What is the quietest ~1TB drive?

glas · Post by **glas** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 6:32 pm

I'm looking to get some 1TB (+/-) drives. Which ones are the quietest (idle) these days? WD Green?

tehfire · Post by **tehfire** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 7:51 pm

FartingBob · Post by **FartingBob** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 3:13 am

tehfire wrote:Yes

What he said.

glas · Post by **glas** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 4:28 am

WD10EACS?

tehfire · Post by **tehfire** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 4:55 am

EACS or EADS should be of the same acoustic properties, the only difference being the EADS has 32MB of cache as opposed to the EACS and its 16MB of cache. Originally, the EADS had fewer platters (and thus a greater potential for being quiet) than the EACS, but they incorporated this into the EACS line a while back, so both should be equally quiet.

glas · Post by **glas** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 6:19 am

Looks like the wd10eads is almost cheaper (shipping, tax included). I was not sure if cache has a positive or negative impact on a raid setup.
Alos, it looks like 2 x 1.5TB is still more expensive than 3 x 1TB?

Jay_S · Post by **Jay_S** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 7:46 am

I believe the EADS 1TB is guaranteed to have 3 333GB platters, where getting the 333GB platters with the EACS is more of a gamble. I might be wrong on this. Comparing the 333GB platter drives to the 250GB platter drives, the 333GB ones are a little quicker and use a little less power.

Trav1s · Post by **Trav1s** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 8:06 am

I have the WD10EADS (1TB 32MB) at home to install over the weekend. I will let you know what I think compared to the WD6400AAKS (640GB 7200 RPM 16MB) I have in the same machine.

Mohan · Post by **Mohan** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 4:08 pm

What about Hitachi drives? Significantly more noise? Samsung and Seagate for sure...

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 8:25 pm

Mohan wrote:What about Hitachi drives? Significantly more noise? Samsung and Seagate for sure...

Probably quietest: WD Green, Samsung EcoGreen, Hitachi 7K1000.B, Samsung F2/F1. The 2-platter 1TB Seagate might be good.

merlin · Post by **merlin** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 1:04 am

QuietOC wrote:
Mohan wrote:What about Hitachi drives? Significantly more noise? Samsung and Seagate for sure...
Probably quietest: WD Green, Samsung EcoGreen, Hitachi 7K1000.B, Samsung F2/F1. The 2-platter 1TB Seagate might be good.

The 3-platter 1TB seagate is pretty good also actually. I can barely tell they're seeking over their idle now.

Fred · Post by **Fred** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 2:58 pm

I found this samsung drive called F2 HD103SI.
It's supposed to be a 1TB 5400rpm drive on two platters. Sounds really good as a storage unit.

On that note, how big difference is it between 7200rpm and 5400rpm drives?
Could I, say, watch some ultra high-tech format movie from a 5400rpm drive without any slowdowns in framerate?

Vicotnik · Post by **Vicotnik** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 3:55 pm

Fred wrote:On that note, how big difference is it between 7200rpm and 5400rpm drives?
Could I, say, watch some ultra high-tech format movie from a 5400rpm drive without any slowdowns in framerate?

Yeah, no problem. As a storage drive it's not much difference between 5400RPM and 7200RPM. As a system drive the difference is more significant since a 5400RPM drive has slower seek times, not good when you want to access many smaller files quickly.

Fred · Post by **Fred** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 7:45 am

Ok, cool. I will probably be getting one then.