quietest HDD for my T60p?

I currently have a Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 drive (HTS721010G9SA00-- 100 GB, 7200 RPM) on my T60p-- which came installed when I purchased the system-- and I'm looking to upgrade my drive both for larger capacity and quieter performance. I've been incredibly pleased with the speed of this drive, but it's a bit noisy I find. So I'm wondering, what is said to be the quietest drive out there? I'm actually less concerned about capacity-- I could go for 160GB if it's significantly more quiet than this drive.

Thanks for any recs!

 

Any of the SSDs would be silent.

 

hm... should have specified that I -- or more accurately, my wallet-- need to stay with HDDs for now

 

Noise seems to be hit or miss, even amongst the same models drives in my experience. I'd just buy one and if it's too noisy, exchange it. The last two Seagates I've bought have been near silent, but again it could have just been luck of the Irish.

 

That may have something to do with seagate missing the patent on disk quieting.

 

I have the WD 500GB WD5000BEVT. It seems silent to me. I would think that any of the newer 5400RPM drives would be quieter than your 7200RPM drive. This may be the fastest 5400RPM drive out there because of the 250GB platters that it uses.

 

There is really no such thing as a fast 5400 rpm disk unless you are talking about head movement.
Renee

 

Faster read/write due to more hdd space on less platters

 

You should try an pick up a SINGLE PLATTER drive if possible. This would generally be a 160GB drive from a 320GB family, or 100GB drive from a 200GB family. These will be slighly lighter and quiter due to the reduced number of platters and read/write heads.

Areal density is also very important, so you should try and get a drive that offers 160GB on a single platter (I would choose a 160GB/platter 5400RPM over a 100GB/platter 7200RPM drive).

I am reasonably satisifed with the noise character of my 5400RPM 320GB Hitachi 5K320 (160GB single platter is also available, but it seems to be relatively rare from resellers). Most people also rave about the Seagate 7200.3 drive ( 320GB 2 platter design).

 

I have used Seagate all over the year, and they are all silent. The three models I have is 7200.2, 5400.4, and 5400.5
Your result may vary though

 

thanks much for all the helpful replies.... I'm curious, is there any reason that an HDD would get louder over time, i.e. through use?

 

It shouldn't, unless it is starting to go bad.

That being said, newer drives do tend to be quieter than older ones (my four 640GB WD6400AAKS drives in my desktop are much quieter than my two 5 year old 120GB Maxtors in the same computer).

 

I have found the new segate black series to be quite quiet. Also you can get a 32Gig solid state drive on newegg for $75.00. 64Gig goes for around $130.00. Depends upon what you are doing with your laptop. I have an older one setup as an ebook reader and the 32Gig solid state drive works wonderfully.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N=2013240636&StoreType=2&bop=And&Order=RATING

 

wow, I didn't realize the prices had come down that much on SSDs... so if I were to purchase one of the ones on the link you provided, I could install it on my T60p in the same way as an HDD, correct?

 

Yes, just be aware that many of the dirt cheap SSDs are lower quality MLC drives with weak JMicron controllers. They perform very well for sequential reads/writes, but have serious problems with small simultaneous random writes (something Vista does way too much) as it overloads the controller.

However, if your top concern is noise, and sequential performance, they are a fantastic option.

 

thanks again for the reply... what is the ultimate result of these cheaper SSDs having problems with simultaneous random writes, as you mention? does the overloading of the controller simply impede performance, or is it worse than that?

 

You get instance of stuttering when using them. So in some instances its lightning fast, in others it takes longer to open a program than if you were using the slowest mechanical drive.

 

yes there is, and it's IDE, and it's faster than my SATA 7200rpm HDD

and it's model is Samsung HM160HC

- but back to the topic:

I have the same Hitachi HDD and it is not very quiet. Also it tends to run hotter than other HDDs that I've seen. So I went with Seagate which is almost silent. It does produce that lauder click when it parks the heads though, like one time every 5min I'd say .. but depends on the usage of course

 

I have the hitachi 7k320. It seems quiet but i always use my laptop with the tv on. The heat for this drive is super low, usually below 40C. Only complaint i have is that you can feel it vibrate on the palm rest but you get used to it. I think it goes back to what someone else said, different hdd's even though they're the same model behave differently

 

so how should i compare the noise of my current drive to one of the seagates that people mention are quiet?

in an empty room with no sound, i can definitely hear the drive spinning. what i'm looking for is a drive that is near silent.

besides SSDs, is such a thing available?

 

I have a t6_1_p and am having the same problem. I had a 7200rpm drive and bought a (larger) 5400rpm Seagate.

It was definitely quieter (a _lot_ quieter) than the original drive when I had them side by side out of the case while I was transferring data.

However, when I put the new one back in the case, it was just as loud.

It's leading me to suspect that it's the design of the case itself that makes these drives "loud". Certainly my old notebook (running a 5400rpm drive) _was_ completely silent.

v.

 

All hard drives make some sound because they have moving parts. However, some will make more noise than others.

As a general rule, slower drives with less platters make less noise.

You should check out Silent PC Review. They maintain an index (although it may be out of date) of the quietest drives available. The forums there may also be more helpful for this question than these forums.

However, if your goal is silent, your only real option is an SSD.

Take note, that even if your drive is silent, you may still hear your CPU fan and/or the dreaded Penryn whine; so true "silence" (0dB) will be almost impossible to achieve.