Hi all.

I am searching for a 2TB Quiet Hard Disk.

Is anyhting little faster and still quiet from WESTERN DIGITAL WD20EARS ??

I mean in 7200RPM or the WD20EARS is the only quiet solution ?

Thanks in advance.

I'm pretty happy with the Samsung F4EG, just got one yesterday. Running in an external case

It's way quieter than the Samsung 103SJ 1TB 7200rpm drive it replaced, and faster!
Sounds like it's half the volume.

It's a 5400rpm drive, but the first 1.2TB is faster than average speed of the Samsung 1TB 7.2k drive I have
Although it's pretty slow after that, so it would not be a bad idea to buy one just to use the first half, they're cheap enough

Burst speed is 144 MB/s, 16ms access time is slower than the 7.2k drives though

I'll throw in behind the Samsung F4EG 2tb drives as well. Only word of caution is there is a bug in the early firmware that causes write issues if a "Drive identify" command occurs during write in AHCI mode. Samsung has a new version of the firmware out there that corrects it, and supposedly all drives manufactured from 11/2010 on have this new firmware. There is no firmware number update from the original though (epic fail Samsung). So there isn't a way to identify the old and new firmwares.

However, unless you are buying from a pretty obscure dealer, I'd imagine now that it is late march 2011, any F4EG 2tb drive you buy has been manufacturered in/after November 2010. Both my F4EGs were (I updated the firmware anyway, just to be 110% sure as I am a paranoid individual), one bought mid February through Newegg, one mid March through Newegg (January and February Man. dates respectively).

Running ATTO my 1TB F3 gets 125MB/sec writes average and 115MB/sec reads. My two F4EGs average out to about 110MB/sec writes and 105MB/sec reads (they are within 1 or 2 MB of each other). My 500GB F3 gets about 120MB/sec writes and 112MB/sec reads. So, yeah they are slower, but still pretty speedy compared to 7200rpm drives.

Most benchmarks I've seen has the F4EG faster than the WD drive, especially in sequential numbers. I think it is also lower power consumption, though I think a hair louder. Heck, my F4EG is at least as quite as my F3 500GB and the 500GB is extremely quite. Only time the F4EG makes any kind of noise is basically benchmarking with random access time benchmarks (then you can hear it crunching away). Idle, sequential read/write and most app loading I can't really hear it.

It is deffinitely quieter than my F3 1tb...that makes some noise, though nothing all that bad on its own. But it is noticable.

One other suggestion, 4 500GB 7200rpm notebook drives in RAID 0. Might not be quite as quite as the 20EARS...but probably not much worse if you pick some fairly quite models, and you'll have a crap load more speed.

I've been considering a couple of 320, 500, 640 or 750GB 7200rpm notebook drives in RAID0 as my fast storage whenever I get around to replacing my computer (well, donating to the Mrs. really). SSD boot/app drive, a couple of notebook 7200rpm drives in RAID0 for fast storage and a 2TB 5400rpm 3.5" drive for bulk storage.