Very quiet hard disk

My Samsung Spinpoints are very quiet.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

A lot of modern drives have acoustic management technology which normally allow you to set a noise performance profile as follows:

- Optimised for speed
- Optimised for quietness
- Balance between the two

Check the manufacturer's websites to find out which drives support this, but as a casual comment I thought the vast majority of or maybe even all modern manistream drives support this.

My 40 GB samsung spinpoint wasn't so quiet at all. I also prefer 320 GB.

Even my hitachi has acoustic management, but even when i put this to maximum, it still makes noise when seeking...

Western Digital SE16 500 gig. Have one that sits on my desk running and it's barely audible. Bought 2 more for Htpc use.

500GB is too big for me. I prefer something about 320 GB. :idea:

The Samsungs HD's are generally well known for their quiet performance properties.

I'd definately recommend starting there.

What do you think about this hard drive:

Samsung SpinPoint T133 Series HD321KJ 320GB 7200rpm 16MB NCQ SATA 3Gb/s

Is it quiet?

You may have a trade-off with any brand of hard drive: that is to say higher reliability may mean sacrificing some of the acoustic management, and vice-a-versa. For example, in the Seagate line the Barracuda 7200.10 drives are quieter than the Barracuda ES line. But, the 7200.10s are not designed for 24/7/365 operation, the ES drives are. This is direct from the tech support people at Seagate.

That said, my 320GB ES is pretty darn quiet. There is no motor sound from it, and only a slight, very quiet, rumble when it is performing a big bunch of seeks. Can only hear it in a quiet room with no other noise. Any conversation or sound (low classical music, someone walking through room, etc.) completely masks it.

If you would like a REALLY quiet drive, why not consider using a 2.5" laptop type drive in your machine. They are used increasingly in ultra-quiet home-theater PCs simply because they are so quiet.

Even though my 7200 ES in my desktop is pretty quiet, the Momentus 5400.3 in my laptop is much, much quieter. It is virtually silent, not detectable, usually, even in a silent room. And there are some 7200 rpm 2.5" laptop drives available.

True: I have a 120GB USB drive which is just a laptop disk in a small case, and the only way to tell it's working is by the LED on the back and a slight vibration from the disk if I open the top and put my finger on it  .

Benchmarks around 36MB/second, I've no idea what the seek time is like.

How about a SILENT drive like this one .  

But you need an adapter.

Should plug right into the MoBo 8)

f61

This is toooo expensive for me...  

So - no thanks.

But which one is the most quiet 320 GB 7200 rpm hard drive then? One expert said that samsung drives are silent only in idle, but when seeking...   And you are just lucky, if you get a silent samsung hard drive.. :roll:

as I stated earlier, my samsungs are quiet enough that I cannot hear them. I have the Armor Jr case which is all vent in the front so if they were noisy I would surely hear them.

Notice that we are all talking about this like our hearing is equal. It is not. If we ignore the psychological aspects of hearing (and they are considerable), and focus only on the physical, testable differences between us, there will be very significant differences between us.

But then we add in the psychological factors and it all becomes very, very subjective. For example, whatever noise you may find objectionable from your current hard drive (motor whine, rumble-y seeks, clicking seeks, unloading heads, etc) is what you are going to be attuned to pay attention to in a new drive and you will focus on it, and may find it annoying even though it may be far quieter than your current drive.

Thus it is really hard to recommend a quiet hard drive to someone else. However, the little, 2.5" laptop drives are the quietest around. Period. They are not available in 320GB sizes, though, and the cost per megabyte of storage is going to be higher than a 3.5" drive.

I will agree that the newer samsung spinpoints are VERY quiet, not the fastest but they're decent drives, and mine was almost inaudible when seeking.

If you want something that will be for all intents and purposes, completely silent, check into a 2.5" drive and an adapter, I have a 2.5" fujitsu in one of my machines and you can't hear it even if you put your ear up to it.

I bought WD3200AAKS. It wasn't quiet when seeking, but i turned on acoustic management and now it's silent, i can't hear it even when it's seeking.

Thanks to everybody.

How quiet are we talking about here? Do you mean even quieter than at whisper volume? Generally I've had good experience with Seagate drives, not much experience with Maxtor though. My primary concern about Samsung drives is reliability. I've had one that died on me for no apparent reason, but that was a long time ago. Generally most hard drives are quiet enough, my fans are louder than the hard drive could ever be.

Well, it's on rubber bands and my case fan's are very silent, so i can say that this hard drive is really-really quiet, i can't hear it at all.

My experience with the Seagate Barracuda is that it is one of the more quite drives.

Hm. Now I can't help you there since in my experience and from the pc's that I got, it's either the case fan or processor fan that really outdoes the hard disk in terms of decibels.