Are Bigger Hard drives louder?

[JefftheCheff]

So our 500gb seagate was very noisy during access time (which is a big problem cause we constantly access things), so we ordered a hitachi 500gb and its a bit quieter but still too noticable. our ould wd 250g doesnt make any noise at all, so that leads me to my question, are bigger hd louder?

 

[sirrobin4ever]

Not really. Sometimes larger hard drives are louder, but the only reason would be that there are are more platters, and thus more moving read heads.

Makes sense to me that the Western Digital HD was quiet; as they tend to be that way. Maxtor's on the other hand are often quite loud.

 

[JefftheCheff]

Not really. Sometimes larger hard drives are louder, but the only reason would be that there are are more platters, and thus more moving read heads.

Makes sense to me that the Western Digital HD was quiet; as they tend to be that way. Maxtor's on the other hand are often quite loud.

if i partitioned the drive would it disable read/write heads?

 

[pppjunk]

No, partitioning won't do any good, what you need if the seek noise bothers you is a harddrive mount with rubber "thingies" to dampen the vibrations.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

Another option to reduce drive noise is to use the Hitachi Feature Tool. This software is on a bootable CD or bootable floppy disk, and allows you to change the acoustic managment settings of most IDE/SATA hard drives (not just Hitachi - I've successfully used it on Western Digitals and Maxtors).

If you set the acoustic management all the way to maximum, it can make even Maxtors quiet.

The drawback of acoustic managment is that is increases the average seek time of the drive, slowing file access.

 

[pppjunk]

No cost, very efficient and very ugly DIY solution to make your drive shut up :

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1100235

Commercial version :

http://www.siliconacoustics.com/novibes3.html

 

[proof]

No, SATA HDDs are generally not that loud. Same with IDE. The Raptor is really the only "loud" SATA drive. When you get in to SCSI, thats when $hit gets loud. My rig sounds like a plane is taking off when it starts up.