I've noticed the new barracudas are on sale at a store nearby. I can get the 2TB for 100CAD and the 3TB for 150. I'm short on space at the moment with my 1TB barracuda (it's an older one from ~2009).

This drive will be just a personal storage drive, it's not going to be used for windows boot, nor will it be used to load heavily used applications, I have SSDs for that. It will be for the most part used to store movies, images, and seldom used applications.

My first impression of the SPCR review was good - it's supposedly the quietest 7200RPM drive (which is essential), and it's fast (which is a secondary benefit to me, not that important).

I assume that the 2TB drive has 2 platters while the 3TB drive was 3.

I am a big fan of quiet drives. My system is built to be quiet (not necessarily absolute silence). The loudest part is my current 7200RPM older generation (7200.12, ST31000528AS) 1TB Barracuda. It's important to me that the new drive not be louder than the old one. I also value reliability, which is why I've avoided the Caviar Greens for the time being. (They are also more expensive)

I have 3 questions:

- When idle, is the 2TB version more quiet than the 3TB? Is it noticeable? has anyone compared them?

- I've read the other thread about these drives here on 'silent storage', and it seems these drives have a noise issue with head parking. Is this likely to happen in my case? My old Barracuda makes no noise other than the low but audible hum of being idle and and increased hum when active. What I would like from this drive is not to notice it when idle. I don't mind if it makes some noise, seeking or head parking or whatever when I'm using it, as those occasions are rare.

I'm not an expert when it comes to tweaking the drive's settings. I'd rather it worked as it was supposed to when first powered.

- Is this the right drive for me?

PS: I ran into a problem with the Barracuda Green 2TBs last fall (just before prices shot up), where I got 2 of them, but both made an annoying clicking noise when idle (not when active). I had to return both. I suspect it was just a bad batch, but I'm not eager to go back to that.

I haven't listened to them(could have but rule out 7200 RPM drives by default) but others say these have about the same head parking click noise. Anyway the 2TB model has three platters too, as it says on Seagates product sheet. Should be an existing thread about them in this forum.

Just to update:

I read that a firmware update fixes the head parking problem. Is this true? ... I just want to double check.

I only have some of the 3TB versions so I can't comment on the 2TB ones. Subjectively at least they are very quiet for 7200 RPM drives. However, that is only in comparison to other 7200 drives. At least to my ears and in the same case they are a fair bit louder than a few different "green" drives, both Seagates and WDs. My advice is that if quietness is important these are not the best choice.

I've never noticed any head parking noise from them.

I just picked up the 3TB version. A quick benchmark shows this thing can deliver upwards of 200MB/s in some sectors, averaging ~170.

There is no head parking problem. I believe this issue was resolved a while ago. New drives of this type should be fine.

The drive is not silent. It's about as loud as my old 1Tb Barracuda... which isn't exactly silent-pc material.

The drive seems fine for the time being, and if it can hold out I wouldn't mind buying it an internal sound-dampening enclosure...

... can someone point me to a good source for this kind of thing?

... also if anyone has any suggestions for sound dampening, that'd be appreciated. I know about elastic suspension and I intend to do that anyway, however that seems to be more effective against vibration than the 'ambient hum', which is noticeable.

Is there anything I can do without risking overheating?

I bought my 3TB one a few days agao and it makes a chirping sound once in a while when it's idle
Guess I need to update the firmware?

Well I just installed the new firmware
It wouldn't work from windows, so I downloaded and burned the ISO version to a CDRW - hate wasting a full CD just for a 40meg install!

And it went without a hitch, didn't wipe any of my files on the HD

So far so good, I haven't heard a "chirp" yet!

---

Suspend this drive and noise is not an issue in a FT-02. If you don't suspend it then it will drone the case a bit...
Seeks are barely audible from my seating position when suspended

see here
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=64620

To anyone who would like to know...

This issue is resolved. The drive seems just fine. It's got huge storage (which I am taking advantage of, I have a lot of stuff), and is fast for an HDD. (200 would rival the older velociraptors IMO, but access time is slower of course).

I ended up getting an internal enclosure for it.... I can't think of which one it was, but it cost about $30 and is basically a huge 5.25" aluminum heatsink on the outside and a padded 3.5" box on the inside. I ended up applying hot glue over all of the seams just to block as much noise as possible. Temps were mointored closely and they stayed pretty much the same, perhaps 1 degree lower after all this.

It's not perfect but it worked very well. With a little innovation anyone can have a fast and cheap storage drive and still have an almost-silent PC.

I can post pics if anyone asks.