Quiet HDD's

What's a really quiet and fast HDD?

I've had 2 different Seagate (200GB @ 7200 rpm) HDDs and they both seemed really noisy. Am I just being too picky?

 

Notebook drives can be noisy. However, I bought a 100GB Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 SATA drive for my e1705 and it's pretty quiet.

 

i have a three western digitals.. 1 in my notebook and 2 external.. all three are super quiet

 

What do you guys have your HDD's set to in the Bios? I have mine to performance, but what do you guys have?

 

I have mine on the default: "Bypass"

When it's on performance I don't hear the clicks but I can hear it spinning, so the noise level is pretty much the same.

 

Is there a difference in speed between performance and what you have? I just set it to performance because I assumed it would be faster, but then again most people don't even know about the Bios and would never change it, so there must not be a HUGE difference.

 

?... my bios dosn't have a hd setting...

 

F2 and then I think it is something like "HD Acoustic Settings".

 

I'd trade a little noisy hard drive for no humming and vibration on my replacement anyday.

 

As far as i know
Hitachi + Seagate = noisy.
Fujitsu = quite quiet.
WD = very quiet

 

I have a Fujitsu 120GB 7200rpm...It's not silent by a long shot, but it's not excessively loud either. I think that how I'll hear all of them.

 

Thanks for the feedback guys. But is there one specific HDD I should be looking for? I just want a really quiet one.

 

Samsung extremely quiet
Toshiba, well its definitely nosier than a Samsung
WD, I have 2 of them as Passports, and they are quiet, but it could also be the good sound insulation of the case

 

My Fujitsu is very quiet.

 

So I guys the Seagates are just loud then?

 

My Toshiba HD is quiet, but then again I don't have any other notebook drives to compare it with.

 

I think you're exactly right.

I've had two Seagates, both very noisy and one Fujitsu, pretty quiet. Thanks for the post.

 

I had Hitach 5400RPM and 7200RPM, and they both made this noise at least once every minute when the HDD was idling:
http://www.zshare.net/audio/8050519331ad14/

You can either download it or listen to it on the site. It's the noise you hear at 00:03.

 

Dell is sending me a SE100 replacement hard drive which is suppose to be a Western Digital hard drive. Has anyone heard anything about these?

I've heard they're some of the quietest.

 

WD is the best hdd you can ever want to get both on desktop and on your lappy. I have had a WD for year on the desktop and it had been quiet. Not until I got a new HP PC

Damn Lord, that is noisy you would want to block your ears

Plus my ext hdd which is Seagate's FreeAgent is so tricky. I won't dare buy anything apart from WD again

 

I have a Hitachi drive, and while it's not silent, it's not excessively loud either.

I also have an external HDD, a Seagate FreeAgent, which I never hear. It's completely silent.

 

according to the specifications I have compared for my purposes
(IDE, 5400rpm) Western Digital and Samsung are the quietest.
I had both of them and Samsung was quieter on me.

 

I don't trust Samsung HDD's quality, coz i know too many failed products (both desktop and notebook).

 

i feel like throwin out the seagate on my hp desktop now...it is a sick product. Dont ever get Seagate!

 

My m1330 came with a Seagate. It constantly has quiet ticking sounds. Too bad I didnt get a WD instead. The WD on my desktop computer is silent compared to the Seagate in my desktop computer. In my experience, Seagate HDs are pretty loud compared to the other brands.

 

Yeah, we have the same hard drive. Are you gonna get a WD??? I was thinking about it, you can get a really quiet for 120 bucks.

Do you think it'd be worth it?

 

I think I'm gonna hold out until SSDs are cheap enough for consumers and I'll get that instead. Should be within budget & capacity in 1-2 years.

 

I got a Samsung 320Gb and a WD 250Gb

Samsung 320Gb = really quiet
Western Digital 250Gb - just a 'little' noisier than the Samsung.

 

yours is a samsung HM320JI right? do you notice any loud clicking issue (not normal hdd seek/write operation) from time to time?

 

Yup, my Fujitsu 160GB 7200RPM is very quiet.


.

 

I have two M1330s (a new one and an outlet), here's my take:

The Fujitsu 120GB 5400rpm( FUJITSU MHY2120BH ) in my "new" m1330 is pretty friggen silent... here's a Newegg link to the specs:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822116036

The WDC WD2500BEVS-75UST0 250GB 5400rpm in the Refurb on the other hand makes enough noise for me to think that a fan is on!!!

