Quick hard drive noise summary - forget about reviews!

davidstone28 · Post by **davidstone28** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 4:00 pm

Seagate Medallist - quiet? Hahahhaha! Fast? Hahahahha! Old? Yup.
Seagate 7200.7 - rubbish. I have one. Quiet when idle but noisy when it seeks 2/5
Maxtor DM9 - rubbish - I have one too. Sounds like ripping velco when seeking 1/5
WD800B - Excellent speed. Forget about this rubbish about FDM vs BB motors - it very quiet. Only problem is it runs hot. 4/5
Samsung Spingpoint - quality. Fast. Quiet at idle, seeking and reading. 5/5
Hitachi Desktar - ditto Samsung Spinpoint, although slightly faster. 5/5

That ya go! No need to bother with a 10 page review. Just listen to the hard drive junkie

aphonos · Post by **aphonos** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 8:15 pm

davidstone28 wrote:Seagate Medallist - quiet? Hahahhaha! Fast? Hahahahha! Old? Yup.
Seagate 7200.7 - rubbish. I have one. Quiet when idle but noisy when it seeks 2/5
Maxtor DM9 - rubbish - I have one too. Sounds like ripping velco when seeking 1/5
WD800B - Excellent speed. Forget about this rubbish about FDM vs BB motors - it very quiet. Only problem is it runs hot. 4/5
Samsung Spingpoint - quality. Fast. Quiet at idle, seeking and reading. 5/5
Hitachi Desktar - ditto Samsung Spinpoint, although slightly faster. 5/5

That ya go! No need to bother with a 10 page review. Just listen to the hard drive junkie

Thanks for your attempted summary. However, I'm going to recommend that people do continue to bother with reviews, at least with Mike's review: Quiet HDDs by Samsung, Hitachi & Seagate, which contradicts your assessment of the Desk[s]tar drive.

Additionally, working through the forums here will show a few folks, committed to quiet computing who admit the louder seek on the Maxtor DM9, but have been willing to live with it for the performance gains. I agree, however that it is not really a quiet solution.

Why have you included the Seagate Medalist? Those drives are years old and not widely available on the retail market.

35dBA average acoustical measurement (WD's specs) for the WD800B is not really all that quiet of a drive. The Maxtor DM9 that you berate is spec'd at 35 bels.

mfeingol · Post by **mfeingol** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 8:23 pm

I have a 200GB DM+9. It is very quiet suspended or placed on a foam surface. Screwed in, seeks are not quiet. But few drives have quiet seeks screwed in. Idle noise is very low.

I have an 80GB 7200.7. Its idle noise and seeks are reasonably quiet suspended. However, it vibrates a lot when screwed in. Maybe I got a bad one.

I have also owned a number of WD xxxBB drives. They are not quiet under any stretch of the imagination. Their idle whine after a few days/months of use is intolerable, and well-documented on these forums. Avoid disks with ball-bearing motors like the plague is all that I can say.

ColdFlame · Post by **ColdFlame** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 11:32 pm

I don't know about WD 800B but the special edition drives, 800JB make awful lot of noise at idle. 7200.7 is WAY quieter at idle (but seeks are louder).

haysdb · Post by **haysdb** » Fri Nov 14, 2003 1:26 am

I just replaced a WD120 with a Samsung drive. The Western Digital was driving me insane with it's high pitched whine. The 160GB Samsung is blessedly quiet. In fact, THREE Samsung drives, including two 120GB 5400RPM drives I bought because they were cheap, in TOTAL are blessedly quiet.

BTW, welcome to the Folding team ColdFlame. I saw your name in the list of new Folders. Hell, I'm new myself.

David

al bundy · Post by **al bundy** » Fri Nov 14, 2003 2:13 am

haysdb wrote:...In fact, THREE Samsung drives, including two 120GB 5400RPM drives I bought because they were cheap, in TOTAL are blessedly quiet...

