Storage

Seagate is one of three manufacturers now making 7,200 RPM Notebook drives. Their Momentus 7200.1 was an acoustic disappointment, but it's been updated with Perpendicular recording and fall detection in the 7200.2. Did the improvements extend to the acoustics?

The MX-1 is Antec's first external hard drive enclosure. They pointedly call it an Actively Cooled Hard Drive Enclosure. It includes a fan, one quiet enough that Antec says it measures less than 22 dBA@1m. That's quieter than most hard drives. It's made mostly of plastic, but Antec also claims it keeps the drive very cool. Those are pretty good reasons for us to be interested

Seagate's Mirra Personal Server is designed to prevent the loss of data from the hard drives in your network. It is an automated backup system. Its acoustics are not ideal for hanging on the wall... or anywhere exposed, for that matter.

eSATA drive enclosures are potentially useful for silencers because they allow the boot drive to be placed remotely for the ultimate in acoustic isolation. Icy Dock makes nothing but hard drive enclosures, and they have one of the first eSATA enclosures on the market, a most stylish device some people wouldn't want to hide.

Samsung has a long history of producing quiet drives, and we expect the Spinpoint T Series to continue that legacy. The capacity can't quite match the 500 GB and 750 GB drives on the market, but the real question will be whether it can match Western Digital's recent drives for noise.

Western Digital has done little to promote their line of notebook drives, and with the flagship drive coming in at just 120 GB, it's not hard to see why. Rated according to the usual slew of benchmarks and performance tests, this Scorpio is not particularly noteworthy. But, SPCR doesn't run the usual slew of benchmarks and performance tests; we are interested in noise. Is the Scorpio quiet enough to earn our approval?

The industry's top performing enthusiast drive is now available in a larger, 150 GB capacity version. Did noise grow with storage space, or does this new revision have the same quiet idle and sharp seeks that we saw in our review of the last revision? Now that WD can lay claim to making the quietest mainstream drive, we expect great things of them.

The search for a quiet high capacity hard drive continues with Western Digital's 500GB Caviar SE16. SPCR's favorite drives are rapidly disappearing as the Samsung Spinpoint P80 and the Seagate Barracuda IV fade further into obscurity; the market has long since moved on from our single-platter 40GB and 80 GB favorites. So far, no high capacity >250GB drives have lived up to SPCR's tough noise standards; could this WD be the one?

You only have to put up with the noise of a portable drive when you're copying to and from it — not whenever your computer is running. On top of that, many portable storage devices employ quiet 2.5" or smaller drives that are inherently quieter than the full-size ones in your PC. They're just so darn convenient that we had to take a look at a couple samples of Seagate's clumsily named but elegantly designed USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive and Pocket Hard Drive.

Perpendicular recording technology has trickled down to a desktop drive... and what a difference it makes. Seagate's new 7200.10 boasts 750 GB of space — 50% more than any other drive currently on the market. The drive has already begun collecting accolades for its performance, but how does it do for noise and power? Find out in our review.

Ever thought about getting rid of your hard drive entirely? We did. Read about our effort to run Windows with the Newisys NA-1400 NAS appliance. Whether or not Network Attached Storage can run your OS, it's a good remote storage solution that can put the noise where you are not. The Newisys NA-1400 comes in 1.0, 1.6, and 2.0 terabyte models — just stick it in a basement and enjoy.

Hitachi's 500G flagship 7,200rpm HDD with 5 platters and 16mb of cache comes under the scrutiny of SPCR's audioscope.

The first perpendicular recording drive to reach the market, this new 5400rpm model from Seagate breaks new ground. It has 30% higher capacity than any other notebook drive, yet requires no more power, generates no more heat, and makes no more noise.

This new 7.2k-rpm notebook drive from Hitachi has such low seek noise that the difference between idle and seek is difficult to hear. It's not just quiet; its performance is such is that it blurs the distinction between desktop and notebook drives. The TravelStar E7K100 may well be a harbinger of good things to come in the transition from 3.5" to 2.5" drives.

An external drive that can handle read/write just about every kind of optical disc for computers: The Writemaster SE-W164C is from Samsung, a brand that's developed a reputation for quiet storage components.