Best of 400-500GB Hard Drives

trooper11 · Post by **trooper11** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:19 pm

I know there arent alot of choices in this capacity range, but I need this range of size.

So in the 400-500gb size, what is the best drive in terms of heat and silence? I will probably be using a few of these drives, so any sound or heat i can cut down on would be good.

Performance is a factor, but its not as big as the other two so as long as its SATA that is fine. I know we wont be talking silent or cool in this size range, I just want to pick the best possible in that range. thanks

Devonavar · Post by **Devonavar** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 6:27 pm

First, let's break an illusion. SATA has virtually nothing to do with drive speed. No drives on the market now can saturate the ATA100 BUS. If you have two devices you might approach the limit, but only if both are going full tilt.

As far as I know, there are only two 400/500GB models out there, one from Hitachi and one from Seagate. The Hitachi has a reputation for being fast, but it's not especially cool or quiet. I haven't seen the Seagate at all.

But, with multiple drives, the biggest factor won't be the individual noise level, but how they interact with each other. If you're looking for low noise, soft-mounting them is a must or they'll start "pulsing" as their vibrations fall in and out of phase with each other.

trooper11 · Post by **trooper11** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 8:47 am

oh im sorry, I didnt actually mean that SATA gave some kind of performance boost. I just want SATA for the cabling improvements lol.

yeah the only two ive seen in this range are the Seagate 400gb and Hitachi 500gb.

when you say soft mounting, do you mena using some sort of vibration dampening material on the drive cage rails?

patricksumner · Post by **patricksumner** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 9:47 am

There's also a 400GB 16MB cache SATA Western Digital on the market.

tragus · Post by **tragus** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 3:06 pm

I just purchased two WD4000YR (SATA) from Newegg.

One arrived DOA. The other was having bizarre difficulties connected to a VIA8237 Southbridge. I'm still working with WD technical on this.

Preliminary anecdotal impression: runs hot, relatively low and boradband noise, but significantly louder in idle than the Samsung Spinpoint 160's that are already in the, and MUCH louder for seeks (more a muted "clicking"). However, I also have the cover off and my ear next to it, whereas normally the case would be nicely sealed (and sound-damped from ARMS Systems, RIP).

The specs for the WD4000 are very nice, though I'm concerned about heat. However, until I have both completely working, I reserve judgement.

Devonavar · Post by **Devonavar** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 7:42 pm

By soft-mounting I mean mounting the drives in such a way that they do not transmit vibration to the chassis. There are several ways of doing this:

- Rubber or silicone grommets, generally pre-installed because otherwise they won't fit in the drive cage.

- Suspension: Hanging the drive from (or between) some kind of elastic material

- Putting it on foam, so that the foam absorbs the vibration.

There are other, more creative methods of soft-mounting, but these are the main ones.

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 5:15 am

Seagate 400Gb would probably be the best bet as they are still the only ones who have 400Gb goodness with only three platters. WD has four platters and a whining issue that's been plaguing latest WD drives. Hitachi has even more platters - five, so it's going to be significantly louder. Maxtor plans on putting out a 500Gb model sometime soon, but I'd recomment to stay away from them due to reliability issues.

trooper11 · Post by **trooper11** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:00 pm

has anyone actually tested the 400GB seagate drives?

It does make sense that if they use less platters, it would cut down on the noise. Im just wanting to see some actual testing before I change my choice to them.

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 2:19 pm

I have two. They are fairly quiet as far as three platter drives go (number of platters makes a huge difference). I haven't done any detailed testing though since that would require way too much time.

sgtpokey · Post by **sgtpokey** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 3:01 pm

I would second the Jazzy Rabbit's obeservations.

I have one and I had it running externally bare for a while and I did notice that it was pretty quiet. I didn't run it for along time like that before I enclosed it but it was definitely quieter than a previous generation's 2 platter Maxtor drive with FDB.

trooper11 · Post by **trooper11** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 7:55 pm

hmm tough choice. go with performance and space in the hitachi drive, or lower heat and noise with the seagate.

heat i dont worry as much about, the lian-li case im going to use has plenty of airflow. its just the noise i wanted to cut as much as possible.

now im also putting together an htpc, and i was first going to go with a samsung spinpoint 250 GB SATAII drive after seeing its good specs.

the case im using for it is the Uneed x15e v2. I might use a single Seagate 400GB instead if the noise isnt that much louder then the samsung 250GB. any thoughts on that?

acaurora · Post by **acaurora** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 8:28 pm

I third the Seagates. However, from my experience (2x, for a week), they made these weird like squeaking/ticking noises. They were barely louder than idle, but were noticeable. These were with the external ones, so obviously by being in their crap plastic enclosures it amplifies the noise.

