Does overall HDD noise depend on windows installation?

tom thumb · Post by **tom thumb** » Tue Jun 22, 2010 10:01 am

Hello SPCR,

Is there any acoustical difference (with respect to seek, idle, etc.) in a typical hard disk drive (HDD) if windows is installed/running or not?

I am thinking that windows likes to do a lot of seeking & reading randomly through operation and that would produce more noise than a storage drive that is basically on idle until you use it, but I'm not sure if this amounts to any audible difference in "overall noise" or if it should affect my purchase decisions.

You might say that this depends on the drive in question - to which I will reply that it's a 300Gb Velociraptor without it's noisepack (icepack).

Thanks in advance!

Strid · Post by **Strid** » Tue Jun 22, 2010 11:45 am

You seem to answer your own question. If a drive seeks, it is more audible for that time. Is there a specific scenario or HDD setup you are considering?

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Tue Jun 22, 2010 12:01 pm

There some things you can turn off, such as indexing service, to reduce the constant I/O.

mkk · Post by **mkk** » Sun Jun 27, 2010 12:59 pm

Vibration dampening will also reduce seek noise. I haven't listened to a Velociraptor myself but with a little bit of dampening in the mounting I'm sure it won't be noisy, if at all more than percievable.