I've had a couple of issues with laptop drives which I've got replaced but I'm still happy to use them. No probs so far with desktops which are all externally housed.

Touch wood etc..

I'm beginning to think it's worth giving the first wave a miss..price(s) have gone up..we all know SSD wll be bigger, better and cheaper soon.

This time next year might be a better purchasing bet if you are happy to wait.

I'm liking it. Might even import one if it's not coming to europe immediately.

I find 8x for 16x DVDRs and 16 or 24x for CDRs is the sweetspot for quality. But it will entirely depend on media and drives. I always buy quality media as the difference in price is much lower than in the past.

Agree with the "avoid Plextor" comments. I had a Plextor 708a in my last build and loved it. I just built a new vista/c2d machine and purchased the Plextor 800. Night and day difference. I knew as soon as I hit the open button that the reviews I had been reading were true. The 708a opening was butt...

Hope it makes the UK (even with a likely inflated price).

I have not been impressed with the two I used for a while -- but it's been a couple a years. Dell does noise testing of all its computers, and puts this info with environmental data on separate product sheets that are difficult to find. The general page is here: http://www.dell.com/content/topics/g...

Well after trying out the 2nd replacement drive from Rexo, I'm now pretty certain that the low(er) vibration drive is the exception as this new one is pretty similar to the previous two. Be nice if Samsung could do something on the vibration front as it somewhat spoils an otherwise excellent unit. P...

On the one I've been running for a week or so now...I think the fan has got slightly louder (if that's at all possible).

Not to the point of any great annoyance but it's certainly audible.

Well Rexo have offered to replace the replacement and pick it up via UPS so I can't fault them.

I'm still pondering what the odds of getting a super quiet or not are.

Well I got my replacement drive and it's pretty similar (perhaps marginally better) to the one I RMA-d...so I'm thinking the statement I made before is probably accurate.

Thanks, all of this is very useful! By the way, one last quick question: Which are the best brands to look out for on a level of reliability and silence? Up till now I have mainly bought Samsung drives, due to their availability, but I've read their after sales isn't that fantastic. I can also choo...

This is when idle so AAM is not really applicable. I isolated the two drives from their enclosures on a soft service and the problem drive exhibits more motor noise and definitely higher vibration. I've contacted Rexo (RMA centre in the UK) for advice but I'll probably RMA it as the difference betwe...

Has anyone seen any variations in vibration noise? I just got two drives from Dabs.com which I've put in those Antec enclosures. One runs very quiet with minimal vibration, while the other vibrates considerably. They're clearly from the same batch..serials only a few digits apart. An RMA job or some...

I tried a HM160JC in my ibook roughly three months ago. The noise of the drive almost drove me mad. A constant *whoooosh*, louder than the notebooks fan, clearly audible through the whole room. I treded the drive immediately in for a new WD400VE. Maybe less space (40gb vs. 160gb), but no more noise...

I found on my new HP nc6320 the buzzing noise under battery when I connected a Microsoft Optical mouse via USB. My solution was to go to Device Manager, select Universal Serial Bus Controllers, you'll see USB Root Hub a number of times. Select one, go to the Power Management tab and uncheck "Allow t...

I ended up getting the HM120JI, nice drive, excellent seek noise, way better than the Hitachi it replaces.

Sounds good, thanks.

Had a quick look at the enclosure..are you using the fan?

Has anyone tried one in an external enclosure yet?

I've just got a new HP laptop with a 100gb Hitachi SATA drive inside and although I've yet to change the acoustic settings I'd like to get another drive as a backup or to clone and swap over. So I'm looking at Samsung (been reasonably happy with) or Seagate..not WD as they are a pain to RMA (as it's...

There's also HDDScan which is a single file Windows executable. Requires no installation, no bootdisks, no reboots. Hitachi FTool is quite capable tool and does have a wider support for certain PCI addon controllers. If you use a motherboard controller HDDScan is likely the easier way. http://hddgu...

Curious, I was looking at the similar coded 160gb IDE and SATA models and only the ST3160811AS that has that specific listing, although they all say low profile in the big list.

You should check out this site, under 'Xbox Hardware Addons/Modifications Guides', they have a 'Extra Cooling and Silent-mods' section which is interesting and I think you should check it out. Thanks I'm well versed with that site and a member of the forums. In fact I should drop a post over there....

AZbrandon, this drive that is being discussed is the new SLIMLINE version and I have used both, the new version has much much quieter seeks, and as that was the only real drawback to the original drive its incomparable to the reviewed drive. Fortunatley all of the 160GB drives that I now have in st...

to me, the hard drive doesnt seem to make much noise in the xbox. i am guessing it is the power supply or fans inside that makes all the noise. now there is a project: silencing xbox fans. Ah we managed to get to grips with that in this thread http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=19...

I've managed to nab a couple of bargain original Xboxes in a sale for myself and a friend..so I'm looking to get us a hard drive each. Now when I got my current Crystal Xbox modded I was able to get the quiet Samsung SV1604N. Obviously similar 5400rpm drives are no longer available...so what's recom...

Cheers for the additional info. I guess some of the whooshing will be the HDD anyway (from what I've read likely to be a Hitachi). My Tosh is basically silent bar HDD (Samsung) until it has to do anything of note..then the fan ramps up. I guess it has 3 levels all clearly noticeable, the highest bei...

Thanks for that...I presume 15.4" is a typo as I believe they are only 14.1 and 15"

One question - does the fan(s) run all the time?

I've been trying to compile a short list of a suitable replacement for my 4 year old Toshiba Satellite..currently the Thinkpad T60 is in the lead.

So I thought I'd post here to see if anyone's got one and can tell me what the noise level's like and anything else of interest.

Cheers..