Cheapest decent 3.5" HDD? Emphasis on cheap....

[Ruu]

For the last several months, an extremely loud, high-pitched whirring noise has been coming out of the husband's gaming system; today I finally stuck my head inside the case and realized---much to my horror---that the noise was the HDD.

The noise is unbelievable; it sounds like the drive heads are etching little tattoo-grooves into the platters. I can hear the whirring from 10 feet away; it has been and is slowly leaching me of all my sanity. The timbre is exactly like that of a dentist's drill.

Funds are tight at the moment, but this nasty drive has GOT to go. Since the system is used for a decent amount of gaming, a new drive needs to be 3.5" 7200 RPM. Storage capacity is not really a concern; I figure that, within reason, smaller is cheaper.

From other people's threads, I have seen suggestions for the WD3200AAKS and HD322HJ. Anything else?

I wish I had recording equipment so that I can capture the sound of this HDD. It is frighteningly bad. In fact, it sounds like mechanical failure is imminent---of the grand, platters-exploding kind of way.

Looking forward to hearing others' thoughts. Thanks in advance.[/img]

[CyberDog]

Well I think that the Samsungs F2 is fast enough for gaming also. Check the new review from the main page.

[Ruu]

Those new Samsungs sound fantastic. 500GB is a bit much for this system, though. I suppose 500GB is the new bang-for-the-buck point? Is there anything smaller storage-wise and even cheaper, or would I start having to sacrifice acoustics and quality if I go with lowered capacity? I realize that I might be looking for older or even discontinued drives... the emphasis these days seems to be on bigger space, though the silent/green trend is very welcome.

[psiu]

Those new Samsungs sound fantastic. 500GB is a bit much for this system, though. I suppose 500GB is the new bang-for-the-buck point? Is there anything smaller storage-wise and even cheaper, or would I start having to sacrifice acoustics and quality if I go with lowered capacity? I realize that I might be looking for older or even discontinued drives... the emphasis these days seems to be on bigger space, though the silent/green trend is very welcome.

Well that is the issue--the newer drives are quieter--but bigger. So just going by capacity is relatively meaningless.

Quick check on Newegg--the WD 320GB w/8MB cache is 49.99 w/FS. The 16MB cache model is 54.99 w/FS. Those are 7200 rpm drives (although again--current 5400 rpm drives will hang with moldy old 7200 rpm drives).

Going up further in price is up to you. The WD 640GB Blue is what I use in 2 machines (and it's the only modern drive I have experience with). I like it, it's fast, quiet and a nice price. It's currently $69.99 FS at Newegg.

For a gaming system I really wouldn't suggest a slower (aka Green, EcoGreen, or whatever) model though. That extra 10 seconds while loading a level is murder.



edit: Brand wise, everyone has their own particular favorite (generally the inverse of whatever brand has crapped out on them lately). I know the Seagate's *had* an issue with the drives killing themselves unpredicatably but I think that's been resolved. I'm steering clear for awhile though--plus the fact that a laptop Seagate I bought died after a year and the replacement was a 2 platter model. Urgh.

I don't think there's any real difference reliability wise at this point though--the Seagate thing was about the biggest screwup by a hard drive maker in years.

[pixel]

Hello,

I was in the same position - VERY noisy hard drives, especially irritating since I made considerable efforts to make my PC more quiet. In fact I couldn't detect the noise was coming from the HDD's - I had 2x 7200 Seagates in RAID 0 and 1 320 GB 7200 Seagate for backup- and replaced the PSU; the noise remained and it was obvious that the HDD's were to blame.

Before considering to replace them, I "elastically mounted" them using some flexible cord - there are many pics here in the forums - and it did help quite a bit. Most of the noise was originated by the "screwed" hard connection to the computer case; the thin steel in the HDD mounting cage was amplifying the vibrations.

This reduced the noise to an acceptable degree, but I wanted to go further. I created a thread here (Noisy RAID 0..) and asked for advice, and was recommended the Samsung F2 EcoGreen 500 GB and the WD Caviar Blue 640 GB.

I also game quite a bit, so I would probably get the WD if I could.. But it wasn't sold here in Turkey, so I went for the 500 GB Samsung.

I'm quite happy now, the drive is VERY quiet and you can only hear a muted clicking as the drive seeks - this will probably be drowned by other components in the PC. I have not yet played a game on the new OS installation, though. This drive is also suspended.

It might be as psiu has said, though. I'm afraid that when I load GTA4 I might get VERY long load times - they were already long with 2x 7200 rpm drives in RAID 0. This will probably be the only time I might wish the WD Caviar Blue's were being sold here.

If your husband is really into gaming and doesn't care much for silence, he might find the longer load times with a 5.400 rpm drive a bit annoying. (If the current drive is more than a few years old there will probably be no difference, though - the new 5400 drives are not really slouches since the data density per platter has increased over years.) In this case it might be wiser to go with the 7.200 rpm WD Caviar Blue's.

I would like to recommend this: If the PC has noise-generating components other than the HDD (maybe a stock CPU cooler, maybe an actively cooled VGA card, or noisy case fans..) the noise difference between the WD 640 GB 7.200 rpm and the Samsung 500 GB 5.400 rpm might not be noticeable. In this case it'll probably be wiser to go with the WD, in order to get better performance for gaming AND not losing the noise advantage.

Please note that in order to get the least possible amount of noise from the HDD you have to consider "suspending" it somehow, with elastic cord, bungee rope, Stretch-Magic or something like that.

Good luck!