Seagate still the quiet leader?

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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SnowPunk98
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Seagate still the quiet leader?

Post by SnowPunk98 » Sun Aug 17, 2008 9:06 pm

When I last built a good desktop Seagate was normally the least noisy drive, I love their drives regardless. Is this still the case, what is the standard quiet drive for a SATA drive?

Nick Geraedts
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Post by Nick Geraedts » Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:10 am

Check out SPCR's Recommended Hard drive list. In terms of desktop drives, the quietest drives you'll find without breaking the bank are the Western Digital GP drives. Some people might claim that the 5400RPM rotational speed of the drives is a major flaw, but in most real-world scenarios, you probably won't notice the difference.

If you read my signature, you'll notice I'm running 10 of them in my server. ;)

QuietOC
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Re: Seagate still the quiet leader?

Post by QuietOC » Mon Aug 18, 2008 4:53 am

SnowPunk98 wrote:When I last built a good desktop Seagate was normally the least noisy drive, I love their drives regardless. Is this still the case, what is the standard quiet drive for a SATA drive?
Seagate has generally had the noisiest 3.5" drives recently. Currently the WD Green Power/Velociraptor/AAKS, Hitachi P7K500, Samsung F1/S250 are the best.

Ranking best to worst:

Speed: VelociRaptor, F1/AAKS, S250, P7K500, WD GP
Noise: WD GP/VelociRaptor, P7K500, F1/AAKS/S250

jhhoffma
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Post by jhhoffma » Mon Aug 18, 2008 7:44 am

Stay away from Seagate and Maxtor (now made by Seagate), they are not among the quietest drives. I have an older 300GB Maxtor (actually Seagate 7200.11-series) that is not intrusively loud, but it has the idle clicking most note with this drive series. My WD5000KS is much quieter.

SnowPunk98
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Post by SnowPunk98 » Mon Aug 18, 2008 8:29 pm

I have an 80GB Seagate Barracuda IV model ST380021A sitting here doing nothing but I would like a SATA drive to get some more speed. How is this drive in terms of quietness?

Which of these two would you guys pick

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148138
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136074

Vicotnik
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Post by Vicotnik » Mon Aug 18, 2008 9:57 pm

SnowPunk98 wrote:Which of these two would you guys pick
Since one of them is a Seagate, the choice is not that hard is it?

Seagate was great once, the Barracuda IV is legendary. The first silent HDD imo. But I think Barracuda V was the last one Seagate had that was good, and that was how long ago?

Stay away from Seagate already! :twisted: :wink:

tuz
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Post by tuz » Mon Aug 18, 2008 10:10 pm

Yes, I have a new Seagate HD, a 500GB 7200.11. Unfortunately even when suspension mounted in an Antec Solo I can still hear the seeks, although its far quieter compared to when it was hard mounted in my old case. In the past Seagate used to be quiet, but no more. Also I can't find any way to enable AAM to quieten down the seeks, though it seems like most other brands can do this. I think I'd go for a WD or Samsung if I was to buy another HD now.

Vicotnik
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Post by Vicotnik » Mon Aug 18, 2008 10:27 pm

Due to patent issues Seagate HDDs lack AAM capabilities.

Kaleid
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Post by Kaleid » Mon Aug 18, 2008 11:11 pm

So they're not allowed to use AAM which is commonly used. So why can't they make something similar on their own?

jhhoffma
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Post by jhhoffma » Tue Aug 19, 2008 6:02 am

Kaleid wrote:So they're not allowed to use AAM which is commonly used. So why can't they make something similar on their own?
Due to patent issues...

SnowPunk98
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Post by SnowPunk98 » Tue Aug 19, 2008 6:36 am

So is http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136074 a quiet one or do I have to get a specific model?

QuietOC
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Post by QuietOC » Tue Aug 19, 2008 7:24 am

SnowPunk98 wrote:So is http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136074 a quiet one or do I have to get a specific model?
There is a review of that model here.

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