How silent are 3600 RPM microdrives?

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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Fire-Flare
Posts: 422
Joined: Sun Jun 13, 2010 12:44 pm
Location: Seattle

How silent are 3600 RPM microdrives?

Post by Fire-Flare » Fri Dec 23, 2011 2:16 am

I saw that a 6GB version has come available on Newegg for a heck of a good price, and I'd like to retire the ancient IDE boot drive in my backup server in favor of a quieter model.

Would this be inaudible if suspended (or placed in a vertical adapter) in an old steel case?

What about performance, think it will be snappy enough to run a light GUI Linux OS or perhaps the swap file without becoming a bottleneck?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822145575

flemeister
Posts: 346
Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2009 1:42 am
Location: Australia

Re: How silent are 3600 RPM microdrives?

Post by flemeister » Fri Dec 23, 2011 3:05 am

You prompted me to dust off my old Creative Zen Microphoto. :D

It's got an 8GB microdrive, and holy crap it's really quiet. Keep in mind that it's inside the casing, but I had to put my ear right up to the MP3 player to hear the drive spinning, still very faintly. You won't have to suspend it, as there is virtually zero vibration. :)

Unless the mass of the MP3 player casing is absorbing it all? Microdrives are tiny anyway, it should hardly vibrate even naked.

washu
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Location: Ottawa

Re: How silent are 3600 RPM microdrives?

Post by washu » Fri Dec 23, 2011 7:42 am

I have a 4 GB one that I use occasionally in my camera. You can hear it faintly if you are holding the camera and pay attention.

It's very slow though, much slower than even generic CF cards of similar size. I only use it as a last resort because of that. Unless your server almost never uses the drive I'd suggest paying the few extra bucks for a 4-8GB CF card.

Fire-Flare
Posts: 422
Joined: Sun Jun 13, 2010 12:44 pm
Location: Seattle

Re: How silent are 3600 RPM microdrives?

Post by Fire-Flare » Fri Dec 23, 2011 4:11 pm

washu wrote:I have a 4 GB one that I use occasionally in my camera. You can hear it faintly if you are holding the camera and pay attention.

It's very slow though, much slower than even generic CF cards of similar size. I only use it as a last resort because of that. Unless your server almost never uses the drive I'd suggest paying the few extra bucks for a 4-8GB CF card.
Can't say I'm surprised. Thank you for your reply.

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