SPCR

Hi everyone ! What is the most silent hard drive I can buy today in 2019? Even if it's 1TB or even 500gb.
No ssd.

internal: 2.5" Seagate or Samsung 5400rpm class drive.
external: I've had good experience with WD My passports.

Why no SSD? They are down in the $50-70 range for 500GB.

CA_Steve wrote:Why no SSD? They are down in the $50-70 range for 500GB.

I second steve suggestion, specially since you dont seem to need a lot of storage, there some cheap options,

NVME
Intel 512GB 660P NVMe M.2 Internal SSD $80

SATA
Crucial 500GB MX500 2.5" Internal SSD $70

I don't know what is safer to store data between ssd and hard disk. I have backup of course. I will need two drives, one for intensive writes/rewrites (torrents and downloads, a lot of them), another one for data I don't want to loose (mostly word documents, pictures ).

An SSD has less likelihood of failure than a mechanical drive. That said, the best way to protect docs is to store backups in several locations - no single point of failure. For docs, I use an encrypted folder on my OS (SSD) drive. That gets backed up daily to an internal mechanical drive...and when I remember (usually monthly), I copy the folder and store it on alternate thumb drives. Maybe once a year, I copy the internal rotating drive to an external one. If I had a NAS, I'd back up to that, too

Windows always eventually craps out and you have to rebuilt the system. But, I've managed to keep my docs safe.

An SSD has less likelihood of failure than a mechanical drive

Here's a debate about it : https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/co ... your_data/
I don't know what to think, I haven't got any knowledge.

Yeah, I'm not going to read through a reddit thread

In short - SSDs have no mechanical failure mechanism and a normal user will never ever go through the number of write cycles needed to run it into the ground For grins, just look at WDC's warranty page and compare the consumer HDDs (2-3 yr) to the SSDs (3-5yr).

judelaw wrote:

An SSD has less likelihood of failure than a mechanical drive

Here's a debate about it : https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/co ... your_data/
I don't know what to think, I haven't got any knowledge.

I would go SSD storage if it was cheaper, i have no doubt that what keeps us still on mechanical is pricing. Go with a good brand of ssds (samsung, crucial and intel are my gotto brands), now a days they are some offering 5+ years on warranty, that you only get on high end enterprise server grade hdds.

And if your data is important, and you dont want to risk it, make sure you do backups to an external drive and/or a NAS and/or cloud service.

A HDD for intensive writes. Suspending in springs or rubber strips helps. I use a quite old WDC WD3200AAKS and don't hear it when idle. Almost any HDD would do (not older than this), but the first one you try might be noisy.
Two HDDs is a thing to avoid. Two can be much louder than one.
Or SSD, if you are willing to pay more.
For complete silence - only a SSD. You don't need two SSDs.

If you don't want SSD then WD blue is the quietest hard drives IMO.