Which is more silent? WD green power or notebook hard drives

9minutestorm · Post by **9minutestorm** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 2:22 am

Hello everyone!

So I'm silencing my PC and right now the most noise comes from my hard drive (Samsung SP2514N) 250gb, 7200rpm.
What would you recommend? I want one as silent as possible - i don't care if it's a notebook hdd, and i'm not really interested in performance, so 5400rpm is ok or maybe even 4200?

Thanks, Alex.

Ch0z3n · Post by **Ch0z3n** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 6:03 am

Vibration wise I would bet that they are about the same. The difference (I think) will be that a 7200rpm notebook is going to make a slightly higher pitched whine because of the increased frequency. Power consumption is probably about the same.

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 8:03 am

Bigger drive (3.5" vs. 2.5") = bigger platters = more mass = more vibration and more power to move.

GP drives spin at 5400rpm, as do most notebook drives. The notebook drive will generally be a little quieter than a desktop equivalent, but the GP's are pretty darn quiet.

Ch0z3n · Post by **Ch0z3n** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 8:33 am

Right, but he was asking it a 3.5" 5400 rpm was quieter than a 2.5" 7200 rpm, not 2.5" 5400.

Vicotnik · Post by **Vicotnik** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 8:40 am

Ch0z3n wrote:Right, but he was asking it a 3.5" 5400 rpm was quieter than a 2.5" 7200 rpm, not 2.5" 5400.

No, read the original post again.

Ch0z3n · Post by **Ch0z3n** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 8:55 am

lol, oops, my bad.

mrzed · Post by **mrzed** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 9:03 am

Yep - notebook drives will be quieter. Though a 7200RPM notebook drive may be noisier than a 5400RPM desktop like the GP. Vibration is almost always less on a notebook in particular, and there are many more options for soft mounting and isolation if you want to get really quiet.

I've noticed over the last year that the price premium on notebook drives has dropped enormously. You can now get 320gb notebook drives for not much more than 500gb 3.5" units. With SATA as the standard, I see little reason not to use notebook drives as the default for a new system, unless of course you are mostly concerned with speed, not silence.

It makes sense that 2.5" drives will become the standard. The share notebooks as a % of total PC sales keeps going up, there is now a single interface standard, and the smaller drive costs less (per unit) to manufacture. I'm now commonly seeing 250gb drives on sale for $75 - and that is plenty for OS/Apps.

I've moved to a simple one bay NAS device for storage anyhow - so I see no need for loads of capacity in the desktop (given my usage).

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 9:08 am

Ch0z3n wrote:Power consumption is probably about the same.

Hardly, even the fastest 7200rpm 2.5" drives idle at ~1W. The lowest power 3.5" Greens idle at ~4W. Even horrible 2.5" drives completely dominate the best 3.5" drives at performance per Watt--like 2 to 3 times better.

RPM is not a reliable measure of how loud a drive will be, but it is reliable measure of its performance. My 2-platter 7200rpm Scorpio Black seems to quieter than my single platter Seagate Momentus 5400.5.

There are 3.5" 7200rpm drives that are almost as quiet as the WD GPs/Greens, but Western Digital seem to be the best performance/noise with whatever type of drive (I'd like to get one of those 10,000 rpm 2.5" drives they sell.)

My Samsung SP2504C is a fairly quiet drive, but people here reported that their Samsung P120s shipped with different motors that were noisier. Perhaps you have one of those. Also if you need a PATA drive that will limit your options. You can use 2.5" PATA drives, but you will need a 2.5" to 3.5" PATA adapter. The only 3.5" PATA drive that might be slightly quieter than a P120 would be a Hitachi P7K500.

xan_user · Post by **xan_user** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 9:10 am

9minutestorm wrote:Hello everyone!

So I'm silencing my PC and right now the most noise comes from my hard drive (Samsung SP2514N) 250gb, 7200rpm.
What would you recommend? I want one as silent as possible - i don't care if it's a notebook hdd, and i'm not really interested in performance, so 5400rpm is ok or maybe even 4200?

Thanks, Alex.

Welcome to SPCR!

id go for the 2.5 5400rpm and suspend it.
no vibrations.

9minutestorm · Post by **9minutestorm** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 9:33 am

Wow thanks a lot guys for all your support!
Most probably i'll go with a 2.5" 5400rpm notebook drive so if you have any suggestions on brands and such is very welcomed.
I think that around 320 - 500gb would be enough for me, since i mostly store lossless music and a couple of movies, no games and no HD movies.
I'll go as far as i can silencing it by suspending it and maybe apply some foam around to eliminate possible idle noise (if necessary)

edit: oh and another thing. what i use right now is a PATA drive, but i see in the middle of the motherboard two SATA (sata1 and sata2) connectors, so i guess i can use a SATA hard drive right?

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 9:45 am

9minutestorm wrote:Wow thanks a lot guys for all your support!
Most probably i'll go with a 2.5" 5400rpm notebook drive so if you have any suggestions on brands and such is very welcomed.
I think that around 320 - 500gb would be enough for me, since i mostly store lossless music and a couple of movies, no games and no HD movies.
I'll go as far as i can silencing it by suspending it and maybe apply some foam around to eliminate possible idle noise (if necessary)

edit: oh and another thing. what i use right now is a PATA drive, but i see in the middle of the motherboard two SATA (sata1 and sata2) connectors, so i guess i can use a SATA hard drive right?

Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT 500GB
Seagate Momentus 5400.6 ST9500325AS 500GB

Both are 2-platter 2.5" 5400rpm. The Seagate is slower (slow seeks) and lower power. The big Scorpio Blue is the current performance/Watt leader in mechanical disks. I was going to buy one of these for my Eee PC, but got a refurbished 320GB Scorpio Black instead that was a lot cheaper and, of course, faster too.

