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Cooke
- Dec 15, 2007: Western
Digital Green Power WD7500AACS added
- April 3, 2007: Samsung Spinpoint T HD400LJ and WD Scorpio 120 added; other minor changes.
- June 30, 2006: A number of minor changes and added the
WD5000KS as the quietest currently available drive.
- October 4, 2005: A complete revision of text and rankings
based on reviews with our latest
HDD testing methodology.
- January 15, 2005: Another reevaluation of the whole article
and rankings.
- April 11, 2004: A long overdue overhaul of the entire article
and ranking table, including information from reviews over the past year,
expanded HDD discussion, a new notebook drive table, and a section on some
excluded drives.
- May 11, 2003: Info from recent reviews added, including
Samsung SP1604N, Seagate Barracuda IV & 7200.7, and IBM 180GXP. Also revised
rankings slightly.
- Jan 11, 2003: IBM 180GXP added
- Dec. 10, 2002: Minor changes + addition of HDD Noise Reduction
Products
- Updated Sept. 18, 2002
- First published July 17, 2002
SPCR began publishing hard drive reviews in March 2003. From the beginning, the focus was on noise. A new, improved
methodology for testing hard drives was introduced in May 2005. Since then, we have reviewed drives from every mainstream hard drive brand. Given the dramatic changes in HDD noise performance in the past couple of years, we've chosen to include only recently reviewed models in our recommended list. Readers are strongly encouraged to read our Hard Drive Testing Methodology article if they have not already done so.
What follows below is a distillation of parts of our HDD testing methodology article.
HDD RANKINGS
Drives on the recommended list are there for one reason:
They are quiet. Due to complexity and time requirements, we do not test drive performance. Generally, performance
is similar for models of similar basic specifications: Spindle speed, capacity, and areal density. We recommend Storage
Review as a reliable source of information about hard drive performance.
Just as our specialization is noise, theirs is drive performance.
Two assessment factors are worthy of note:
- Sample variance is a hurdle we cannot overcome without examining random samples from many production batches over a period of time. This is not feasible. The reviews and our rankings are based on a careful assessment of our samples only.
- Manufacturers sometimes revise products line without
notice or any change in model number. Even an updated firmware can affect drive noise,
as seek strategies can be changed. Keep this in mind when perusing the recommended
list; the date of manufacture and the firmware version of our sample is usually listed.
TYPES OF DRIVE NOISE
The noise of a disc drive mounted in a case comes in two forms:
- Airborne acoustics is what all drive manufacturers currently specify as the HDD noise. It is the sound that comes from the drive through the air to the observer. This value is measured with the drive suspended in space by wires.
- Structure-borne acoustics induced by the drive's vibration during idle and seek is not quantified by HDD makers. This vibrational energy is transmitted to the PC chassis and causes the chassis to act much like a sounding board.
Structure-borne acoustics is the dominant source of HDD-induced PC noise. Seagate's testing has shown that changes in stand-alone drive acoustics had little effect on the overall system acoustics when drives were hard mounted in the chassis. Hence the dramatic noise reduction evident with decoupled mountings such as the NoVibes, SPCR's own elastic suspension, or simply placing the drive on soft foam. The noise emitted by even drives with very quiet stand-alone performance is greatly effected by how it is mounted to a chassis. There is also a useful forum thread on the effectiveness of various HDD decoupled mounting techniques.
There are also two
main types of noise:
- Idle noise - typically a smooth hum or whoosh, caused by the spinning
motor and its bearings. Non-FDB drives often exhibit a high pitched whine.
- Seek noise - a rough, intermittent noise caused by head actuator movement during seek, read and write.
Idle and seek noise have both airborne and vibration-induced components. The
relative balance between airborne and vibration-induced noise is influenced
by the case and the method of installation (i.e, soft vs. hard
mounting). In other words, setup affects how a hard drive will sound. This is
why we do not produce a unified rating for drive noise, but measure and report
both airborne and vibration-induced noise.
FACTORS AFFECTING DRIVE NOISE
Until about two or three years ago, the majority of hard drives on the market
used ball-bearing motors, which had a characteristic high pitched whine and
other objectionable airborne noise. Since then, the industry has shifted to
much quieter FDB (Fluid Dynamic Bearing) motors, with the result that most recent
drives are significantly quieter than older drives, sometimes by as much as
10 dBA@1m. All major drive manufacturers now use FDB motors in their current
lineups. If you have a typical non-FDB drive that's more than a year or two
old, the simplest way to achieve lower noise (and improved performance) is to
swap it for a new drive, almost any new drive.
There are three other factors that affect drive noise:
The number of platters in the drive. The acoustic difference between a single platter drive and a four platter drive is much
smaller than between a ball-bearing drive and a FDB drive. In other words, the noise penalty for using a higher capacity drive is not great, especially with FDB bearings. Still, the quietest drives are single platter FDB models.
The difference between idle and seek noise. While a drive idling quietly may not be intrusive, if seek noise is considerably louder than idle noise, it will certainly be noticeable. The smaller the difference between seek and idle noise, the less audible the drive will be.
Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM). This technology sacrifices some
seek latency in favor of softer, quieter seeks. The performance hit is often
small enough that AAM is well worth using. With the notable exception of Seagate,
all manufacturers these days allow AAM to be enabled, although its effectiveness
varies wildly from drive to drive. Not all manufacturers provide a utility
to enable and adjust AAM, but almost all drives work with Hitachi's
feature tool.
USEFUL LINKS
In SPCR
On the Web
- Disc
Drive Acoustics: A comprehensive, informative and readable white paper from Seagate.
- Storage Review:
An excellent resource for drive performance information. Like SPCR, they specialize,
and are good at what they do.
- Storage
Review's Performance Testing Methodology: A detailed description of
how they test drive performance. Soon to be superseded by Testbed 4.
- Hard Disk
Drives: An extremely thorough explanation of how hard drives work from
The PC Guide. Expect to spend several hours reading this.
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