I have a 3.5" WD10EACS, a 2.5" WD5000BEVT and a 2.5" WD3200BEVT. The 2.5" drives are definitively quieter, both in terms of idle noise and seek noise.

I can recommend WD5000BEVT for use in an external enclosure. This drive has a very low spinup power requirement (2.62 W) compared to 4.20 W for the 320 GB model WD3200BEVT. I have both of these drives and I have put the 500 GB drive in the external enclosure instead of the 320 GB as I originally pla...

I use the type of brackets linked to in the first post. They work fine for me but the holes for the screws are partly located in the wrong places. Only 2 out of 3 holes line up correctly with the 3.5" drive cage and they are not positioned in exactly the same height as on a 3.5" drive.

Cirkus

Doesn't it say when you run a full format in DOS/Windows that it will will format the drive and "check the entire surface"? At least that is my impression on what the full format will do. If you have any bad sectors on the drive they will be detected and removed from the file allocation table so you...

I have three WD drives in my HTPC and I have run WDIDLE3 and disabled the idle 3 timer (APM?) completely on all of drives. The main reason I did this is because there is an annoying clicking sound when the head is loaded/unloaded. Before I ran WDIDLE3 there was an annoying clicking sound quite often...

I have now installed Windows Vista on my new 2.5" 5400 RPM drive (WD3200BEVT). The seek noise of this drive is very low compared to the 3.5" 5400 RPM WD GP drive I used as system drive before. The drive is currently hard-mounted without any noise dampening material and I consider keeping it that way...

I have a WD GP 1TB (WD10EACS) drive and it has very low idle noise but the seek noise is at least as high as on a 7200 RPM drive I purchased recently (WD5000AAKS) if not higher. I installed Windows Vista on the GP drive and I couldn't really tell any difference in performance from the WD5000AAKS. If...

I just purchased a 2.5" WD3200BEVT drive. See my post in another thread: viewtopic.php?p=433418#433418 for my experiences so far.

Cirkus

Generally speaking 7200 rpm drives are louder than 5400 rpm drives. There might be exceptions but without reviews with comparisons and actual user experiences it is hard to find the really silent 7200 rpm drives. I purchased a 5400 rpm 2.5" drive today, Western Digital WD3200BEVT. It has 320GB capac...

Is it important to get a single platter drive to get low noise in a 2.5" drive? Will I be able to notice the difference in noise level between the single platter WD1600BEVT and the two platter WD3200BEVT drive? And what about the single platter Hitachi 160GB 5K320 versus the two platter 320GB 5K320 ...

Hej Ziphnor, I've just bought a WD Scorpio WD3200BEVT 320Gb. I'm still waiting for it to be shipped, so I can't comment on the noise yet. It's a SATA 2 1/2" 5400rpm drive which should be quiet, especially since I plan on soft-mounting it (with rubber bands) in a P182. If you want to wait for it, I ...

But Vista is accessing the drive for reasons beyond my imagination and it is really annoying, especially now when I have a drive with very low idle noise that doesn't hide the seek noise. Try turning off superfetch (stop the superfetch service), indexing and system restore. This seems to calm thing...

I am already having second thoughts about having my new 3.5" WD GP drive as the system drive in my HTPC. I think seek noise from drive is ok as long as it is caused by something I do, like starting a program. But Vista is accessing the drive for reasons beyond my imagination and it is really annoyin...

I went for a 1TB WD GP drive (WD10EACS) in the end. It has a much lower idle noise than my old 7200 RPM WD5000AAKS drive. But the seek noise on the GP drive is quite noticeable, maybe even worse than my old drive. I have enabled AAM and it helped a lot but Windows Vista is accessing the drive quite ...

dids22 wrote:hey,
i need new 500G HD.


which one is better (quiet)

- WD5000AAKS
- ST3500320AS
- samsung HD501LJ

or maybe you have another suggestion?

Ty.

