Do quite HDD's exist or do i go pure SSD?.

So by the title do quite Hard drives exist?.

Managed to get most of my build near silent except my 2 year old Seagate Barracudas are making a fair bit of noise.Specifically the loudest spins up and makes a vibration noise through the case.

I'm not sure if they're dying but i would prefer to replace the loudest.

So what are some quite HDD options around?.
Or is this not a thing and i should just save up for a pure SSD system?.

Budget right now is to replace 1 drive at most 160$ AUD.
Mostly want storage you guessed it quite but enough speed to right H.264 video to it for a hour each day.

Hopefully some of you silent system guys can help me out cheers.

 

HDD's will always make noise, its hard to contain the noises of a 7200RPM disc getting spun.

A SSD will be dead silent however.

 

You could go for one of the energy efficient drives from WD or Seagate. They are typically very slow compared to other HDD's though. They aren't 100% silent but they are quieter than say a WD Black.

 

I know that but i swear my Seagate Barracuda 2TB drives used to be a lot quieter and even the 3TB ones i got for a mate.

2-3 year old WD Green i had wasn't to slow.
I guess maybe just get a 3TB replacement in the
mean time until i can get a couple of 500GB ssd's for recording.

Since i am recording video would a WD purple be a better idea?
Most of its marking is suggested for recording video cameras and my task isn't that different.

 

Hi there

I would go with Toshiba DT01ACA300 3TB,I'm using two in my PC,one is used as scratch disk for Photoshop and for many other SW which I do use,tested older WD Blue 500GB which is not bad,but is louder and write speeds they're just not right

Regarding SSD,if its only for recording,not sure if its worth,I know I used 480GB SSD for textures and models for 3DS MAX and loading models or textures has been pretty much awesome,I've used this SSD for Photoshop or After Effects too and I've been very happy,but really depends there

But you need take to account,how many writes you will be doing to SSD during the H.264 recordings/sessions,but I would go with SSD too if budget allows there,size can be problem if you want go beyond 1TB,then you will need PCI-E SSD which are expensive

Hope this helps

Thanks,Jura

 

I got five of those myself (yes five lol). I would very strongly recommend them, they're by far the best value for money hard drive, they're fast, reliable, and quiet. Just remember like with any piece of computer hardware to keep good airflow around them and if it needs to keep spinning up all the time when you're using the computer due to power saving settings, turn the power saving settings off. Doesn't do any hard drive any good constantly spinning up and down.

For Western Digital drives, now Western Digital have the great idea of relabelling all their crappy green drives as blue drives, maybe because they weren't selling as well as they have done in the past? In any case, go for the Toshiba . It seems that 3 TB is still the optimal drive size for size vs cost, it hasn't changed much in the last couple of years.

 

Hi there

I will be buying few more too as I'm always low on empty space,I want to replace my 3 WD

I can recommend them too as I've them and they're very reliable and regarding WD,I will be no longer buying them,I lost 2 WD in past

Thanks,Jura

 

Honestly, if you haven't had the experience of having a SSD, I would strongly recommend getting one because they're pretty amazing with respect to how much faster/snappier your general experience is. I have a hard time dealing with rigs that have a HDD now, lol.

Edit: Sounds like you might already have one, wasn't sure. I don't think you're going to find a "perfectly silent" HDD though.

 

I used to have 7 SSDs but now i only have 3.

I can get really annoyed dealing with Client systems without SSD's
How did we live without them?.

Thanks for the suggestion i'l check to see if i can those those at any Local Stores.I have a 240GB SSD for Premiere pro maya and photoshop already as a scratch disk and it definitely does help.

My original idea was to have a 3TB drive to store footage while i work on it and then a 500GB SSD as the recording disk.

Budget isn't really a huge problem in the future just for the moment with moving house i'm semi poor haha.Hence asking if any semi quite hard drives exist.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

 

You won't. There is, however a solution, though an expensive one.

He'll have to buy a soundproof pc case, one that keeps the noise out. They are rather expensive but work wonders should you want a near silent computer...

 

The most quiet drive I've come across was the WD red drives. I've got a 1TB one and you can hear it ramping up at first, but after that it's inaudible. Test have reported it as being below 0.2 sone for the 1TB model and below 0.3 for the 2TB version (was a year back or so).

 

Right, people who are recommending to buy x or y hdd, seems like you've forgotten about some simple features that are included in HDD firmware, it's AAM, Automatic Acoustic Management.

The last couple of HDDs I bought for example, acoustic management in their firmware were set to performance so you would hear the clicking/thudding of the drive heads (this seems to be done on purpose in the industry now to promote performance vs quiet/efficient drives when in actual fact the quiet and the performance drives are identical) so I changed those to quiet so instead you just hear the feint humming of the drives.

Now the difficult part, some drives, you'll need to use firmware tools specific to the HDD for example the 4TB WD green drive I got, I had to run it's firmware tool in DOS so that I could disable it's parking mode (so it's essentially a WD Blue drive now) and there I also changed it's AAM mode to quiet (I think the value used was 128), other HDDs I used a program I found after googling. (This one for example http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html seemed to work for 2 of my drives so if it doesn't work for you, search for another program, if I could remember the program I used before I'd link it but it's a case of you only run it the once and then forget about it after as it's a permanent setting).

Anyway hope this helps.

 

Heh, I never knew you could tinker a HDD's firmware.

 

I have a Nanoxia DS1 which is as silent as it gets + its being modded
with extra sound dampening material and Noctua fans.

Cheers a bunch for the suggestion i completely forgot about
doing that.Funny thing is before posting on here i was researching
WD greens and found a thread on a local aussie forum about the drive parking every 8 seconds and how to change the firmware or whatever
not to and people have not had WD green drives die as often.

Cheers for that suggestion and i'l give it a go on the current drives.

 

I never hear a sound from my Seagate Barracudas and my case is on top of the desk about a foot from my ears.

 

My Seagate Barracuda is very quiet.

As for the "I have an SSD and can't deal with systems with mechanical drives" crowd....I got a good laugh at that. I've got a fairly recent 7200rpm Seagate Barracuda as well as a 64GB Crucial M4 and 256GB Crucial M4 and I see no difference in performance or response time regardless of whether I run the 256GB Crucial drive, the Seagate by itself or the Seagate paired with the 64GB drive as a cache drive. Unless you're working on older systems or systems with older drives, it's mostly placebo effect. Hell, the only thing my Crucial M4 has any noticeable advantage at, is installing Windows....lol

 

Seagates chirp (rather loudly) thanks to their stupid head parking.


I have Toshiba DT01ACA300 3TB and I'm really happy with it and it doesn't have head parking. I'd say that it's quieter than Samsung F3. It's a 7200 RPM drive so it's not going to be as quiet as WD Green or Red but it is faster. I use my Toshiba as storage disk and video recording disk.

 

Is it even possible for an SSD to make noise? :3eyes:

 

Probably only if it's malfunctioning / damaged / burning.

 

I asked if there were silent or quiet options for a HDD or if Pure SSD was my only options and hoping the smart guys here on Guru3d could help with there knowledge.

I didn't ask for a irrelevant post with oh i'm happy with my HDD is very quiet and SSD's are just a placebo effect.

I was going to suggest that i test 4 systems with and without a SSD
and put up the footage to prove you are completely wrong.
But i have a feeling you are just a pointless troll.

That seems to be what is making a fair bit of noise for me.
Good drives and great performance but the head parking kills them
and it seems quite literally.