I am trying to decide whether to build my RAID array with 2 120 gig WD special editions, or wait a month or so until the fluid-bearing Maxtor versions are available. I had read in some store's user reviews that nearly everyone found the WDs quiet but one person commented on a high-pitched whine. I'd love to know the experiences of sensitive-eared Silent PC forum members...

Thanks in advance,

The only recent WD I have is a WD200B -- 7200 rpm, one platter. It whines like any other drive -- except the cuda. WD's own specs on the 120 (35 dBA idle; 39 seek) is the same as for the 200. I'd expect they sound about the same.

I've heard both a WD 120GB SE and a WD 100GB SE drive. I have to say that they're relatively quiet; no high pitched whine at all.

When you're doing disk intensive stuff you do get the usual clicks and noise. But no whine.

The WD drives as I recall had the highest objective noise test results on storagereview.com. Although objective sound measurements are extremely suspect to errors, I'd say its safe to say the WD's are by no means a quiet drive. Stick with maxtor fluids or seagate, I hear the cuda's fixed the raid 0 problem with models that have newer firmware (around ~3.75 and newer). Note that firmware estimate is a guess.

-Ken

I recently bought a 40 GB non-special edition ATA100 7200 RPM WD (400BB?). I needed a drive to put in a machine for my kids. The current drive they have is PIO Mode 2! Anyhow, I'm building a new box, and needed a new HD, and BestBuy has a pretty good sale on these drives.

First impression when taking it out of the box was "WHOA, this thing is light!!!" I'm assuming that the difference in weight can only add to the amount of noise the thing makes.

Another thing that puzzled me was the specs on the WD site for performance. There does not seem to be much difference in the stats between the SE and the regular 7200 rpm drives. They don't express a "sustained transfer" stat, I was looking at the buffer to disk measurements.

Queue

I have WD1200JB (special edition 120gb).

I've used it for about 3months now and they DO make the high pitched noise. you really don't realize it most of the times, but when temperature is right (or some other variable), they make the high pitched noise which makes my computing really unbearable.

I'm patiently waiting for the 8mb version of Seagate.

Don't get me wrong, WD1200JB's are GREAT drives. High pitch sound is very subtle and unfortunate. In fact I plan to keep this drive even after I get my Seagate. I'll probably wrap it up in an external box and turn it on, to access movies I have in there.

My usage of this drive is very frequent. I run it overnight with bunch of movies / musics downloading via p2p. and when I'm not downloading, I'm defragmenting, etc. No problems after all that use. I've killed series of IBM's before I relinquished my die-hard IBM fan status.

Dual 100 WDSE's here.

Annoying whine. ANNOYING. Since I've got the Zalman PS, Papst case fans, and Magic Fleece in my case, now they're the thing that bugs the holy hell out of me.

See my HD Sandwich thread for what I'm willing to go through to silence them.

I have the same experiences with dual 80 WDSE's. They have an annoying whine. I have a modified zalman psu, zalman cpu heatsink, zm17 on 8500 and 2 panaflo in my case and these harddrives are by far the loudest thing on my rig. Sometimes i put my computer on standby and let the harddrives shutdown just to hear how quiet my system would be without them. . ., (Can't wait for the barracuda's V!!)

when is the V with 8mb buffer coming out anyway? 2mb versions are out already.

Fastened to the case, the drives definitely have a whine...I've tried 2 things.

First, I did the double aluminum channel mod along the sides of the drive and placed it on foam in the bottom of the case. That helped a huge amount, and cost virtually nothing.

Secondly, having caught a really bad case of the "i need my PC silent" bug, I purchased one of the SmartDrive units from Silicon Acoustics and installed it, again laying the drive on top of foam in the bottom of the case. Ths drive is now pretty much silent. I'm going to try mounting the drive in a bay and see what happens. The SmartDrive does seem to work, though since the WD drive doesn't seem to have an internal temp gauge, so I can't tell if the drive is overheating in there or not. All of the Silent Drive reveiws I've read seem to indicate it's very effective at dissipating heat, but I would sure like that safety check of knowing for sure that it's not overheating.

Regards,
Bob

I have two 120GB WD1200JB's in RAID 1.

They are quite a bit louder. But their speed can't be denied. Especially with the write speed penalty I get with RAID 1.

I have a 80GB WD800JB, and that is one loud sucker. It has an almost raspy, grindy noise. Very annoying. I'm thinking of using a Smart Drive enclosure. Hope the WD800JB doesn't get killed by overheating.

Man, perhaps I should've gotten a Cuda V instead? Is the Cuda V that much slower than the WD800JB(8MB Cache)?
-Ed

seagate did perform slower than the wd counterpart.

wds are the loudest drives avilible, tho w/ a sandwich and some sound-absorbing foam they should be okay