David, thanks for that info. Do your 5400rpm Samsungs also run fairly cool as well? I've been considering putting one of those in a SilentDrive enclosure for an HTPC...

haysdb · Post by **haysdb** » Fri Nov 14, 2003 2:34 am

al bundy wrote:
haysdb wrote:...In fact, THREE Samsung drives, including two 120GB 5400RPM drives I bought because they were cheap, in TOTAL are blessedly quiet...
David, thanks for that info. Do your 5400rpm Samsungs also run fairly cool as well? I've been considering putting one of those in a SilentDrive enclosure for an HTPC...

I have never tried to measure hard drive temps. Can the Hitachi Feature Tool report the hard drive temps? If I were to use temperature probes, where should I put them to most accurately report the drive temperatures? I have a DigitalDoc5 laying around someplace.

David

bigred · Post by **bigred** » Fri Nov 14, 2003 2:57 am

Yeah that order seems off. The WD drive should be near the top (loudest) and the Seagate should be at least second from the bottom while moving the Hitachi up a few. Sure the Seagate has loud seeks, but that’s where a NoVibes would be very usefull.

davidstone28 · Post by **davidstone28** » Fri Nov 14, 2003 5:56 am

I posted info about the Seagate Medallist 5400rpm only because its a (very) old drive I've got and thought it would be an amusing comparator.

The Samsung Spinpoint I've got is a 7200rpm drive which seems to be average in terms of temps. I haven't done any measurements with temperature probs or anything like that.

The WD800BB (OEM) is by far the hottest. The top of the drive seems fine but if you put your finger on the underside of the drive against the exposed PCB, you will not be able to keep your finger there for more than about 10-20 seconds. It's that hot. In fact, temp wise, I suspect it might be faulty, even though its realtively new (about 9 months old). Not sure

I've also had a IBM Desktar 75GXP. Great performer but ran hot. Didn't have any realiability issues with it, but I managed to break one of the IDE pins on the connector and its practically impossible to get it fixed (getting a replacement PCB is a nightmare, and neither does resoldering work as the heat damages the circuitry)

The biggest gripes I have with the Seagate 7200.7 and the DiamondMax9 is that they are very noisy when seeking / writing. It sounds like muffled velcro being ripped repeatedly. It's starting to become annoying because its very noticeable. Both are fine at idle though and both seem to run cool.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Fri Nov 14, 2003 6:10 am

haysdb wrote:
al bundy wrote:
haysdb wrote:...In fact, THREE Samsung drives, including two 120GB 5400RPM drives I bought because they were cheap, in TOTAL are blessedly quiet...
David, thanks for that info. Do your 5400rpm Samsungs also run fairly cool as well? I've been considering putting one of those in a SilentDrive enclosure for an HTPC...

I have never tried to measure hard drive temps. Can the Hitachi Feature Tool report the hard drive temps? If I were to use temperature probes, where should I put them to most accurately report the drive temperatures? I have a DigitalDoc5 laying around someplace.

David

HDD temps can be monitored through the built-in "SMART" sensors in the drives. (well, except in almost all but the very latest WD drives).

Motherboard Monitor can do this, as can the little stand alone app called "Dtemp".

Tom Brown · Post by **Tom Brown** » Fri Nov 14, 2003 9:33 am

Ralf Hutter wrote:
Motherboard Monitor can do this, as can the little stand alone app called "Dtemp".

In Linux, hddtemp does a nice job of this (and can integrate into gkrell with a display agent).

mshan · Post by **mshan** » Sat Nov 15, 2003 4:48 am

Hello haydb:

I own a WD800JB HDD which I'm thinking about replacing with a Samsung Spinpoint or Seagate Barracuda V because of it's low level, but extremely grating high pitched whine.

When you replaced your WD HDD with a Samsung Spinpoint, did you notiice any perceptible performance drop (i.e. speediness of your system in general, in loading Windows, etc.). I am not a gamer and primary use of my computer is as a dedicated home theater computer.

