SPCR

If I want the most quiet mechanical HD storage, is it 3.5 WD green or 2.5 ?

http://www.silentpcreview.com/wd-black750-blue1tb
WD Scorpio Black 750GB & Scorpio Blue 1TB

WD Scorpio Blue 1TB WD10JPVT
July 2011
firmware 01.01A01

8

Idle

15

0.89 W (0.75 W heads unloaded)
Seek

16

1.86 W


vs

http://www.silentpcreview.com/wd-green-1.5tb


WD Caviar Green 1.5TB WD15EADS
November 2009
firmware 01.00A01

9

Idle

13

4.5 W
(2.8 W heads unloaded)
Seek (AAM)

14

5.8 W

The 3.5 WD is 13 decibels vs 15 decibels idle for 2.5"
14 vs 16 on seek.

Please clarify, the 3-platter 3.5 WD is quieter than the 2-platter 2.5" with both at 5400rpm ?

Those are the measured values. They don't always translate directly to subjective perception. Having heard them both, I'd say it is a bit of a tossup, but I'd lean to the 3.5", actually, especially if good soft mounting is available for the drive.

In seek when mounted in a case, the higher mass of the 3.5" may result in higher perceived noise than in our tests, which are conducted with the bare drive, albeit on a vibration-amplifying aluminum box, but with very low mass. IE, the higher mass of a case may help tone down the seek vibration/noise of a notebook drive a little better than that of a 3.5" drive.

In idle, there's no question the WD Green 3.5" is quieter. It's not a night/day difference but clearly audible.

Worth noting that newer 1TB Scorpios now only have 2 platters and a standard 9.5mm form factor. This should be slightly quieter than its 3-platter predecessor, and should keep a 2-platter 3.5" Green very honest.

MikeC wrote:Those are the measured values. They don't always translate directly to subjective perception. Having heard them both, I'd say it is a bit of a tossup, but I'd lean to the 3.5", actually, especially if good soft mounting is available for the drive.

In seek when mounted in a case, the higher mass of the 3.5" may result in higher perceived noise than in our tests, which are conducted with the bare drive, albeit on a vibration-amplifying aluminum box, but with very low mass. IE, the higher mass of a case may help tone down the seek vibration/noise of a notebook drive a little better than that of a 3.5" drive.

In idle, there's no question the WD Green 3.5" is quieter. It's not a night/day difference but clearly audible.

thanks for clarifying it with me.

If I want as silent a pc as possible, evidently the 3.5" is better then? It's my understanding that 2tb is the most I can boot from on a bios system.

I wouldn't recommend the WD Green as a drive to boot from. Mainly because of the head park feature. And if you're looking for silence, why not an SSD?

Vicotnik wrote:I wouldn't recommend the WD Green as a drive to boot from. Mainly because of the head park feature. And if you're looking for silence, why not an SSD?

yeah i've heard about that head park feature being a complaint over at newegg -- what is the issue with that?

id like 2tb storage (since 2tb is what a bios would allow)

After 8 seconds of inactivity the disk parks its heads. Gives slightly less power consumption while the disk is idle and it's great for a storage drive if you ask me (some do disagree though) but it can be very annoying in some cases when say the disk is accessed every 10s or so.. Sometimes the OS cannot leave the OS drive alone, resulting in constant unloads and reloads of the heads.

Besides, I wouldn't use a 5400RPM HDD as an OS drive anyway, as they have slow seek times. An SSD + a WD Green would be perfect. If your budget doesn't allow that I would go with a 7200RPM drive for OS and storage, or if you don't mind having OS/apps on a 5400RPM HDD, choose another one without the head park feature. I like the Samsung F4 but I hear the new Hitachi is good.

Also, unless you need to boot from the drive, it doesn't matter if the BIOS allows HDDs greater than 2TB or not. The OS will find the drive anyway.

Vicotnik wrote:After 8 seconds of inactivity the disk parks its heads. Gives slightly less power consumption while the disk is idle and it's great for a storage drive if you ask me (some do disagree though) but it can be very annoying in some cases when say the disk is accessed every 10s or so.. Sometimes the OS cannot leave the OS drive alone, resulting in constant unloads and reloads of the heads.

