[xer0kill (old)]

Holy shit these drives are loud! I have 2 WD 7200rpm 100GB drives and the idle sounds like a jet engine! They're hard mounted in a full tower, in those removable trays that hold 4 drives each. The read/write sound doesn't bother me, it's just this insane idle! I seriously have to have the TV up at twice normal volume just to hear it. I have never heard drives this loud. Anybody else have this issue with WD? I need to upgrade to SATA finally and I'm thinking of going with a Seagate as I heard they're quieter... but I haven't found any info on WD's being THIS loud.. wtf?

[Nonus (old)]

Had the same problem with a 40gig 7200rpm drive, sounded like a vacuum cleaner, was horrible. If you just bought them I suggest taking them back and getting something else

[DJ Schuby]

I'd recommend Maxtor. You gotta know western digital is cheap if they sell them at walmart.

[|it|Nexu]

I know the WD Raptor are loud (well, what you expect at 10k rpm?). But the noise level of the rest of WD drives varies hugely from model to model. Like where the WD Caviar SE16 500GB is very quiet where the WD Caviar RE2 400GB is almost as loud as WD Raptor. Same with the performances of the harddrives.
Also, check the Hard Drive Acoustic Management settings on the drive...

Quote

I'd recommend Maxtor. You gotta know western digital is cheap if they sell them at walmart.

LOL! i doubt you can call the WD Raptor "cheap". One of the most high-performances drives around used in lots of server farms.

Why does people judges a brand based on a single product... instead of model to model and the market the product was designed for. If you buy a cheap $30 drives you get what you pay for.

[xer0kill (old)]

Thanks for responses.. and thanks Nexu for the suggestion.  I found the Hitachi utility to adjust the acoustic settings. Unfortunately you have to create a bootable floppy or cd, and I can't do that right now. This new motherboard only has one IDE plug so my cdroms aren't plugged in (damn i need to get a sata drive bad), and my floppy seems to have gone tits up awhile back. I guess I could find a spare thumb-drive and do that it that way (hell, that's how I installed Linux), but I'll probably just live with it until I can get a sata drive.

One of the drives is about 5 years old and the other is maybe 2. They both seem to be equally annoying. For now I pray for money to fall out of my ass to get a new one.

[Nonus (old)]

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

[xer0kill (old)]

Thanks for the advice Nonus. Yea I've always had the sucker on the floor. I'm willing to bet once I get a new Seagate SATA drive I won't have the issue. HDD prices are dropping like mad now cause solid state disks are finally out (as desktop HDD replacements) and will hopefully be the norm soon. Imagine how fast maps would load with one of those suckers! Unfortunately the 30GB models are still over $1000, but in a couple years...

[AKGRIZZLY (old)]

I'm sooo excited about solid state disks.  I saw a 4 GB thumb drive, for 39.00 in some tech rag this week, I was just 


I can't wait to ditch platters.  Did I mention how excited I was?

zer0, my satas are whirling in my ear bugging hell out of me right this second, I guess I have a bargain big CPU that it came in, but still, I hope you have better luck.

[Nonus (old)]

Get some of that dense matting for your case, the stuff that is used to absorb sound and also weigh the case down a tad to prevent vibrations, that might help a bit if you want to spend a couple bucks.

You can also get special mounting brackets with rubber on them to stop some of the vibrations.

As for solid state I remember those old PCI cards that had like 4 ram slots on them so you can have a solid state hard drive. Was a buttload of money for the slot too without the ram. This was also when PCI133 was like 300 bucks for a 512meg strip. Also you needed a powerbrick on it so it will have constant power for when the computer is off, otherwise good bye data

[Cyanide666 (old)]

If you like Maxtor just buy a Seagate they just bought Maxtor not too long ago.  I have a Seagate and love it I can hardly hear it at all.