Hi,

Currently I am using a Maxtor Dimondmax 10 (I think) as my main OS drive and a WD 1TB GP for storage... to be blunt the Maxtor is noisy and runs rather hot compared with the WD drive.

I was thinking of buying a 500Gb WD GP for my OS drive, but was wondering whether it'd run slower or not, obviously I want quieter but don't want a performance impact!

I've used HDTune to benchmark both drives and aside from access time my WD GP is actually better than the Maxtor! I was wondering whether the 500Gb would have better access times compared with the 1TB version as it has less platters?

To be honest, hard drives is an area I lack much knowledge in with regards to hardware.

Heres the HDTune benchmarks:

Maxtor 300Gb:


WD GP 1TB:

A GP500 would be faster than your Maxtor

A WD640 would be faster than that.

A WD3000GLFS would be even faster than that.

All would be quiet enough for me, though I'm not rich enough to splurge for the Velociraptor.

Here are some rough price levels for me in the US, hopefully you can easily price these on your side of the pond:

$100 Western Digital Caviar GP WD5000AACS 500GB

$125 Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB

$300+ ?? Western Digital 300gb Velociraptor WD3000GLFS

Of course all of these prices will drop as SSDs drop in price and put pressure on the HD market.

Pick the 500 or 640 GB option and enjoy, I doubt either would be a mistake...

In the article for the 320Gb WD SE16 it mentions getting a sample for the 640Gb version? Does anyone have any more info on the 640Gb version?

Does it suffer from the same problem as the 320Gb version in there being two different types? Is it louder than the 320Gb?

Is it going to be quiet?

To be honest I have no need for 640Gb for my OS hard drive, 320Gb would be plenty enough, but I'd rather get the 640Gb if its definitly going to have the characteristics of the quieter 320Gb version rather than the other version that's slightly louder

Picking a new HD is a pain I've got my system to the point now where the sound and vibrations from my Maxtor HD are actually the loudest thing of my system, so its going to have to be replaced!

I'm currently cautious towards the 500GB GP because it draws a little too many complaints about seek noise. It is also mysteriously rated for a higher seek noise than the 750GB and 1TB drives at Western Digital's website.

My 500GB Deskstar P7K500 is substantially quieter than my WD6400AAKS, and is a tiny bit faster than the 500GB GP.

With the new WD3200AAKS there is some risk about which version you will get. The old 2-platter WD3200AAKS was a nice drive--very similar to the new WD6400AAKS.

The 320GB version has more issues than how many ribs are on the bottom. You may actually buy one and get a much older drive based on the 160GB platters instead of the new 320GB platter.

To me that alone is a reason to avoid the 320GB version.

On top of that the 640GB version is tweaked to a more balanced setting whereas the single platter 320GB version is noticeably slower because they tweaked it for slower seeks to reduce seek noise.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=394 for 640GB
25 dBA idle

versus

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=299 for 320GB
25 dBA idle

If you are going to hard mount it or suspend it you may find there is no difference or the 640GB version is quieter. If you use an enclosure you definitely won't notice the difference.

of course the GP500 is 24 dBA idle per http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=338

and the Velociraptor is 29 dBA idle per
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=459

So to me the difference between a 24 and 25 dBA choice is a non issue vs the noise of a performance drive.

Take a look at the noise on the diamondmax specs http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/maxt ... _sheet.pdf

just multiply 2.5 bels by ten to get 25 dBA of course you never know how accurate those noise specs are. Maybe you have a Diamondmax 9 or some other model that doesn't match the specs I linked to.

Hmm, I think I may risk it and give the 640Gb model a go...

Those specs might be about right, the seeking is NOISY, or at least appears so compared with my WD GP which just has a low grumble when seeking... idle the Maxtor just seems to cause a lot of vibration and is noiser by far than the WD GP.

The WD SE16 640Gb will be an improvement over the Maxtor, so even if it isn't perfect I can always try and suspend it and make it better, which wouldnt cure the Maxtors seek problem!