Incredibly noisy/whining Samsung SP 250GB (w/Nidec motor)

ziphnor · Post by **ziphnor** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 2:32 am

What enclosure are you using it, and how have you suspended it?(doesnt the enclosure take up the entire space of the DVD/CD slots?).

I can easily see the problems with turning the HD off, but if no running programs are using the HD, it shouldnt be an issue. Of course, actually achieving that no programs are doing that, might be a bit of a problem

luminous · Post by **luminous** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 2:39 am

Am using SilentMAx enclosures, but these are no longer the best on the market. Mine are resting on tall, narrow strips of acoustic damping foam

Seems to work well.

Oh, and for a HDD to stay spooled down, its a lot harder than just getting the programs not to use it....its windows that is the evil one. It just keeps wanting to access drives

swissguy77 · Post by **swissguy77** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 1:35 pm

Hi every body

I purchased four Samsung SP2504C SATA II 250G (all have nidec motors), three for office computers and one for my quiet home system. Before choosing the one for my home system, I tested all of them with the hitachi feature tool 1.98. I also have 2 two nidec SP1614N PATA to compare with. I tested them in the drive cage that is decoupled from the rest of the case.

First I set AAM to the lowest possible setting on all drives, then I used the “test”-button in the feature tool, which generates maximum noise. Although the serial numbers of the drives where in a row (ending with 47, 48, 49, 50) they behaved differently: 48 was the loudest, 47, 49 the same and 50 the quietest. This was both at idle and under load.
All four Nidec SP2504C where louder than my two Nidec SP1614N both at idle and under load (although drive with serial number ending at 50 just very slightly).

My subjective conclusions:
The noise differences between my four Nidec SP2504C’s was pretty big. Therefore the high quality measurements carried out at SPCR are almost useless, when only a few drives are tested.

luminous · Post by **luminous** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 1:41 pm

Yeah, I agree with you there. I have thought this for a while.

The best we can hope for is that the tests are a good guide as to what we may get. Then its a case of reading the forums to check up on how things are going "in the field"

mrk22 · Post by **mrk22** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 7:32 pm

ziphnor wrote:I can easily see the problems with turning the HD off, but if no running programs are using the HD, it shouldnt be an issue. Of course, actually achieving that no programs are doing that, might be a bit of a problem

Put a CD or DVD in your optical drive for a few days and take note of how often windows feels the need to spin it up. It would be the same situation with a hard drive.

Just opening "My Computer" may be enough as Windows will want to check on the drive to see how it is doing. Another time I've had Windows spin up a disc for no reason is when I'm on a save/open dialog and wish to change to another folder.

Ackelind · Post by **Ackelind** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 9:31 am

My spinpoints are starting to act weird. When i first installed them, the seeks were very close to being inaudible, I could just hear them when my ambient was very low and i concentrated hard.

Now, for a few days in a row, some of the seeks are extreme! my harddrive makes a really loud, half-muted rumbling sound. They are on the grommets in the lower compartment of the P180. Could it be that the drives have moved around somehow when I moved my case? My case is in a very bad spot, so I don't like to disconnect and open it up all to often.