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I've yet to have a WD drive that wasn't noisy.  They've gotten a little bit quieter, but they're still noisier than my Seagates.  Every Maxtor (four total) drive I've owned has died on me.  Seagate might enforce stricter tolerances on Maxtor, but just because they acquired them, it doesn't mean they're the same; Maxtor still has their team making their drives and Seagate has their team making theirs.

I've yet to have a WD or Seagate drive die on me, or on any computers I've built for clients; all four of my Maxtor's died on me, and one died on a client (he insisted that I install a Maxtor).  My single IBM 13.6gig from 2000 is still truckin' (it's my web server), but I've never owned another IBM/Hitachi aside from that one.

Just throwing out my experiences ...not here to start a war.

[xer0kill (old)]

Word. I've purchased WD drives exclusively whenever I've built or upgraded a PC. I did actually have one fail on me after about 3 weeks of use, but they were so good about replacing it and replacing it FAST that I stuck with them. I cannot stand this noise though, so I'll be trying out a Seagate soon.

[Cyanide666 (old)]

Every and I mean EVERY WD drive I have ever had has failed.  I will never buy one again, I have put bullets through at least 15 WD drives.

[Nonus (old)]

Yeah I had one or two WD fail on me, good thing I stopped using them before they went poof.

I have a Maxtor now and it is rather quiet and still working.

Should look into one of them solid state drives that Apple is selling with their Macbook Air thing.

[BorderFox]

No problems with a WD 160 GB ATA-100, WD1600AAJB

[Diggs (old)]

Just to add to the knowledge base.  I have 10 WD drives running right now.  7 older than 5 years and 2 older than 7 years.  They are all almost silent.  (Caviar series drives from 20-250 GB.)  Every Maxtor drive I have ever owned has failed and I have had quiet a few failures from Seagate also.  It just goes to show that individual milage may vary.  I do like the WD RE series drives and use them in some of the SATA RAIDS at work (and a few at home).  They offer 1 million hours MTBF and don't really cost any more.  Try them if you are disappointed with the standard SE series.

A word of caution to those that like to pad their drives to keep them quiet.  Heat kills a drive just as quick as a processor.  Probably not a good idea to insulate them.

[xer0kill (old)]

Problem solved! About a month ago I finally was able to upgrade to a 320GB Seagate SATA HDD. Finally, sweet silence! Now we can watch movies in bed without having to crank the volume up. I still have no idea why those 100GB WD Caviar drives were so damn loud... you'd have to hear it to appreciate the extreme volume...

[God_like (old)]

Quote

What I did was took this foam padding that I got from a package and put that on the two sides of the case, it cut the sound down a wee bit. Also having your case at ear level is bad too, move it to the floor or somewhere else (if you haven't already).

That constant loud whine of the hard drives and the fans is enough to drive you crazy, which is pretty much the reason why I only use my laptop now, nothing but nice silence

The problem with using pads is that over-heating becomes a problem and the constant vibration make that pad denigrates into dust and gets on parts.