Quietest floppy drive

JC · Post by JC » Fri Oct 31, 2003 9:47 pm

I've tried Alps and Mitsumi. The Alps seems quieter to me, but I think it is more a function of the case it was in than the drive itself.

What are some of the members' opinions of the relative quietness between the various makes of floppy drive?

Zyzzyx · Post by **Zyzzyx** » Fri Oct 31, 2003 10:12 pm

Umm... not something I'd really given thought to. The amount of use my floppy drive sees, even on my testing system, isn't gonna be enough to have any noise bother me.

The most noise it makes is every time I reboot, and that's only cuz i'm too lazy to disconnect it when I don't need it.

GenghiS_KhaN · Post by **GenghiS_KhaN** » Sat Nov 01, 2003 1:10 am

I have a sony floppy drive, it makes a hell of a noise. Much more then the noname I have in a different PC.
But I dont care, I never use it, only to install Windows.

bigred · Post by **bigred** » Sat Nov 01, 2003 1:35 am

Its the nature of the beast. Floppy’s are loud, and I don't really see how they could be significantly quieter.

I don't even know if my next system will have one. With almost all machines having cd-rom's/cd-rw's and USB, there are much better options.

Zyzzyx, if you have the option in our BIOS to disable "Boot-up floppy seek" and place the floppy after your HD in the boot sequence you will never have to hear it again. (unless you chose to use it)

JC · Post by JC » Sat Nov 01, 2003 3:49 am

bigred wrote:Zyzzyx, if you have the option in our BIOS to disable "Boot-up floppy seek" and place the floppy after your HD in the boot sequence you will never have to hear it again. (unless you chose to use it)

Thanks for the replies.

BTW, I found a way to eliminate additional floppy boot noise. In Window 2000, I noticed the floppy seeking every time the OS was started (this is in addition to the floppy seek the BIOS does). By changing the "Distributed Link Tracking Client" service from "Automatic" to "Manual", this extra floppy seek was eliminated. This tweak might work in XP as well.

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Sat Nov 01, 2003 5:58 am

Hello:

I like the Alps, and if memory serves, the TEAC units are very fast (for a floppy!) and pretty quiet, too. Unfortunately, they are not selling black TEAC's on NewEgg...

MGP · Post by **MGP** » Sat Nov 01, 2003 12:00 pm

My beige TEAC is very loud . I have a Mitsumi that I bought from Newegg (if this info helps) that is VERY quiet during "seek" and I'm quite satisfied with it.

Justin_R · Post by **Justin_R** » Sat Nov 01, 2003 4:33 pm

I bought two Samsungs from newegg, and they're both very quiet (for a floppy). They are also availabe in black. Read the product reviews at newegg. Only thing about the Samsungs is that they have an exposed spinning part on the bottom, so you can't sit them on top of a table, or in a spot that's a tight squeeze.

There are other threads on the forums here where quiet floppies are discussed.

Floppies will also be accessed at windows boot time if you have "A:\" included in any of your system paths.

Zyzzyx · Post by **Zyzzyx** » Sat Nov 01, 2003 8:25 pm

bigred wrote:Zyzzyx, if you have the option in our BIOS to disable "Boot-up floppy seek" and place the floppy after your HD in the boot sequence you will never have to hear it again. (unless you chose to use it)

Yup, but about half the time I'm rebooting its to boot off the floppy to run MemTest86. I'd rather put up with the noise during the occasional reboot than have to go into BIOS and change it back and forth.

al bundy · Post by **al bundy** » Sat Nov 01, 2003 8:46 pm

MGP wrote:My beige TEAC is very loud . I have a Mitsumi that I bought from Newegg (if this info helps) that is VERY quiet during "seek" and I'm quite satisfied with it.

I too have found the Mitsumi floppy drives to be the quietest so far...

luminous · Post by **luminous** » Thu Nov 06, 2003 11:22 am

I have a Samsung floopy drive. Its slightly better than average, but its not as good as the best that I have come across.

Unfortunately the best one that I came across was a business PC and I did not manage to gain permission to strip it to find out what make it was

ez2remember · Post by **ez2remember** » Thu Nov 06, 2003 11:46 am

Why in this day and age are we still using floppies? (unless you still installing Windows 95 or before).

I mean a 16mb/32mb+ usb pen drive cost little to nothing (cost about the same as a floppy drive) and is far more handy for storing data.

I hate floppies, they develop bad sectors quite easily and wear down pretty quick. I just remember all the work I had to redo because of it..

lenny · Post by **lenny** » Thu Nov 06, 2003 11:57 am

ez2remember wrote:Why in this day and age are we still using floppies? (unless you still installing Windows 95 or before).

Toddlers find mangling floppies more fun than tossing CDs, and it's a lot cheaper than USB pen drives.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Thu Nov 06, 2003 12:14 pm

ez2remember wrote:Why in this day and age are we still using floppies? (unless you still installing Windows 95 or before).

I mean a 16mb/32mb+ usb pen drive cost little to nothing (cost about the same as a floppy drive) and is far more handy for storing data.

I hate floppies, they develop bad sectors quite easily and wear down pretty quick. I just remember all the work I had to redo because of it..

I build and repair systems and use floppies every day.