Seagate has started to release new hard drives, including their External Hard Drives which now look similar to a closed photo album laid on its spine facing up (bigger at the bottom, thinner at the top), with vents on bottom front and along the top. Personally I haven't tried them, but they look not much different - same brittle easily vibrating plastic -.-;;

trooper11 · Post by **trooper11** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 10:15 pm

well i did find a review comparing the WD 400GB drives, Hitachi 500GB and Seagate 400GB.

the seagate is quiter thent he hitachi, but only at idle (2-3db). during seeking, the hitachi is actually quiter by 1-2db. now of course i know sometimes its not just the db rating,b ut also the type of noise, but this is close enough that i dont feel as bad going with the hitachi.

now the seagate is lower wattage wise, so itll be cooler, but its still not a large margin. Since the hitachi is the better performer, i think ill go with it.

The review im taling about was on The Tech Report. if you all arent aware, they are a good hardware review site, ive read thier reviews for a long time and they seem to do a good job.

trooper11 · Post by **trooper11** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 7:31 pm

Ok I wanted to give a little update here.

I havent made my purchase yet and Im glad i didnt becuase I noticed that Seagate has new 500GB drives out now.

They are the Barracuda 7200.9 drives that match the Hitachi drives in everyway, SATA II, 16mb cache, and of course the 500GB storage size.

The reason Id be alot more intersted in the Seagate drives are for a couple reasons:

-The 7200.9 uses 4 platters versus 5 on the hitachi

-The 7200.9 comes with a 5 year warranty while the hitachi only comes tih 3 years

now since I cant find any reviews on the 7200.9, I have no idea about performance, but those two reasons above might be enough for me to take the chance. and really, i doubt it will perform worse then the hitachi drives, their specs are so similar.

Anyone have any comments on this?

Schroinx · Post by **Schroinx** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 9:40 am

Hey, I am pondering the same question about 500GB drives. I don't need the speed as I don't game, and these are going into my HTPC. So I want to go with the 7200.9 with 8mb.

Based on my experience, you won't notice an eventual difference in speed, performance being so close. After a while, you'll suffer more from the noise...

Post by **MikeC** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 10:03 am

A 7200.9 500G sample just arrived. Quick & dirty check: It's pretty quiet at idle, considering 4 platters. More broadband than the Hitachi 400G, and less whine. Fairly low vibration. Suspended, this sample could be a pretty quiet drive. Review should be up in a week or two.

I can almost guarantee you will not perceive any real-life performance diffierences between any of the 400~500 GB 7200rpm drives. We can barely tell between 5400 notebook drives and 7200 desktop drives -- this on fairly fast systems.

Shining Arcanine · Post by **Shining Arcanine** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 11:13 am

Devonavar wrote:First, let's break an illusion. SATA has virtually nothing to do with drive speed. No drives on the market now can saturate the ATA100 BUS. If you have two devices you might approach the limit, but only if both are going full tilt.

As far as I know, there are only two 400/500GB models out there, one from Hitachi and one from Seagate. The Hitachi has a reputation for being fast, but it's not especially cool or quiet. I haven't seen the Seagate at all.

But, with multiple drives, the biggest factor won't be the individual noise level, but how they interact with each other. If you're looking for low noise, soft-mounting them is a must or they'll start "pulsing" as their vibrations fall in and out of phase with each other.

Devonavar, there are 15.3K SCSI drives that can do 93MBps sustained transfers and SATA drives that can burst above 100MBps on the market.

tragus wrote:I just purchased two WD4000YR (SATA) from Newegg.

One arrived DOA. The other was having bizarre difficulties connected to a VIA8237 Southbridge. I'm still working with WD technical on this.

Preliminary anecdotal impression: runs hot, relatively low and boradband noise, but significantly louder in idle than the Samsung Spinpoint 160's that are already in the, and MUCH louder for seeks (more a muted "clicking"). However, I also have the cover off and my ear next to it, whereas normally the case would be nicely sealed (and sound-damped from ARMS Systems, RIP).

The specs for the WD4000 are very nice, though I'm concerned about heat. However, until I have both completely working, I reserve judgement.

tragus, you might want to take platter and head counts into consideration when judging hard drives as if they're not identical it isn't exactly an apples to apples comparison.

Post by **MikeC** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 11:55 am

Shining Arcanine wrote:Devonavar, there are 15.3K SCSI drives that can do 93MBps sustained transfers and SATA drives that can burst above 100MBps on the market.

Your SCSI reference doesn't really apply, as Devonavar was looking at PATA vs SATA, and I'd be curious as which SATA drives can "burst" 100MBps -- also for how long... Generally, I think Devon's point that the interface is not really a bottleneck is correct. Even if does become one, it will only be for future drives.

I'd think the main reason people want SATA is because so many motherboards have fewer IDE channels these days, while SATA channels become ever more plentiful. There are a few boards in the lab (Intel) that have only a single IDE connector. The writing is on the wall: PATA is on its way out.