Hello Devon,

The thickness of the material around the main bearing hub (on the bottom of the unit) does appear to be more substantial on the new version -- maybe this is why it has lower idle noise?

Perhaps the new 74GB Raptor also benefits from lower idle noise but lower seek noise?

I own the new revision, and I can attest to the loud seeks. I've also got a WD 320gb, KS revision, same as the recently reviewed 500gb. Seeks are barely audible from the 320gb drive, whereas the raptor is very noticeable. I can tolerate it, as idle noise is incredibly low, and when I do access the drive I'm usually playing a song, or using my headset for a game. This combination of drives is the first I've had that emit practically no whine, at least none that I can hear. The raptor does seem to get hot though. I've got a fan at 600rpm blowing at it, and it stays at 43C as monitored by Speedfan. Oddly, speedfan doesn't detect the 320gb drive..

I find it amazing that a 10,000 rpm drive can have only a 20db idle noise level! Amazing, since a 4,200 rpm drive in the old days could make your ears bleed.

However, after listening to the mp3, seeks are a little too rough for my taste.

It seems as though Western Digital is getting in the quiet game. First the very quiet 500 gigger, now this - seeks notwithstanding, I betcha with 7200 rpm and AAM those seeks would be comparable to a P120. Samsung needs to start playing catch-up. Customers win

I think it's time you guys switch to "two distance" noise recording we talked earlier. Up close, the new raptor sounds horrible, so much high pitched noise. The db numbers tell us one thing, but when I listen to noise recordings, there is no way I can perceive raptor as quieter than P80/P120. I don't think you should do away with the current 3" recording distance either, but do two instead. 3" to hear all the details, the noise character and 0.5-0.75m one so that we could hear what the drive would sound in real life situation.

We're moving in that direction. More in the next review, and probably some new recordings of reference products.

That's great news, can't wait for new sound samples, although it means more work for you

I have been very happy with my 150GB Raptor. I was expecting seeks to be much louder but was pleasantly surprised. Then of course there is the speed...

Maybe you have bad sample? When I bought my Raptor, I did a close comparison between with my P80 and my raptor, to me they both were really silent even from close distance. The raptor had a higher pitch, but nothing I would describe as horrible.

I was actually a bit suprised to see that the seek noises are so loud in the test. I guess it shows that case dampening helps to quieten down hard drives.

I have to say, however, that the quality of your own PC sound playback system is extremely important; it probably affects what you hear from these recordings more than anything else. If you know you don't have a very good playback system, then I'd say improve it before you tell us our recordings are no good.

I’ve also noticed that Speedfan has problems with monitoring multiple hard drives if that's what you are implying here. I use DTemp to monitor drive temps. It doesn’t interact with fan speeds though, so maybe somebody can recommend a program that can monitor multiple drives and control fan speeds.

Bold part highlighted, I was referring to SPCR noise recordings.



Where did I tell you that your recordings are no good? They are good, as we have discussed before in WD500 thread, they portray overal drive noise signature quite accurately, however they cannot be used to compare relative loudness of any two hard drives. And for the record I do have a decent system: E-MU 1212M > MisterX PPA w/steps and diamond buffers > HD-600. It's not a multi-thousand dollar system, but it's good bang for the buck and is more than plenty for SPCR noise samples evaluation purposes...

Fair enuf.

I've got one of these mounted in my P180.

It does have more seek noise than the Seagate 7200.8 I was using as hda0, but only noticably so when doing read/writes for an extended period of time, like boot up, or loading my developement tools and database.

It's a great workstation hard drive, and if given the choice, I would buy it again.

Is there any possibility of getting samples of 1, 2 and 3 platter Caviars from Western Digital for review?