Second HDD - Double the noise?

Quitch · Post by **Quitch** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 12:38 pm

I'm contemplating how many drives to put into my Antec SOLO (which I believe has suspension for three drives), one or two. I'm considering a second because Vista likes to index personal data, and I see some benefits of splitting the data it's going to want to index off from the drives housing everything else, so it can index merrily while I load apps without impairment.

However, if I shove in a second drive, say an identical model to the first one, what's the likely impact on noise? Does it stack? Does one drive exactly the same as the other make a minimal difference?

wim · Post by **wim** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 4:58 pm

sound addition works on a logarithmic scale not linear, so an extra drive is significantly less than double the perceived noise. whether it is a minimal difference or not depends on how quiet the rest of your system is.. for example if the only sound from your system is a lone hard drive you can expect +3dBA in the noise level from adding another. but if you have some fan noise and/or a high ambient , then you can expect much less increase in noise level from the extra drive

Quitch · Post by **Quitch** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 1:53 am

Hopefully you can clarify this for me. What is something like 3dBA is the world of PC sound? The problem is I see these numbers and don't have a base to judge whether they represent a lot or nothing. Are they pounds or pence? Dollars or cents? etc.

Thomas · Post by **Thomas** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 2:38 am

Is it indexing for searching files, you're thinking about? If you dont search files much, you might consider disabling the index service... I've done that on my XP, and never missed it.

Quitch · Post by **Quitch** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 3:05 am

I use Vista, every time I type into the Start Menu I'm doing a search. Indexing is a big thing in Vista, though the performance is partially addressed by low priority IO, I was wondering if anyone had figures on the benefits and downsides.

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 5:13 am

Quitch wrote:Hopefully you can clarify this for me. What is something like 3dBA is the world of PC sound? The problem is I see these numbers and don't have a base to judge whether they represent a lot or nothing. Are they pounds or pence? Dollars or cents? etc.

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/dB.html#soundfiles

see "Sound files to show the size of a decibel".

basically, +3dbA is definitely noticeable but not catastrophic and nowhere near double.

Holy-Fire · Post by **Holy-Fire** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 6:00 am

"Double the perceived noise" is barely a meaningful phrase, so you should take statements like "nowhere near double" with a grain of salt.