I use them for:

Formatting and partitioning harddrives
Memtest86
BIOS flashes (both mobo and agp)
Low level formatting
Harddrive utilities and diagnostics
Raid drivers

I have never ever, in 7+ years of doing this, had a floppy disk go bad. I just take reasonable care of them and they seem to work fine. Occaisionally I'll make a copy of some of my critical disks (I have ISO images of them stored on my drive and on some CDrs) just to make sure I don't get caught short. But that's all the special care I take with them and I've had nothing but good luck so far (knock wood!).

I love seeing the questions from the guys who say the floppy is obsolete but can't figure out how to burn a bootable CDr to do whatever it is that they think they can do as well as, or better than if the were using a floppy. They'll spent tons of time and wasted CDrs trying to get their bootable CDr disk to work when they could have just stuck a blank floppy disk into the drive and formatted it with the system files on it in about 2 minutes.

ez2remember · Post by **ez2remember** » Sun Nov 09, 2003 12:39 am

Ralf Hutter wrote: I love seeing the questions from the guys who say the floppy is obsolete but can't figure out how to burn a bootable CDr to do whatever it is that they think they can do as well as, or better than if the were using a floppy. They'll spent tons of time and wasted CDrs trying to get their bootable CDr disk to work when they could have just stuck a blank floppy disk into the drive and formatted it with the system files on it in about 2 minutes.

Yes it does take a bit of practice but once you get it on cdr it's wonderful. It's not that hard!

I carry a credit card size CDR, a specially cut one. It holds the boot image of windows ME, boot magic, partitioning tools and a few other useful tools from the old DOS days. I would need to carry atleast 3 floppies with me, it's just too small to hold what I want on it.

80mm Mini-CDR are not bad, but credit card CDR rocks!

PS. I am very suprised you don't have problems with floppies, anyone would tell you if you read/write files onto the disk they will become corrupted after a while (develops bad sectors).

But if you just leave boot images and things permantly on there, then you chances of having errors has greatly improved. The heads is physically scratching the disk everytime it reads/writes, noisy and unreliable buggers!

HammerSandwich · Post by **HammerSandwich** » Sun Nov 09, 2003 1:42 am

Zyzzyx wrote:Yup, but about half the time I'm rebooting its to boot off the floppy to run MemTest86.

See the bootable ISO.

MoJo-chan · Post by **MoJo-chan** » Sun Nov 09, 2003 10:52 am

I used to use floppy drives every day and owned about 20 different ones. That was back when I used an Amiga all the time (which, out of interest, was silent).

The problem is that these days they make floppy drives by the million and hardly anyone uses them very often. People don't care about the noise, they care about the cost. So, my advice is try and find an old drive that is still working, or that can be repaired. I have an Amtrak (Panasonic mechanism IIRC) external floppy which is just about the quietest I have ever found.

Either that, or junk your floppy drive and just use CDR(W) and bootable USB memory sticks.

MoJo

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sun Nov 09, 2003 12:59 pm

MoJo-chan wrote:I used to use floppy drives every day and owned about 20 different ones. That was back when I used an Amiga all the time (which, out of interest, was silent).

The problem is that these days they make floppy drives by the million and hardly anyone uses them very often. People don't care about the noise, they care about the cost. So, my advice is try and find an old drive that is still working, or that can be repaired. I have an Amtrak (Panasonic mechanism IIRC) external floppy which is just about the quietest I have ever found.

Either that, or junk your floppy drive and just use CDR(W) and bootable USB memory sticks.

MoJo

My best FDD's are ones I've pulled out of old systems that were being thrown in the trash. They are built waaay better than anything you can buy nowadays and are almost always significantly quieter as well. I have several NEC's and a couple of Sony's that are built like tanks. They are circa '96 and '97.

MoJo-chan · Post by **MoJo-chan** » Sun Nov 09, 2003 3:52 pm

Ralf Hutter wrote:My best FDD's are ones I've pulled out of old systems that were being thrown in the trash. They are built waaay better than anything you can buy nowadays and are almost always significantly quieter as well. I have several NEC's and a couple of Sony's that are built like tanks. They are circa '96 and '97.

Ah... kids today

I'm really thinking back to the early 90s. Everything was 3.5" floppy. Now those were quality drives... didn't just read your disks, but spit-polished 'em for you too. Of course, we had none of your fancy "high density" stuff back then, it was 880k all the way. And the sounds - oh, the tunes those drives used to make. I could tell when Gods was loaded just from the sound of the drive...

Worrying thing is I'm only 23. Am I still young enough to be MoJo-kun?

MoJo

lenny · Post by **lenny** » Sun Nov 09, 2003 4:56 pm

MoJo-chan wrote:I'm really thinking back to the early 90s. Everything was 3.5" floppy. Now those were quality drives... didn't just read your disks, but spit-polished 'em for you too. Of course, we had none of your fancy "high density" stuff back then, it was 880k all the way. And the sounds - oh, the tunes those drives used to make. I could tell when Gods was loaded just from the sound of the drive...

Don't think Amiga drives would work on a PC though

MoJo-chan · Post by **MoJo-chan** » Mon Nov 10, 2003 5:04 am

lenny wrote: Don't think Amiga drives would work on a PC though

Not without some modification, but it can be done. Some drives even have a jumper to configure them... my computer doesn't even have a floppy drive any more though.

MoJo

Quietest floppy drive

Quietest floppy drive

TEAC?