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    Cool and quiet harddrive!

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Oskare100, Nov 13, 2007.

  1. Oskare100

    Oskare100 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hello,
    I recently bought a Thinkpad but I think the harddive is too loud so I've searched for a quiet notebook HDD. Unfortunately I've only found one that should be quiet so far (Samsung SpinPoint M80). Are there any more quiet 2.5" HDDs or any as quite 2.5" HDDs? Are you aware of any other very quiet 2.5" HDD? The capacity doesn't matter as long as it is more than 80GB.

    Thanks,
    Best Regards
    Oskar R
     
    Oskare100, Nov 13, 2007
    #1
  2. Johnny T

    Johnny T Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Western Digital and seagate are quite good :) For quietness, don't get Hitachi lol! Very fast, but also loud (as i have one :)).
     
    Johnny T, Nov 13, 2007
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  3. adinu

    adinu I pwn teh n00bs.

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    Seagate is pretty much your best bet there. They are know for being cool and quiet, giving up some speed to Hitachi in exchange for those 2 attributes.
     
    adinu, Nov 13, 2007
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  4. jetstar

    jetstar Notebook Deity

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    I'll second the Seagate recommendation above.
     
    jetstar, Nov 13, 2007
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  5. prashanthm

    prashanthm Notebook Consultant

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    Any comparision between WD & Seagate on the quietness part?
     
    prashanthm, Nov 14, 2007
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  6. Commander Wolf

    Commander Wolf can i haz broadwell?

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    Well, if you want to get something REALLY quiet you should just get an SSD. No noise whatsoever. Of course you'd have to be willing to pay the premium...
     
    Commander Wolf, Nov 14, 2007
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  7. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    I would give my vote to Samsung. I've had several of their 2.5" HDDs during the past couple of years to replace whatever came in a notebook and they have consistently cooler and quieter than whatever they replaced. The same applies to their desktop HDDs.

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Nov 14, 2007
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  8. KnightUnit

    KnightUnit Notebook Evangelist

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    Seagate are pretty good for what your after
     
    KnightUnit, Nov 14, 2007
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  9. vostro1400user

    vostro1400user Notebook Deity

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    what's the max rate with HDTune?
     
    vostro1400user, Nov 14, 2007
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  10. JabbaJabba

    JabbaJabba ThinkPad Facilitator

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    An alternative, which is free and efficient, is to download Hitachi's Feature Tool and adjust the sound level with the Acoustic Management function.

    In most cases, you can make the hard drive more or less dead silent without sacrifizing much on performance. I did it on my Hitachi 5K160 120 GB drive. The drive became very quiet and the performance decrease was not noticeable in real life. HD Tune results showed a decrease of less than 1 MB/s transfer rate and 0.3-0.5 ms slower access time.

    Here's a link to one of the many sites where you can download the software needed:
    http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/Hitachi-Feature-Tool.shtml
     
    JabbaJabba, Nov 14, 2007
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  11. Johnny T

    Johnny T Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    really??! nice :D Will try that thanks :)
     
    Johnny T, Nov 14, 2007
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  12. JabbaJabba

    JabbaJabba ThinkPad Facilitator

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    Yes, it is a very useful tool. It has a quite a few other interesting functions other than the acoustic management function.

    Here's another link. This time directly to the Hitachi site, which includes the instruction manual for the software:
    http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#FeatureTool

    Note that you have to burn it to a bootable CD as it doesn't run directly in a Windows environment.
     
    JabbaJabba, Nov 14, 2007
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  13. amerks

    amerks Notebook Enthusiast

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    Well , I have the samsung 250 GB 5400 now. It sure is dead quiet, but it has it's oddities: sometimes it runs a very high temp when running idle; and there's a random clunk and the vibration of the drive is much higher than the other 5400 drives I owned (mostly fujitsu, and a HGST 5K250 which I returned for clicking). I am using the latest firmware of the drive.
    I never owned a seagate but I'm very curious if the 7200.2 drives are noisy.
     
    amerks, Nov 14, 2007
    #13