WD Caviar Black noise levels

cfp · Post by **cfp** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 10:52 am

Has anyone tried the new Caviar Blacks? How do they compare acoustically with the Spinpoint F1s?

On the one hand they're "performance" drives which usually means noisy, on the other the improvements seem to be aimed at reducing vibration.

Tom

Goldmember · Post by **Goldmember** » Fri Jul 04, 2008 6:26 am

Not known yet as it has just arrived in the United States.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136284

I was looking at some pics from Japan and it seems that it has the same chassis as the SE16 640GB. Hard to tell, but it looks like it has 7 ribs for your acoustic pleasure.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/ho ... tc_wd.html

P.S. I would be skeptical of the "dual-processor" marketing. After all, WD is still advertising the green power as a 5400-7200rpm drive when they know it is 5400rpm. Unbelievable.

Hopefully, MikeC can rip off the PCB again like he did to the SE16 640GB. (AFAIK, the only website that did this.)

e v o · Post by **e v o** » Sat Jul 05, 2008 4:05 pm

I too am very interested in these drives. Have not found any user or site based reviews, although I realize they just arrived. I am looking to consolidate my hds and was scared away from the 1 TB F1.

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Sat Jul 05, 2008 6:56 pm

Goldmember wrote:Hopefully, MikeC can rip off the PCB again like he did to the SE16 640GB. (AFAIK, the only website that did this.)

Huh? I just went back and reviewed the review and the thread discussing it. I don't see any mention of him removing the PCB or any picture that implies he did. What are you talking about?

cfp · Post by **cfp** » Sun Jul 06, 2008 4:20 pm

Yeah I wasn't exactly sure what he was talking about either...

Google is still just churning up a thousand copies of the same press release, no reviews anywhere as yet so far as I can see.

cfp · Post by **cfp** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 4:24 pm

There's a performance review up here.

The conclusion seems to be there's not much difference in speed between it and the Samsung, no mention of noise though.

EsaT · Post by **EsaT** » Sat Aug 16, 2008 8:28 am

cfp wrote:There's a performance review up here.

The conclusion seems to be there's not much difference in speed between it and the Samsung, no mention of noise though.

Storagereview has never had any real noise measurements but in performance that drive is very good, trouncing other 1GB drives and 150GB Raptor in nearly everything.
http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchm ... 4&devCnt=5
(ES2=enterprise version of 7200.11)

cfp · Post by **cfp** » Sat Aug 16, 2008 8:38 am

Ahh interesting. They seem pretty tempting.

echo1434 · Post by **echo1434** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 12:28 am

Ok, I just got a couple of the 1 TB Caviar Blacks and installed them in the 3rd and 4th drive bays of my ARM Systems Stealth PC. I always put my drives in Smart Drive 2002 Copper enclosures, which of course reduce some noise, but I can provide a few relative comparisons here.

Previously I have used Seagate 7200.7 Barracuda 160 GB and Samsung Spinpoint P120 250 GB drives.

The Seagates were very quiet in general, but the seek noise was rather noticeable at times. When I switched to the Samsungs a couple years ago, they seemed slightly louder at first but with virtually no seek noise at all. After a few days, I think they broke in and got quieter. Very, very quiet drives. Sure, you can always hear *something* if you really concentrate on it, but that's the case in pretty much any environment.

Although these new Western Digital drives have similar noise specs to the above drives, I couldn't help but suspect that they'd still be louder in some way, simply because they are so much larger in capacity.

Well, I was pleasantly surprised. I honestly cannot tell the difference between these and the Samsung Spinpoints I had before - which I had previously believed to be the quietest large capacity drives available. Just super, super quiet.

They seem just as fast, if not faster, than the Samsungs. And according to HDTune, they run at very similar temperatures to the Samsung Spinpoints (my old Seagates seemed to run a bit hot, if I recall correctly).

Sorry, I don't have any fancy measurement gear - but I do have very sensitive hearing and am prone to notice noises that most people do not.

I'm personally very pleased with these drives.

cfp · Post by **cfp** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 4:36 am

Great. Sounds like they deserve a spot on my shopping list...

twoscoreandfour · Post by **twoscoreandfour** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 3:33 am

Wow are they really as quiet as the Spinpoint 120s? I hope SPCR do a review because over here is the Land of Aus a Caviar Blue (750AAKS) costs about $100 more than a Caviar Black (750AALS).

echo1434 · Post by **echo1434** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 3:43 am

twoscoreandfour wrote:Wow are they really as quiet as the Spinpoint 120s? I hope SPCR do a review because over here is the Land of Aus a Caviar Blue (750AAKS) costs about $100 more than a Caviar Black (750AALS).

In the Smart Drives, they're the same for me. And absolutely no seek noise from the Western Digitals this way.

I'd assume the enclosures don't distort my perception too much, as the sound that you *can* hear is still the same (close to nothing).

twoscoreandfour · Post by **twoscoreandfour** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 4:07 am

ahh I'd imagine the smart drive makes all the difference. If I was just to suspend naked it might be alot worse.

Although to be fair anything is better than what I have now

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 8:07 am

TechReport review

Rather disappointing.

cfp · Post by **cfp** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 8:10 am

Ahh that really isn't that impressive. I was expecting them to be at least as quiet as the F1s.

twoscoreandfour · Post by **twoscoreandfour** » Fri Aug 29, 2008 8:21 pm

Yeah according to the techreport review they win the performance crown, but are fairly noisy. However, like most review sites the noise discussion is limited to a few db graphs and there is no subjective analysis of the drive's noise

cfp · Post by **cfp** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 5:59 am

Come on SPCR...