I have the WD5000AAKS and it has quite a lot of idle noise (wind noise).
I will probably replace it with a Green Power model.

I think you're right about not being able to use the rest of the space as "normal" partitions. You'd have to run a mixed RAID1 and RAID0 environment on the drives. Again - I don't think the RE drives would make a difference. One thing I would recommend doing first, however, is enabling TLER on the ...

I have the WD5000AACS Caviar Green 500 GB. It is extremely quiet, especialy when soft mounted (I use the silicone mounts on the P180 Mini). It is more than fast enough, and when I boot Windows or Linux (I have dual boot) I don't even notice any difference in speed compared to 7200 RPM drives. The W...

For a home HTPC, I wouldn't bother with the RE drives over the standard GP drives. If you're going for increased data security (in the event of hard drive failure), then RAID1 is the best bet. If you're simply going for the maximum data storage, then simply use the disks separately. The Intel Matri...

Doesn't it work with normal drive diagnostics tool? Western Digital has a tool (Data Lifeguard Diagnostics) that runs from within Windows and it works with USB drives so I think there is a good chance it will work with memory cards too. Edit: I have tried it out myself now and WD Data LifeGuard Diag...

What errors are you protecting against by mirroring? The problem with most software based "RAID" is that the mostly likely source of errors is not the individual drives. Striping is useful in some limited situations, but generally not worth the trouble. Realistically the anser is, no, it doesn't ma...

After getting some good advice here I consider going for one or two WD Green Power drives in my HTPC. Does it make sense to use two RE-2 GP drives in a RAID setup instead of two normal GP drives in a normal two drive setup? If I go for a RAID setup I will use Intel Matrix Storage to configure RAID m...

I'm using a Scythe 92mm PWM fan. Fairly happy with it. I have read good reviews on the Scythe fan, but I haven't found anyone selling this fan in Sweden. Do you know the part number on your fan? Regarding the 92 mm Nexus fan I tried, it was good at low RPM if I changed the "PWMOUT" setting from 3M ...

I have considered this but there is a disctint advantage to mounting the drive in the standard 3.5" drive cage. It makes it easy to cool the drive because there is 92 mm fan just in front of the the 3.5" drive cage. A Scythe Quiet Drive I would have to mount in the non-ventilated 5.25" drive cage. ...

What about putting the current drive in a Scythe Quiet Drive or the like? I have considered this but there is a disctint advantage to mounting the drive in the standard 3.5" drive cage. It makes it easy to cool the drive because there is 92 mm fan just in front of the the 3.5" drive cage. A Scythe ...

Lawrence Lee wrote:Have you tried enabling AAM on the AAKS?

I am pretty sure I have tried this, but it was a couple of months ago I purchased the drive so I am not sure. I will have a look.
But AAM will not change the idle noise anyway, will it? It is the idle noise that annoys me the most with this drive.

Cirkus

I have the WD5000AACS Caviar Green 500 GB. It is extremely quiet, especialy when soft mounted (I use the silicone mounts on the P180 Mini). It is more than fast enough, and when I boot Windows or Linux (I have dual boot) I don't even notice any difference in speed compared to 7200 RPM drives. The W...

I have a rather new Gigabyte motherboard and as with other new Gigabyte motherboards a 3-pin CPU fan will run at max speed all the time. Gigabyte has removed the voltage control "legacy" fan speed method that existed on their older motheroards and CPU fan speed can now only be controlled with a 4-pi...

I currently have a WD5000AAKS drive hard mounted in the standard drive cage of my Silverstone LC17 cabinet. This causes some vibration hum when the computer is put in my hifi rack, but not much hum when the computer is put on a normal table. Almost all of the vibration hum is eliminated if I place t...

After reading some reviews I purchased a WD5000AAKS for my new HTPC, hoping it would be silent enough. But I need something more silent. The idle noise from the WD5000AAKS is easily heard from a couple of meters away. The WD5000AAKS is also causing some vibration hum but after putting the computer o...