There are AV versions of the WD Green which don't have the head park feature (or it is disabled), designed for constant-on operation. We used these in our various Home Server build guides a year ago, and they are excellent. http://www.silentpcreview.com/Silent_Ho ... uild_Guide

Besides, I wouldn't use a 5400RPM HDD as an OS drive anyway, as they have slow seek times. An SSD + a WD Green would be perfect. If your budget doesn't allow that I would go with a 7200RPM drive for OS and storage, or if you don't mind having OS/apps on a 5400RPM HDD, choose another one without the head park feature. I like the Samsung F4 but I hear the new Hitachi is good.

Agreed that an SSD + big WD Green (or similar high capacity HDD) is ideal. It's what I run on several PCs. But... while the random access time of lower RPM drives is naturally slower than 7200rpm drives, the difference never seems that significant to me, and the high areal density of today's drives makes throughput very similar for slower/faster rpm drives. In any case, one simple way to speed up a HDD is to make 2 partitions, first a small one (say 100gb) for the OS, and a second of partition of the rest (1.9gb) for data. This means all the OS operations happen in the fastest outer edge of the disk, effectively improving performance. I've done this on single HDD HTPCs, and have no issues with performance.

Vicotnik wrote:After 8 seconds of inactivity the disk parks its heads. Gives slightly less power consumption while the disk is idle and it's great for a storage drive if you ask me (some do disagree though) but it can be very annoying in some cases when say the disk is accessed every 10s or so.. Sometimes the OS cannot leave the OS drive alone, resulting in constant unloads and reloads of the heads.

Besides, I wouldn't use a 5400RPM HDD as an OS drive anyway, as they have slow seek times. An SSD + a WD Green would be perfect. If your budget doesn't allow that I would go with a 7200RPM drive for OS and storage, or if you don't mind having OS/apps on a 5400RPM HDD, choose another one without the head park feature. I like the Samsung F4 but I hear the new Hitachi is good.

Also, unless you need to boot from the drive, it doesn't matter if the BIOS allows HDDs greater than 2TB or not. The OS will find the drive anyway.

hi,

yeah that head park feature is rather discouraging. I need the HD to be a bootable backup, hence 2TB.

I want as close to silence as possible so the 7200rpm is out of the question

MikeC wrote:

Vicotnik wrote:After 8 seconds of inactivity the disk parks its heads. Gives slightly less power consumption while the disk is idle and it's great for a storage drive if you ask me (some do disagree though) but it can be very annoying in some cases when say the disk is accessed every 10s or so.. Sometimes the OS cannot leave the OS drive alone, resulting in constant unloads and reloads of the heads.

There are AV versions of the WD Green which don't have the head park feature (or it is disabled), designed for constant-on operation. We used these in our various Home Server build guides a year ago, and they are excellent. http://www.silentpcreview.com/Silent_Ho ... uild_Guide

Besides, I wouldn't use a 5400RPM HDD as an OS drive anyway, as they have slow seek times. An SSD + a WD Green would be perfect. If your budget doesn't allow that I would go with a 7200RPM drive for OS and storage, or if you don't mind having OS/apps on a 5400RPM HDD, choose another one without the head park feature. I like the Samsung F4 but I hear the new Hitachi is good.

Agreed that an SSD + big WD Green (or similar high capacity HDD) is ideal. It's what I run on several PCs. But... while the random access time of lower RPM drives is naturally slower than 7200rpm drives, the difference never seems that significant to me, and the high areal density of today's drives makes throughput very similar for slower/faster rpm drives. In any case, one simple way to speed up a HDD is to make 2 partitions, first a small one (say 100gb) for the OS, and a second of partition of the rest (1.9gb) for data. This means all the OS operations happen in the fastest outer edge of the disk, effectively improving performance. I've done this on single HDD HTPCs, and have no issues with performance.

ok.
So in the quest for silence you'd recommend the 3.5 over the 2.5 notebook drive.

interesting.

dan wrote:ok. So in the quest for silence you'd recommend the 3.5 over the 2.5 notebook drive.