Also, how much difference in performance did you notice between the 7200 rpm and 5400 rpm Spinpoints? Can I ask where you got yours and how much cheaper the 5400 drives are? Same quiet acoustic profile as the 7200 rpm drives?

haysdb · Post by **haysdb** » Sat Nov 15, 2003 9:29 pm

mshan wrote:Hello haydb:

I own a WD800JB HDD which I'm thinking about replacing with a Samsung Spinpoint or Seagate Barracuda V because of it's low level, but extremely grating high pitched whine.

When you replaced your WD HDD with a Samsung Spinpoint, did you notiice any perceptible performance drop (i.e. speediness of your system in general, in loading Windows, etc.). I am not a gamer and primary use of my computer is as a dedicated home theater computer.

Also, how much difference in performance did you notice between the 7200 rpm and 5400 rpm Spinpoints? Can I ask where you got yours and how much cheaper the 5400 drives are? Same quiet acoustic profile as the 7200 rpm drives?

mshan, I have not noticed any day-to-day performance difference between the Western Digital and Samsung drives.

I have only used the 5400 RPM drives for media storage, never as a system disk, so I can't compare the speed of the two drives. I think it's a given that the 7200RPM 8MB cache drives are considerably faster than the 5400RPM 2MB cache drives.

Neither MBM5 nor DTemp detects temperature sensors in the 5400RPM Samsung drives.

The 7200 RPM Samsung drive, mounted in a NoVibes III in a 5.25" bay, with no airflow over the drive, reports 37C, which is interesting because this is within one degree of the "case temperature" according to MBM5. I have no idea where the case temp sensor is located.

David

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Sun Nov 16, 2003 3:52 am

I've got a seagate V that was suspended in a novibes III but I was worried about the temp. The drive was inaudible above my seasonic ss 400 suspended but is crunchy when seeking when not in the novibes III.

Ha, how the heck do you work MBM5? Is more software needed after it is downloaded? everyone says it's great, if I wasn't retarded id use it.

just got dtemp, it seems to work. 32oC +/- 1 at more or less idle and resting in a 3.5 slot. That's hotter than i thought it'd be. I wonder how hot it was in novibes?

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sun Nov 16, 2003 5:52 am

Trip wrote:I've got a seagate V that was suspended in a novibes III but I was worried about the temp. The drive was inaudible above my seasonic ss 400 suspended but is crunchy when seeking when not in the novibes III.

Ha, how the heck do you work MBM5? Is more software needed after it is downloaded? everyone says it's great, if I wasn't retarded id use it.

just got dtemp, it seems to work. 32oC +/- 1 at more or less idle and resting in a 3.5 slot. That's hotter than i thought it'd be. I wonder how hot it was in novibes?

32°C is a great temp. Don't worry about it.

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Sun Nov 16, 2003 4:17 pm

i was thinking 32 in the HDD slot would mean bad temps in the novibes, but when i put it back in novibes, the temp stabilises at 41. That's at more or less idle, would a lot of use push that to unsafe temps?

seagate operating temps are 0 - 60 oC, so even 45oC is fine, right?

al bundy · Post by **al bundy** » Sun Nov 16, 2003 5:00 pm

Trip wrote:i was thinking 32 in the HDD slot would mean bad temps in the novibes, but when i put it back in novibes, the temp stabilises at 41. That's at more or less idle, would a lot of use push that to unsafe temps?

seagate operating temps are 0 - 60 oC, so even 45oC is fine, right?

Some people would say that anything under a max of around 55C or so is fine. I'm one of those people BTW...

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Sun Nov 16, 2003 5:21 pm

good to hear, it's at 44oC running defrag so im safe by that standard.

do you think it will last me 3 yrs if I run it at 41-45?

Quick hard drive noise summary - forget about reviews!

Quick hard drive noise summary - forget about reviews!

Re: Quick hard drive noise summary - forget about reviews!

Re: Quick hard drive noise summary - forget about reviews!

Any perceptible speed differences between various hard drive

Re: Any perceptible speed differences between various hard d