Which of these three drives is the quietest?

WD Caviar 7500

Samsung Spinpoint F1

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11

I'm looking for a 500GB drive to put in a PC that will be in my living room. I have it narrowed down to one of the above three, and I'd like to get the quietest one.

It's hard to find a lot of information regarding the sound levels of drives.

Thanks for your help.

there are limited reviews out there as these drives are new..i can tell you for a fact about the 7200.11 500GB cause i own one that its very quiet. i cannot hear the annoying clicking when seeking for information as i used to with my old 7200.7 80gb

dont know about the others but i dont think you can go wrong with any of them...if you get the 7200.11 just remember to remove the smal jumper for sata3.0 speeds

i also own the 500gb seagate 7200.11 and i can confirm that it's very quiet. the only time i hear it is when the windows if loading all the programs when my computer boots up. and not to say it's loud or anything, it's just the only time i can hear it working.

WD caviar gp's are quieter than the 2xWD 500 GB, and seagate 320 gb and maxtor 250 all sata300 at 7200 rpm. the GPs have the variable speed

You might look at www.silentpcreview.com for quiet computing issues. They did some analysis for quiet hard drives, but I don't know if it is up to date. http://www.silentpcreview.com/article29-page1.html

The quietest, of course would be a ssd, but they are expensive.

The next quietest would be a 2.5" notebook drive.

I'm a little reluctant to get the 7200.11 because I have a 7200.10 and I find it to be very loud. Have they really corrected this issue with the 7200.11?

As far as the WD GP drives go, they are very quiet, but the performance just isn't there. Also, FYI, they are NOT variable speed. The rotational speed is set at the factory and it is invariable. It's somewhere between 5400 and 7200 RPM, but WD will not say what speed each drive is set at.

SSD will be great someday, but not now. Too small and WAY too expensive. Let's hope that changes in a few years.

Thanks.

Performance in your living room, might i ask what more performance you need? all 1 TB drives are set at 5400 rpm non-variable

What in the world does the fact that the PC is located in my living room have to do with its performance? I'm not using it as a HTPC. It's a general purpose/gaming PC that happens to live in my living room.

I just don't want a hard drive that's going to make overly loud seek noises while I'm watching TV. The Seagate 7200.10 I currently have is LOUD.

Obviously a drive running a 5400 RPMs can't perform at the level of a 7200 RPM drive. The GPs are great for data drives, not for boot drives, IMO.

Thanks.

Any 7200.11 drive would be quiet enough for your needs. Imo, your case/CPU fans are probably going to be more louder than the HDD. (Unless you use high quality ones like Scyth S-Flex,etc)SSD dives might/might not be an option for you.

I have a 7200.10 ES 500GB and 2 7200.11 500GB drives in my system now and I can tell you from personal experience that yes they have fixed their noise issues. My ES drive is extremely annoying as a primary drive due to the constant clicking and loud seeks but the newer drives are almost completely silent.

I own a Seagate 500GB model, it is by far the quietest drive i've ever used. I also have a Seagate 250GB, and the 500GB is even quieter then that one is! Also with a 5 year warranty, can't go wrong.

Now on the flip side, the loudest drive i've ever witnessed was the WD raptor 150 with the litttle window. Wow, you do not want that thing if your trying to build a silent pc.

Just my two cents.

Thanks, that's good to hear.

Sounds like the 7200.11 is the drive to get.

yeah why not ? go ahead and grab it, its one of the best prices per gb (500gb model) at least it was when i was building my pc earlier this year

32mb cache, second gen perpendicular write technology, its a good drive man, just remove the jumper b4 install, and make sure the drive had that new firmware i think its called AD4 or AS4 or whatever, A - something, cause the earlier ones had issues with cache not being recognized by windows, check the downloads section on the seagate site to find whats the latest firmware version...

The case will make a big difference as well. Using the suspension setup in my SOLO, my raptor is just as silent as my 7200.10.

no it isn't.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14200/14

@ Idle
F1 - 49.4 / 52.2
7200.1 - 50.8 / 53.6
Caviar Green - 49.3 / 51.3
Caviar SE 16 / RE2 - 50.9 / 53.6
Raptor X - 53.9 / 58.8

Caviar comes in several flavors.....the green model spins from 5400 - 7200 to keep power and noise down and "This feature is also the reason why the performance isn't at the very top."

The green Caviar is 49.3 barely under the F1 and considering the performance difference between the Greenie and the others, I'd go elsewhere:

Average DTR
Samsung F1 (1 TB) - 91.7
Seagate 7200.11 - 80.9
WD7500 - 76.5
WD Raptor - 75.3
WD Green - 59.5

PC Mark HD Benchmark
Samsung F1 - 122.6
Seagate 7200.11 - 92.9
WD7500 - 91.9
WD Raptor - 86.3
WD Green - 74.6

The caviar is out cause it's the lowest performer among the acceptable performers and the loudest. The Greenie is out cause it's a dog.

It would seem to be a choice between the Seagate reliability and 5 year warranty and the Samsung's performance. If the 3 year warranty doesn't affect your decision, the F1 would seem to be a no brainer. The F1 gets it's performance boost from higher density platters . Samsung 1000 GB model has 3 platters which works out to 333 GB per platter. Now the F1 line has capacities of 160, 250, 320, 500, 640, 750 and 1,000 GB. At 333 GB per platter, the number just don't work. Apparently, they have two different platter densities 250 and 333 (well somewhere between 320 and 350) in this line and use from 1 to 3 platters.

Now Tomshardware review says:

"The HD103UJ is the top model of Samsung's new Spinpoint F1 family. While all are based on the same data density (350 GB per platter), rotation speed (7200 RPM) and interface (SATA/300), only the 1000 GB and 750 GB models have the full 32 MB of cache memory."

But I can't make that math work for 500 and 750 GB drives so, I am gonna have to assume that the reviewer is wrong. Other sites have said that the 500 Gb and 750 GB models are based upon 250 Gb platters.



Seagate OTOH, uses 250 Gb platters which "works" as they offer it in sizes of 500, 750 and 1000 GB.

So the F1 at 750 GB will have no where near the performance of its 1000 GB sibling.

So if you want to bump up to the TB size, I'd say get the F1 with it's hi density platter as its the only size that is this fast. The other 250 GB multiple Samsungs, I'd expect to top out at about 88 MB/s peak and 68 average.

At 500 GB and 750 GB, Seagate is the king of the hill performance wise. AT 1 TB (and maybe 320 / 640 GB) , it's Samsung.

Is the 1.4 dB extra noise for the 7200.11 enough to offset the 10 or so MB/sec performance hit for the Samsung with the lower platter density ? That's your question.