Best quiet/affordable ~500gb hard drive?

I've been hearing about a Scorpio (Blue, i think?) that people like. I want something cheap, yet quiet and about ~500gb. I think that I want to go with 5400rpm since 7200rpm is louder/hotter, and at these densities 5400rpm drives perform nearly the same, right? I have a Dell Latitude E6400, if it makes a difference.

I wish I could afford a SSD but alas, i am a poor college student.

Thanks all!

 

i have a seagate 250gb 7200rpm drive that is slightly faster than the 500gb 5400rpm western digital blue drive, so you can assume the 320gb and 500gb 7200rpm versions are slightly faster than that. the 500gb western digital 5400rpm drive is really dang quiet and it doesn't put out much vibration at all. i'd take it over the 7200rpm drives because it's near silent. highly recommended if you don't need the absolute fastest thing out there.

 

any deals or anything? recommended places to buy?

 

Check pricewatch.com.

 

WD Scorpio Blue 500gb or Hitachi 5k500B. Both are the top mainstream drives at the moment.

Both have impressive power consumption figures. Though Hitachi has a slightly lower power consumption than the Scorpio blue.

Have a look at this review: http://techreport.com/articles.x/17010/1

 

The Toshiba has the lowest power consumption of all, but performance is only middle of the pack. I don't care for a couple extra MB/s as much as I do for low power consumption and quietness so it was an easy choice for me.

Here is a link to it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149087

 

If silence is your priority get the Toshiba 500GB or WD5000BEVT.

WD5000BEVT is actually quieter than Hitachi 5K500.b


http://techreport.com/articles.x/17010/13

 

id recommend 5K500B for lesser power consumption..
but for a little bump of performance can go for WD5000BEVT...

but overall the performance gap between hitachi and wd is not so huge...

 

thanks guys! Now to just find it for really cheap.

 

And that benchmark is only relative to the place you are in.
An SSD makes no noise, so there is 42 decibels of pollution in the room already. How do we know that is constant in all tests.
In reality you will see no difference in noise between the WD5000BEVT and the 5K500.B, just get what ever is cheaper. Make sure it has warranty. Some online stores sell drives which are oulled from external enclosures, which have a 1 year warranty, not the 3 year warranty normally given

K-TRON

 

They explain it well:

Since WD5000BEVT is also faster I would go for WD.

 

But thats only one source
We had numerous sources here back when the 5K500.B came out, which showed higher crystalmark performance on the 5K500.B

Not that either is really any better, but those results are definitely misleading, since both drives use the same platter technology

K-TRON

 

Seems very unlikely that:
- Hitachi 5K500.b outperforms WD5000BEVT in Crystal Mark.
- I would miss those posts.

Please show me those posts.

Come on K-Tron you know better than that. There's a lot more to speed than platter density. The WD beats the Hitachi when it comes to I/O and acces times.


Source: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/25inch-500gb-hdd-roundup_10.html#sect0