Silent and Fast SATA Disk ?

[trick]

For specific needs I just got a system with 10K rpm 150 GB WD Raptor Disks. Since this system is specially build for interactive client presentations the drive is way too loud in seek operations. Now I could change to 7200 rpm disks but can anyone advice a silent hard disk with higher rotation speeds ? (No SAS or SCSI !!!)

Another problem is that the newer (last 1-2 months) NVidia QuadroFX 1500 cards speed up their fan for about 5 minutes each time you start an OGL app. Does anyone know if the newer FX3500 or FX4600 cards have the same problem ? BTW the recent (last week) bios update did not help...

[MoonDoggie]

my 150gb raptor is just fine, I'm a quiet nut and it doesn't bother me at all.

I read alot of reviews before I bought it on newegg

"-way too loud"
"AWESOME A+, but VERY loud"

etc.

But I don't think it's too loud, unless I was in a very quiet room, then it might be.

-Colin

[crazy homeless guy]

when i bought my last power supply, i did a web search, and found a couple of sites that were dedicated to rating pc equipment based on their noise levels. you might want to do a search to see if you can find similar info on hard drives.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article622-page2.html


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[RErender]

You might look into some of the drive isolator/mounts. Some are supposed to reduce noise by a bunch.

[trick]

Thanks for all info.

I already tried all the solutions offered by SilentPC (rubbers, wires, cases) but it does not solve the high hollow seek noise which is very irritating for example when doing video/music edits in AfterFX/Fusion. Because the idle noise level is very low, the seek noise really "jumps" out of the case. At home I have a similar setup with this same drive and indeed for doing 3D work and such it does not bother that much. When there is no equivalent disk I will probably use an external SCSI case with 15K Cheetahs that is placed in another room...

[visumporec]

...my Seagate Cheetah 15K SAS is quiet too but in Intel server case...

[DaForce]

Yeah raptors are rather noisy.. they just are.. face it

I believe seagate had a liquid bearing technology that was pretty quiet. Also teh western digital drives on the whole are pretty quiet.

check out. www.storagereview.com they go into pretty good detail about heat and noise of each drive they test.

[tricky]

I've used http://www.quietpc.com/ for bits and pieces in the past.

Samsung Spinpoint T-Series Hard Drives are apparently nice and quiet.

[dellis]

...maybe increase the volume on the presentation.

[werticus]

my raptor is mounted inside an antec p180 case which has two pieces of aluminium cladding plastic for the walls - so the case itself is well insulated.

also the drive mounts to a silicon stopper at all the scew points, sorta makes for a floating suspension. and then the entire case is on a rubber mat.

never had noticed the raptor was any louder than any other drive to be honest

[claude_tnt]

these might be an option to consider SSD Drives completly silent drives with no moving parts...
claude

[rcollett]

If you're looking for speed and quiet, try taking some of the quiter 7200rpm drives and make a raid 0 (striped set). 2 drives will roughly double the read/write speeds, 4 drives will quadruple the speeds. Using a hardware raid solution will offload a lot of the processing, reducing CPU usage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

[Da_elf]

i use a normal sata external and its quite quiet. its 7200 but is still good for me to do my audio and video edits with in real time

[dlparisi]

The Western Digital 500gb SE16 (WD5000AAKS) have gotten some pretty good reviews for noise levels. Just a suggestions as i don't have one myself

[DaForce]

Only problem with raid is it rarely works out as good as it sounds. Sure its an improvement, but often not as amazing as it looks by the numbers.

Have a look at http://www.storagereview.com/ they review most new and recent drives.
ANd list all the things you will need to make a decision.