxes out at 50 degres, which relatively speaking is very cool! Keep in mind theese disks where installed in the stupid airflow deadzone and foam isolated Muffler!

Sorry for the long post, but i had to get it out =) Now my only hope is that this drive will last. I've had Seagates for 10 years and never encountered a reliability problem.

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Post by hsinhow » Fri Jun 29, 2007 11:17 am

I would like to contribute my 2 cents about the 5000KS vs 5000AAKS...

Originally I have 2500KS and 5000KS in my PC and I bought a 5000AAKS to replace the 2500KS.

Performance-wise, 5000AAKS beats 2500KS with big margin. The Windows load up time is cut short a lot. PC Mark05 HD score jumped from 4xxx to 58xx. The performance difference between 5000KS and AAKS is small. However, PC Mark05 indicates that the AAKS has much better throughput (>90MB/s) while it is worse in many other categories. The overall HD scores are about the same in the end.

Now comes the problem... my PC is getting louder after the upgrade. The seek sound is OK and quiet but the idle noise (humming) is very annoying. The Antec Sonata II case, if I put my hand on it, is vibrating. I tried many techniques and solutions suggested by the forum members, including padding, reverse orientation installation, and using a silent drive enclosure, did not reduce the humming noise.

By touching the 5000KS and AAKS, I figured that KS is the worse one (idle sound and vibration) between the two. I considered the suspension method but I am somehow nervous about the physical stability issue.

Since the idle humming noise is quite unbearable, I decide to replace the 5000KS with another 5000AAKS. Guess what... the idle noise and vibration are almost totally gone. I wonder if my 5000KS is abnormal or the KS and AAKS just don't like each other.

The 5000KS will go to my HTPC with Antec NSK2400 case where hard drives are vertical half-suspended mounted. Vibration should be absorbed better in NSK2400.

hsinhow

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Post by mttcrlsn » Fri Jun 29, 2007 3:22 pm

Don't have the KS version but do have the AAKS one in the bottom of my P182. I can not hear it nor can I hear the Raptor 150 next to it running the OS.

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Post by zoob » Wed Jul 18, 2007 1:01 pm

I've come to conclude that these AAKS are very sensitive to temperature.

I was doing some tweaking in my system and accidentally blocked my 120mm bottom chamber fan. As a result, my hard drives got pretty hot (I was also doing a stress test so the PSU was very warm).

Not long after did I notice that mouse movement was very erratic and choppy-- Just like my previous 500 GB AAKS failures.

Windows Event Viewer shows:
The device, \Device\Harddisk2\DR2, is not ready for access yet.

And the drive was dismounted and missing.

Only after disconnecting the drive was I able to get back into Vista, or else it would get stuck on crcdisk.sys.

The funny thing is that my Raptor 150GB and 320 JD have no problems in the same chamber. Unfortunately SpeedFan does not show drive temperatures in Vista X64 so I cannot provide any information on that.

Looks like I'll be switching away from WD AAKS drives! I guess I'll be on the lookout for Samsung drives.

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Post by BIONIC_EARS » Wed Jul 18, 2007 2:58 pm

That's terrible news, zoob!

I guess I'm going to have to do some heat tests before I put anything valuable on these AAKS drives.

I'm wondering why these 500GB AAKS are so cheap, even cheaper than the 400GB versions. Hmmm.

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Post by MoJo » Sun Jul 29, 2007 11:43 am

I have both the AS and AAKS, and the KS is certainly quieter for idle noise. Seek noise too I think.
mttcrlsn wrote:Don't have the KS version but do have the AAKS one in the bottom of my P182. I can not hear it nor can I hear the Raptor 150 next to it running the OS.
In the bottom of a P182, I can hear the AAKS easily. In fact, they are easily the loudest component in the system, far louder than the 6 120mm fans I have running.

The KS have black tops, the AAKS have silver tops. Full model of the KS is WD5000KS-00MNB0.

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Post by mttcrlsn » Mon Jul 30, 2007 7:44 am

MoJo wrote:I have both the AS and AAKS, and the KS is certainly quieter for idle noise. Seek noise too I think.
mttcrlsn wrote:Don't have the KS version but do have the AAKS one in the bottom of my P182. I can not hear it nor can I hear the Raptor 150 next to it running the OS.
In the bottom of a P182, I can hear the AAKS easily. In fact, they are easily the loudest component in the system, far louder than the 6 120mm fans I have running.

The KS have black tops, the AAKS have silver tops. Full model of the KS is WD5000KS-00MNB0.
Interesting because I can not hear normally my Raptor or AAKS in my 182. If I listen and do a file operation I might be able to hear it but nothing above background noise levels.

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Post by MoJo » Mon Jul 30, 2007 12:41 pm

mttcrlsn wrote:Interesting because I can not hear normally my Raptor or AAKS in my 182. If I listen and do a file operation I might be able to hear it but nothing above background noise levels.
At first, I thought the sound was the fans. I stopped each fan in turn, and it made no difference. I unplugged the HDDs, and realised what was happening.

The AAKS seem to put out a lot of noise from the motors. A whooshing sound just like a fan. In fact, it's so close to fan noise that it's probablt obscured unless you have really quiet fans.

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Post by mttcrlsn » Mon Jul 30, 2007 2:30 pm

MoJo wrote:
mttcrlsn wrote:Interesting because I can not hear normally my Raptor or AAKS in my 182. If I listen and do a file operation I might be able to hear it but nothing above background noise levels.
At first, I thought the sound was the fans. I stopped each fan in turn, and it made no difference. I unplugged the HDDs, and realised what was happening.

The AAKS seem to put out a lot of noise from the motors. A whooshing sound just like a fan. In fact, it's so close to fan noise that it's probablt obscured unless you have really quiet fans.
I must be lucky then because I have to open the front door and the filter door then if I put my ear right up to the area I can hear a very slight noise (filter and front grill have been removed as well in my case). Right now I have a water sprinkler going in the back yard and the water flowing through the pipes is making more noise.

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Post by MoJo » Tue Jul 31, 2007 5:27 am

mttcrlsn wrote:I must be lucky then because I have to open the front door and the filter door then if I put my ear right up to the area I can hear a very slight noise (filter and front grill have been removed as well in my case). Right now I have a water sprinkler going in the back yard and the water flowing through the pipes is making more noise.
Maybe it's a different motor? Like the Samsung Spinpoints which used either JVC or Nidec motors. I'll probably have them out today so I'll check and see what I have.

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Post by MoJo » Tue Aug 14, 2007 2:17 pm

elec999 wrote:This is getting confusing. Which drive is quieter the KS or AAKS.
The KS is quieter.

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Post by Meowbay » Thu Jan 10, 2008 12:57 pm

ryboto wrote:just installed mine. It's formatting right now, hopefully it will be done before I go to bed.
Next time pick a Quick format. Formatting 500 GB of a new drive is ridiculous. You might as well run an actual surface test later on instead when you feel like it (and continue working on the PC).

By the way, my AAKS are extremely silent (I own and use 3 now). I have had no problems whatsoever in using these drives, they are from 29 OCT 2007.

I don't know the KS edition, but these AAKS are the quietest drives in my home, fo sho! And the quietest ones I've ever owned too.
Last edited by Meowbay on Thu Jan 10, 2008 1:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Meowbay » Thu Jan 10, 2008 12:59 pm

MoJo wrote:
elec999 wrote:This is getting confusing. Which drive is quieter the KS or AAKS.
The KS is quieter.
Do you have any actual valid sources? I'd like to see the difference tested, because I don't take anyone's word on the internet as truth.

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