EsaT · Post by **EsaT** » Sun Aug 31, 2008 9:12 am

twoscoreandfour wrote:Yeah according to the techreport review they win the performance crown, but are fairly noisy. However, like most review sites the noise discussion is limited to a few db graphs and there is no subjective analysis of the drive's noise

Noise levels were measured... 1" from the side of the drives... Drives were run with the PCB facing up.
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15363/13
Now that surely gives realistic results... those results ain't worth of bits those graphics waste!

FartingBob · Post by **FartingBob** » Sun Aug 31, 2008 9:33 am

EsaT wrote:Noise levels were measured... 1" from the side of the drives... Drives were run with the PCB facing up.
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15363/13
Now that surely gives realistic results... those results ain't worth of bits those graphics waste!

Well you can tell from the numbers that its not representative of how loud they are in general, but as a comparative graph it doesn't matter. As long as they were all measured the same way, its clear that their caviar black drive is louder than the rest.

twoscoreandfour · Post by **twoscoreandfour** » Sun Aug 31, 2008 11:45 pm

EsaT wrote:
twoscoreandfour wrote:Yeah according to the techreport review they win the performance crown, but are fairly noisy. However, like most review sites the noise discussion is limited to a few db graphs and there is no subjective analysis of the drive's noise
Noise levels were measured... 1" from the side of the drives... Drives were run with the PCB facing up.
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15363/13
Now that surely gives realistic results... those results ain't worth of bits those graphics waste!

Yes but it doesn't exactly tell me much about the sound. Whining, hummy, clicky whatever. Ok, it's louder than drive X. But is it a low-frequency whir and is drive X a high-freq whine? The db itself is not the be all and end all.

Considering the drive I have now I would be willing to put up with something that is not neccessarily quiet but has a nicer noise signature.

EsaT · Post by **EsaT** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 9:58 am

twoscoreandfour wrote:Yes but it doesn't exactly tell me much about the sound. Whining, hummy, clicky whatever. Ok, it's louder than drive X. But is it a low-frequency whir and is drive X a high-freq whine? The db itself is not the be all and end all.

Also different mechanical design of drive casing could cause notable directional differences in sound so from other direction order of drives could be entirely different.
Neither nothing about vibration, drive might appear quieter than other but if it vibrates more in practise it's noisier than other drive in most situations.

Would be really interesting to get reliable noise results from drives more often.

fo · Post by fo » Fri Sep 12, 2008 4:57 pm

I recently bought two retail 1TB Blacks to replace a couple of drives in my RAID setup. The drives are decoupled but not suspended - Lian Li rubber grommets in a Lian Li cage that is resting on soft rubber pads (repurposed fan mounts) inside the case. The case is aluminum, but I've added AcoustiPack inside and have slowRPM 12cm fans throughout.

So far, they seem fast and quiet. No seek sounds to speak of, and no whirring whatsoever. I do hear subtle vibration, but I believe it was present before the upgrade (you tend to listen more carefully after making a change). I can't judge accurately because the machine is currently in a different location than usual, and on a hardwood floor (not on the Sorbothane feet I made for the case). I also changed the mounting of the existing drives, which I suspect might be the primary cause of the vibration. There are four drives in the machine... if I touch the Blacks they seem to vibrate less than the other two drives (two older MaxLine III 300GB). So the only concern I might have with the Blacks is with vibration (something that few reviews measure), and they seem to vibrate less or no more than a normal quiet drive.

I like them enough to buy a couple more. In my current machines, I have 1TB WD GP drives in a RAID, 1TB WD GPs in a RAID, 300GB Maxline III drives in a RAID and 300GB Velociraptor boot drives. Of all these, I think the Blacks will be my drive of choice for an upcoming 4TB RAID6.

FWIW, I only buy retail drives now... for the warranty (5 yr with the Blacks) but more importantly for the quality control. The warranty is not too important to me because I rarely want to replace a bad drive (I usually want to upgrade the capacity). But the only drives I've had fail have been OEM, either in my own machines or in brand-name machines.

slovokia · Post by **slovokia** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 7:49 pm

I recently purchased a WD1001FALS - it was manufactured in mid June 2008. I am running it in an Apricorn external SATA enclosure.

I find the noise the drive makes when seeking to be very annoying - it has a chirpy cricket like quality to it which is very noticable.

I also have 1 WD7500AAKS and 3 WD5000AAKS hard drives I use in the same enclosures. The WD7500AAKS is significantly quieter when seeking. The WD5000AAKS drives are a bit quieter than the WD1001FALS. It may be the case that there is a good deal of variability of seek noise levels within a given WD drive model line. It might be interesting for someone to test this hypothesis.

The external enclosure I am using tightly couples the hard drive chassis to the metal case of the enclosure so clicky kinds of seek noises are particularly evident. In a grommet based mounting this may be less of an issue.

barbaroja · Post by **barbaroja** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 10:34 am

So, any words about this drive getting issues with the parking feature? I mean, the load cycle count per hour?

WD Caviar Black noise levels

WD Caviar Black noise levels

my experience

Recently purchased WD1001FALS exhibits annoying seek noise