Quiet Hard Drives

[Hilts]

I've just replaced my Hitachi HD with a new Maxtor 250Gb and it seems be a lot, lot noisier when seeking data compared to the Hitachi. It's supposedly faster though 7200>5400 and has 16Mb cache instead of 8, I don't notice any difference though and would rather have a quiet drive. The Hitachi is possibly u/s.

Any recommendations for good quiet drives ?

Trying to find some current magazine reviews for HDs on the web but nothing so far.

[_dobbo_]

First tip would be to unscrew the drive from the case and then mount it with velcro instead of screws - it prevents the vibration being transmitted through the case and should make a world of difference, and the best bit is that it only costs about 5p!

[pmanson]

Your new drive is spinning a lot faster hence the extra noise.

The velco idea sounds like a good one!

[Plotloss]

Check out quietpc.com

They have a number of enclosures for HDD's

[aldi]

Seagate 7200.7's are quiet!

[pentoman]

www.storagereview.com for hard drive comparisons and reviews including noise tests. Currently IBM/Hitachi 180GXP and 7K250's I believe are one of the quietest, this is why I bought 2 of them and they are very quiet. Also have a quiet mode you can enable which silences any disk noise as it is being read/written (you know the rapid clacking sound) at a speed cost of course.

Russell

[Hilts]

The Maxtor is annoying so I'll get something out of that lot, thx.

Now one for the boffins !

I still have the Hitachi and would like to use it again if possible, it was my original C drive when it crashed and wouldn't reboot.

I tried booting from the XP CD and doing a recovery but didn't have the motherboard driver disk so it couldn't see the drive.

I've now rebuilt the PC using the new Maxtor and am trying to get the data off the Hitachi, I can see the drive in XP but when I try and open it it says it is not formatted, do you want to format now ?

I downloaded and ran Hitachi's drive fitness test disk and it siad the drive had some errors but it corrected them but I still got the same message in XP.

Have I deleted the partition just by running XP from boot and selecting the recovery option ? It never got to the stage where it showed any partitions or gave me the option to delete/rebuild etc ?
There's about 100 gigs of stuff on there as well, movies, MP3s etc so I'd love to get it back.

[Plotloss]

Build it into a non XP machine perhaps?

I am thinking that Windows is seeing the Hitachi as uninitialised.

If you initialise it through Disk Manager I am not entirely sure what will happen so am loathed to suggest that.

[Hilts]

Plotloss said:

Build it into a non XP machine perhaps? I am thinking that Windows is seeing the Hitachi as uninitialised. If you initialise it through Disk Manager I am not entirely sure what will happen so am loathed to suggest that.

I only have the 1 desktop but I have another Maxtor 200Gb (yep noisy !) I could image with 98se, worth a go ??

[GregE240]

Don't initialise it - it WILL format the drive and you'll lose all the data.

[Plotloss]

Hilts said:

Plotloss said: Build it into a non XP machine perhaps? I am thinking that Windows is seeing the Hitachi as uninitialised. If you initialise it through Disk Manager I am not entirely sure what will happen so am loathed to suggest that. I only have the 1 desktop but I have another Maxtor 200Gb (yep noisy !) I could image with 98se, worth a go ??

Yep worth a go or go with a live Linux distro like Knoppix or Unbuntu

That will boot off the CD allowing you access to the lower level componentry, it will be quicker than building a new install of Windows

[lockstock2sb]

The velcro thing is a new one to me ! I was going to say mount the drive with rubber washers in between the drive and case ? If you want to silience the fiend totally i would recommend a sealed enclosure that doubles as a heat sink for it. Cool the enclosure with an internal fan or duct.

Steve

>> Edited by lockstock2sb on Wednesday 16th November 17:05