Quick double-check --

After reviewing the latest info at the WD web site on the Green AV drives, it's not clear that the head park feature is really disabled. I thought it was, and I am sure we reported that in a review somewhere (WD 3 TB Green), but the WD site lists Intellipark as one of the Green AV model's features. Perhaps it is set to a different timing -- ie, instead of engaging in 8s, perhaps it does it in 60s? I don't have time to check this right now. Whatever..... my experience with the WD Green AV 2TB (WD20EVDS) in my HTPC is that I don't hear the drive. Mind you, it sits 2m away under the TV, encased in a Smart Drive 2002 (silencing box) which sits on thick soft silicone rubber feet, and there is a 120mm Noctua fan on the CPU HS which always spins very quietly at ~500rpm. Maybe the latter makes just enough masking noise to make the HDD inaudible.

With these 2.5" vs 3.5" HDDs, when both are well-cushioned for vibration isolation, I give the nod to the 3.5. (Since I never hard-mount hard drives, this is really the only way I compare them.)

But all this assumes the differences between these drives will be audible in your setup. You never mention the rest of your setup. If there's any fans which run louder than these drives, sweating over the choice may be moot.

MikeC wrote:

dan wrote:ok. So in the quest for silence you'd recommend the 3.5 over the 2.5 notebook drive.

Quick double-check --

After reviewing the latest info at the WD web site on the Green AV drives, it's not clear that the head park feature is really disabled. I thought it was, and I am sure we reported that in a review somewhere (WD 3 TB Green), but the WD site lists Intellipark as one of the Green AV model's features. Perhaps it is set to a different timing -- ie, instead of engaging in 8s, perhaps it does it in 60s? I don't have time to check this right now. Whatever..... my experience with the WD Green AV 2TB (WD20EVDS) in my HTPC is that I don't hear the drive. Mind you, it sits 2m away under the TV, encased in a Smart Drive 2002 (silencing box) which sits on thick soft silicone rubber feet, and there is a 120mm Noctua fan on the CPU HS which always spins very quietly at ~500rpm. Maybe the latter makes just enough masking noise to make the HDD inaudible.

With these 2.5" vs 3.5" HDDs, when both are well-cushioned for vibration isolation, I give the nod to the 3.5. (Since I never hard-mount hard drives, this is really the only way I compare them.)

But all this assumes the differences between these drives will be audible in your setup. You never mention the rest of your setup. If there's any fans which run louder than these drives, sweating over the choice may be moot.

Currently I use scythe fans. I plan though to consider building a silent fanless PC, one with no fans and no moving parts, except the HD, as I do not play games.

If I want the most quiet mechanical HD storage, is it 3.5 WD green or 2.5 ?

Notebook drives are really quiet when seeking but I`ve come across a WD green that was quieter than any notebook drive I`ve owned when idle. Right now, I`m using a couple of scorpio blue drives and they`re not too bad. Their idle noise isn`t that low but it`s a smooth hiss rather than a whine.

While 2.5 inch drives are not necessarily quieter, they do open up some interesting possibilities. One could suspend a 2.5 inch drive inside a 3.5 inch bay. Or, put it inside an enclosure and suspend it in a 5.25 inch bay..

Currently I use scythe fans. I plan though to consider building a silent fanless PC, one with no fans and no moving parts, except the HD, as I do not play games.

Have you tried slowing down the fans? A pair of good fans can be very quiet at slow speeds, most half decent 12 cm fans I've owned became inaudible at around 600rpm. If this is still not good enough, then consider passive cooling.

ntavlas wrote:

If I want the most quiet mechanical HD storage, is it 3.5 WD green or 2.5 ?

Notebook drives are really quiet when seeking but I`ve come across a WD green that was quieter than any notebook drive I`ve owned when idle. Right now, I`m using a couple of scorpio blue drives and they`re not too bad. Their idle noise isn`t that low but it`s a smooth hiss rather than a whine.

While 2.5 inch drives are not necessarily quieter, they do open up some interesting possibilities. One could suspend a 2.5 inch drive inside a 3.5 inch bay. Or, put it inside an enclosure and suspend it in a 5.25 inch bay..

Currently I use scythe fans. I plan though to consider building a silent fanless PC, one with no fans and no moving parts, except the HD, as I do not play games.

Have you tried slowing down the fans? A pair of good fans can be very quiet at slow speeds, most half decent 12 cm fans I've owned became inaudible at around 600rpm. If this is still not good enough, then consider passive cooling.

oH i use speedfan it works

most noisy thing now is my samsung drive