Most silent HDD ?

I'm considering of swapping my Hitachi 7K100 7200 HDD with a new and more silent HDD. I often sit in very quite environments and work so therefore I want a HDD which emits as little noise as possible.

I really like 7200 RPM HDD's for its speed but I'm only using my notebook for work such as Internet, e-mail, Photoshop and word-processing. Therefore I would be able to go with a 5400 RPM HDD instead.

Which HDD is recommendable ? I'm not willing to get any SSD's at the moment as I don't want to pay the premium.

I've been looking at Western Digital's Scorpio HDD's (WD Scorpio WD1600BEVE 160 GB) and have heard some very nice things about them. How are they performing regarding noise and speed ? Other recommendale HDD's with very low noise emission ?

Has to be at least 100 GB and at least 5400 RPM.

Regards,
Jakob Laursen

 

Seagates are well known for running cool and quiet, as apposed to the Hitachis which tend to be faster but louder and hotter. So go with a seagate and you won't be dissapointed. Their 5 year warranty is also nice.

 

Does your notebook have a fan? If it has, very often the noise of the fan eclipses the noise of the hard drive. So, replacing the hard drive will not solve the problem. Most notebook hard drives are very quiet these days. Also, try to download Hitachi Feature Tool http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#FeatureTool

It has a utility that can change the acoustic and power management feature of the hard drive. You can make the hard drive very quiet with the tool, at the expense of having lower performance.

 

according to silentpcreview.com, the newer 7200rpm from seagate are somewhat loud.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article771-page1.html

that being said, western digital and samsung hds seem to have a reputation for being quiet, and i have heard that 5400 rpm seagates can be pretty quiet. i have a wd hd, and the majority of the time it's quiet, but i do hear clicks that can be annoying, but never the sound of the hd spinning.

edit: you may also check out this page.

http://www.storagereview.com/WD2500BEVS.sr?page=0,5

 

Western Digital makes the quietest hard drives in my opinion. I have an 80GB 5400RPM from two years ago and it is absolutely silent - no clicks. I have two 320GB 7200RPM 3.5" drives in my desktop and both of those are the same say. WD drives are the best built drives on the market as far as I'm concerned and I'd say unless you have a dying need for a 7200RPM drive, get a WD.

 

I don't have a dying need to have a 7200 RPM HDD although it is nice. I'm willing to sacrifice some performance in order to get a more silent HDD/computer.

Right now I only have 1 GB RAM in my computer. Could more RAM help to compensate for the slower HDD ?

 

I have a Seagate 160GB 7200rpm drive, and its almost silent - I hardly hear it at all.

More RAM is always a good thing, since your system will be able to store more of the running programs etc into RAM, hence it wont need to access your HDD as much - which means the system runs quicker by reading from RAM, and runs quieter since it doesnt need to spin up the HDD as often.