So, if you don't care about blazing speed or huge capacity.... just blow the $60-$70 for a Fuji 120gb 5400rpm and CALL IT A DAY!

Personal note.. I'm ULTRA Anal about noise... I blew all kinds of money on my Antec P180 SILENT desktop. So yes, I'm very very very picky.

 

I have the 7200 Seagate in the 1530 and it's noisy all the time. My Compaq laptop has a 5400 Hitachi that I never hear and I have a WD external drive that is silent. I was thinking the 1530 was noisy because it has a 7200 but maybe it's just the brand?

 

I think it's the way the m1530 is designed. The aluminum casing doesn't seem to help with keeping the noise down.

Do you guys think it's worth it to get a different hard drive. I would be spending about a 100 dollars, but does anyone know how much performance I would be sacrificing to get a quiet hard drive?

 

Totally subjective question man! That's a question you have to ask yourself

For me it's quite simple:

I would notice a loud drive 100% of the time
I would notice (if at all) a performance increase what... 10-20% of the time?

I'm going with quiet... I'll wait the extra 30+ seconds the few times I'm installing applications.

 

Just a thought... have you gone into the bios and set the HD to quiet mode to see if it makes any difference? I was thinking about trying this myself. I probably didn't need the 7200 in the first place because I don't do any gaming. With the programs I use, I haven't noticed a significant performance increase from my 1505 that had a 5400 drive.

 

In the 2 weeks I've had it i've only noticed it once, it was like a loudert than usual twanging sound. Reading about it, it seems like something to do with powersaving ie the drive not wanting to and the OS saying do it. I may be wrong though (like always)

 

when i first got it, i only got that sound once in a few days or maybe 1-2weeks. i just ignore it. recently (after 2 months), the clicking is happening every 30-45 min or sometimes 10-20 sec once. it's totally random and unpredictable. i tried all the settings in power management and even BIOS, tried NHC, nothing works. really annoying because it's really loud, otherwise, the drive is an absolute speed monster, even faster than most 7200RPM drives.

 

I have spoken to Samsung and if you are in doubt these drives are covered by a 3-year warranty (doesn't help your data, but you should really get important stuff on an external USB jobby).

Will have to wait and see.

 

Yeah I have messed around with those settings and it was still pretty loud. Placing it on quiet didn't really do anything and placing it on performance just basically stopped the clicking but turn on the fan almost constantly.

I think I'm just gonna have to bite the bullet and eventually get a really quiet Western Digital.

 

Seagates are fine, it's me that's wrong. My hard drive really wasn't being that loud, I was just being picky.

Compared to other "loud" notebooks, I think this thing is pretty quiet.

Two thing that helped to make it quieter tho, IMO would being changing it from BYPASS to QUIET in the Bios. And also disabling the indexing feature under properties of the C drive.

 

The case has a lot to do with it.

The same WD Scorpio 250GB drive is much quieter in our 1720 than in the 1520. Same drive, less noise.

 

Hey guys,

I just have a few questions about my m1530 hard drive. I'm pretty sure that my HDD is a seagate (it has STxxxxx etc) as the device. It makes a soft "crunching noise" somewhat, but I believe it's just the HDD working. Is this normal or are most HDDs silent? I'm thinking that I should maybe get a replacement from Dell (mine is 200GB 7200RPM HDD). Is this the noise you guys are discussing or is this something different? Thanks!

 

It shouldn't be making a crunching noise, but more of a clicking noise. Since a hard drive is basically just a spinning disk, there really shouldn't be any crunching. I'd probably get a replacement.

Another thing that I think helped with the noise was the fact that my first hard drive wasn't perfectly streamlined with the left side of the notebook. So when I got my replacement, they said they would send me a Western Digital (lie), I made sure it went in all the way. Call me crazy but, I think it's a little quieter now.

 

i am having the same issue here too. I have a m1530 and i believe mines is also a seagate drive (200gb 7200rpm) I noticed the clicking noise the first day I got it. When the notebook is in idle mode I would hear the clicking noise. Other then that I dont hear it. Should I be worry about this? I

 

Mike 01Hawk,

what do you think about Samsung hard drives?