Also the 5400.4 and 5400.5 that have come in my Eee PC makes me not expect the 5400.6 to be especially quiet, but I haven't seen a reliable review regarding the noise of either of these drives.

There is not much point in getting an older 320GB 2.5" 5400rpm drive, as these at best will be as loud and use the same amount of power as the 500GB drives and be slower. There are suppossed to be single-platter 250GB versions of both of the newer drives, but they don't appear to be available yet.

mattthemuppet · Post by **mattthemuppet** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 4:31 pm

that question also depends on how noisy the rest of your computer is - in absolute terms 2.5" drives are generally quieter than 3.5" drives, but I'd be surprised if you can hear a suspended 3.5" WD GP drive (I can't hear my WD6400AACS). So you may end up paying a premium and having lower performance (I think 3.5" drives are still faster than 2.5" drives of the same speed, not 100% though) when it won't make a noticeable difference.

I wouldn't worry about power consumption either - 2-3W isn't going to make the slightest difference to thermals or electricity bills

9minutestorm · Post by **9minutestorm** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 12:32 am

QuietOC thanks for your suggestions!

mattthemuppet: If i eliminate the hard drive noise the system would be pretty much dead silent, here's a pic of it http://i43.tinypic.com/2qm3yuu.jpg
You might say "oh you have fans you have noise" well, the Scythe processor fan is a big 14mm @500 rpm if i remember right and you can't really hear anything from it. The other one is an old fan from an old PSU fed by 5V, from this i get just a tiny motor noise but only if i put my ear next to it. And either way i'll have to change this cheap PSU with something better, but that's after i pass the hdd issue. You also see i keep the system on my desk, yea right now i don't have a case and actually plan to build one myself out of MDF, but again that would be one of the last things i`ll do. I also plan to use a couple of Noctua fans to cool the case.

Oh and i never worried about the power consumption factor, it's pretty much all about silence

Koolpc · Post by **Koolpc** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 2:40 pm

Are WD quieter than Samsung drives?

alleycat · Post by **alleycat** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 8:24 am

Apart from the Velociraptor, are there any 2.5" drives which are faster than a WD GP?

mattthemuppet · Post by **mattthemuppet** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 2:50 pm

on an open bench, yes, I think a notebook drive would be the way to go for ultimate silence. I was working on the basis that it would be inside a case, where I think there would be little noticeable difference.

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 7:32 am

alleycat wrote:Apart from the Velociraptor, are there any 2.5" drives which are faster than a WD GP?

My 320GB Scorpio Black is definitely faster than any WD GP/Green.

9minutestorm · Post by **9minutestorm** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 8:06 am

mattthemuppet, what stresses me the most is idle noise, that high frequency constant noise. Seek noise on the other hand, i don't find that annoying, plus most seek noise can be eliminated by suspending the hd.
Hopefully by the end of this week i'll put my hands on one of the hdrives QuietOC suggested.

PartEleven · Post by **PartEleven** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 9:48 am

Just to throw in my thoughts here, I own both a WD10EACS and a Hitachi Travelstar 7k320. In open air, the 7200 rpm notebook drive has a higher pitched idle while due to the faster rotation, but seeks are far quieter. In fact, I have yet to see any notebook drive have louder seeks than a desktop drive. The whine on the notebook drive actually isn't as bad as it seems on paper, since the noise is fairly high pitched and is easly blocked by thick cases like the P180. But a 5400 rpm 2.5" drive will be quieter, hands down.

EDIT: Maybe it's me, but seek noises have always been a problem. Suspending it significantly reduces the seek vibration from going to the case, but it doesn't reduce the actual seek noise generated by the drive. I can still hear the seeks of my WD10EACS over the rest of the system.

alleycat · Post by **alleycat** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 5:22 pm

QuietOC wrote:My 320GB Scorpio Black is definitely faster than any WD GP/Green.

Great info, thanks. How about noise?

I read somewhere that the Scorpio Blue is almost as fast. I only do office type stuff with my PC, so do you think I'd notice any difference?

9minutestorm · Post by **9minutestorm** » Thu Feb 26, 2009 2:53 am

I'm curious, can an ipod 1.8" hard drive be used in a desktop?
I know they are slow, and pretty expensive but they are really really silent

just wondering..

Ramses · Post by **Ramses** » Thu Feb 26, 2009 3:38 am

9minutestorm wrote:I'm curious, can an ipod 1.8" hard drive be used in a desktop?

Sure! You'll need an adapter (or 2 in series, depending on what you plug your HDD in to). DealExtreme has some here. Make sure you know which connector your 1.8" drive uses, either 50-pin (older iPod, Sony VAIO) or ZIF (ribbon) and possibly drive thickness if you're thinking of buying an external case instead: 5mm for modern ones, 8mm for early generation.

9minutestorm · Post by **9minutestorm** » Thu Feb 26, 2009 4:28 am

Thank you sir!

9minutestorm · Post by **9minutestorm** » Sat Apr 18, 2009 11:52 am

A little update:

I've actually ended up getting a hitachi travelstar 2,5" 5400rpm 500gb hard drive and i'm pretty much happy with it, so if anyone is searching for a silent hdd i can only recommend it. I've chosen hitachi because i have a friend who owns a laptop equipped with this brand and it was silent enough for me, really i don't think you can ask more from a hard drive. My enermax psu fan is way louder than the hdd!

Which is more silent? WD green power or notebook hard drives

Which is more silent? WD green power or notebook hard drives

Re: Which is more silent? WD green power or notebook hard dr