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Storage
Submitted by Mike Chin on Wed, 2005-05-11 22:04.
Reference / Recommended | Storage
The HDD testing system underwent a major series of upgrades that reflects the growing sophistication of SPCR readers -- and our own increasing awareness of hard drive acoustics issues. The acoustic testing tools of careful listening and SPL measurements remain; they are enhanced with a new vibration testing methodology, as well as measurements of power draw in an effort to predict thermals.
Submitted by Mike Chin on Wed, 2002-09-18 11:10.
Reference / Recommended | Storage
Our reference article about HDD noise, along with a select roster of recommended quiet 3.5" and 2.5" drives. First published 18 Sept 2002. Latest update made 13 June 2008.
Submitted by Mike Chin on Sat, 2009-06-13 21:43.
Storage
Single-platter drives are the quietest, according to conventional engineering wisdom, but this truism is not always borne out in reality. The Samsung F2 EcoGreen 500GB desktop drive is a triumph for conventional wisdom.
Submitted by Lawrence Lee on Thu, 2009-03-26 04:20.
Storage
Two drives vie for the title of Miss SPCR Quietest 3.5" Hard Drive 2009. WD's candidate is the first and only (so far) 2TB desktop drive, and happens to be part of their famous Green Power series. Seagate's contestant is a 500GB Pipeline HD, marketed for media applications and spinning at an odd 5900 RPM.
Submitted by Mike Chin on Mon, 2009-03-02 09:29.
Storage
The current flagships of WD's and Seagate's 2.5" notebook drives go head to head in our review. 5400RPM, 500GB on two little platters with areal density at nearly 400 GB/inch: What performance and noise do the Momentus 5400.6 500 and Scorpio Blue 500 offer?
Submitted by Lawrence Lee on Sun, 2009-02-15 04:20.
Storage
Seagate's Pipeline series of hard drives are aimed at DVRs, HTPCs and other devices designed to serve up media. Since performance is not critical for these types of applications, we assume that such a drive would be power efficient and quiet, two qualities that are right up our alley.
Submitted by Lawrence Lee on Sun, 2009-02-01 14:10.
Storage
On the outside, Seagate's 7200.11 1.5TB drive looks no different than the 1TB model. On the inside however, the platters are much more massive: 375GB vs. 250GB. Performance should be improved but will that be accompanied by extra noise?
Submitted by Devon Cooke on Thu, 2009-01-22 15:13.
Storage
Reaching the terabyte mark was an important symbolic step for hard drive makers
— a way of saying, "Our drives are so big, we need a new word to describe
how big they are!" But that was two years ago, and, as the drives have
aged, some problems have come to light. Both Seagate and Western Digital are
in the midst of dealing with unexpected problems in their terabyte drives. And
both have now commented publicly on the problems. And, happily, both have offered
fixes for their respective problems.
Submitted by Lawrence Lee on Tue, 2009-01-13 13:49.
Storage
The Caviar Black is Western Digital's premium 7200 RPM hard drive. The 1TB model has 3 platters and 32MB of cache putting it in direct competition with the Samsung F1 1TB drive. Which is faster, and more importantly, which is quieter?
Submitted by Mike Chin on Sat, 2008-11-15 15:50.
Storage
It is a portable optical disk writer barely bigger than two standard CD clamshell cases and weighing under a pound. The small size and weight is perfectly enhanced by its power requirements: It needs no wall-wart for AC power, because its USB cable draws power for the unit from the PC that it's connected to. Brilliant and obvious.
Submitted by Mike Chin on Wed, 2008-06-18 00:04.
Storage
Western Digital has a new color code to identify different classes of drives in its lineup. This 320GB/platter, 2-platter 640GB is now in team Blue, between Black and Green. The single-platter 320GB model had casing variants which made it either very quiet or not so quiet. What about the Caviar Blue 640?
Submitted by Mike Chin on Wed, 2008-06-11 14:53.
Storage
It's an unusual product in every way: A 10,000rpm SATA drive in an enterprise 2.5" form factor mated to a cast aluminum heatsink with a 3.5" desktop HDD form factor. WD's Velociraptor actually manages to win three crowns at SPCR: Performance, Green and Acoustics... but for the last crown, not the way it's delivered to the retail buyer.
Submitted by Mike Chin on Mon, 2008-06-09 21:14.
Storage
Samsung F1s are the top performing 7200RPM desktop drives of the day. We put the 750G and 1TB models through their paces in SPCR's acoustics chamber to find out whether they can take the low noise crown.
Submitted by Mike Chin on Tue, 2008-04-08 23:13.
Storage
WD's new 320GB/platter Caviar SE16 desktop hard drives have been creating some excitement. They are high performance by virtue of their high areal density, the OC websites have reported. With the low number of spinning platters, they should also be very quiet, a quality WD have been focused on for a couple of years now. We took the 320GB single-platter model out for a spin in our acoustics lab. It turned into a long and winding road.
Submitted by Mike Chin on Tue, 2008-02-26 09:01.
Storage
Our enthusiasm for the low noise WD 750GB Green Power hard drive prompted us to go hunting for the 1 TB flagship model so we could do more than speculate about it. With Western Digital's odd IntelliPower system for rating spindle speed, we wanted to confirm for ourselves that it shared all the characteristics of its smaller brother — noise, power and all.
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