*****THE OFFICIAL "SPEC ME" THREAD*****

You wouldn't catch me dead with a Maxtor drive in my PCs. I've seen way too many dead ones. The 500GB Samsung Spinpoint in my dual core build, while a tested and proven reliable drive, is noticeably noisier than my 2 Seagate drives combined. You can hear it seeking and writing, but it's not terrible. As far as any grinding or bad noises... none. My Seagate drives make almost no noise at all, even with my ear right up to the front of the case. In my experience, Western Digital is about the same for noise and reliability. Nice and quiet, even during large installs.

I'd also like to add that the 500GB Samsung performs well with just over 400GB of data on it. I have noticed no slowdown or increase in loading/startup times or anything. It probably helps the I defrag religiously

 

Dead hard drives - a pain, data loss, and expense. Hard drives that catch fire though? That really does suck.
Estuansis: The later seagates are a little quieter for seeking though not perfect, Samsung tend to be the quietest drives of all for seeking except for 2nd generation WD Caviar SE16 drives.

 

It seems to be the opposite for me. My Samsung drive might even be considered somewhat loud for a hard drive, while my Seagates are both whisper quiet.

Seagate has always been my personal preference, but I agree that the WD Caviar SE16s are some of the quietest and best performing HDDs I've seen. But then again, I like to retain some brand loyalty

 

some of the drives I own, rated 1 to 10, 1 for silent, 10 for excessively noisy:

WD 36.7GB Raptor: Idle noise 7, Vibration 5, Seek noise 9
Seagate 7200.9 250GB: Idle noise 1, Vibration 3, Seek noise 10
Samsung HD400LJ 400GB: Idle noise 2, Vibration 9, Seek noise 5
Samsung HD753LJ 750GB: Idle noise 1, Vibration 6, Seek noise 2
WD2500AAJS SE16 250GB: Idle noise 1, Vibration 7, Seek noise 1
WD5000AAKS-00 SE16 500GB: Idle noise 2, Vibration 5, Seek noise 5
WD5000AAKS-65 SE16 500GB: Idle noise 1, Vibration 3, Seek noise 2
WD2500JD 250GB: Idle noise 4/6, Vibration 1, Seek noise 5
WD1600 160GB IDE: Idle noise 9, Vibration 4, Seek noise 8

Idle noise refers to the high pitched whine the drives make when running, in the case of the raptor it's almost so high pitched it'sa hiss, with the 160GB IDE drive it's just generally crazy loud. Almost absent entirely from the newer WDs and Samsungs, the older 250GB WDs produce it as a tonal whine of around 2KHz.
Vibration is the constant low frequency hum (or worse, one that fades in and out) the same frequency as the drive motor (120Hz for 7200rpm, 166Hz for 10k rpm), and is noticeable on the retail WD drives, but absent from the RMA replacement OEM ones, and the older 250GB versions. Samsungs are poor for this, Seagates are excellent.
Seek noise should be obvious.

 

I see you also own no Maxtor drives. I wonder why

My drives are:

Samsung Spinpoint 500GB
2 x 320GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10
WD Caviar SE 160GB
WD Caviar SE 80GB ATA133
Seagate Barracuda 250GB 7200.10

My only drives even close to noisy are the 80GB Seagate and the 500GB Samsung. My 2 320GB Seagates are literally silent under the minor fan noise from my case, while the Samsung can clearly be heard seeking in a case with a similar amount of fan noise.

 

My friend's server uses 7200.10 Seagates (two) and Samsung HD501LJs (three) and neither are remotely noisy, then again, it is an Antec P182... ;-)

 

That's not even fair then

Antec's P180 series are extremely quiet...

The Thermaltake Armor is pretty quiet for its size and airflow. So I think that means quiet drives

To each his own. I have a tendency to just buy Seagate and be done with it. No guess work and no surprises. Just quiet, reliable drives.

 

Same for me but with WD. If you heard my 7200.9 you wouldn't rave about how quiet Seagate are... haha

 

MY particular Seagates are very quiet. I know some of the older drives are terrible.

Is there really all that much to choosing a hard drive? Quiet, fast, and reliable are all I need. I'm not opposed to using WD drives.

 

Not really, either of WD and Seagate I'll happily recommend. Given the rather substantial pile of faulty ones, I'm dropping Samsung from the list now methinks. Mine's ok, but I seem to have got lucky there...

 

I think you mean WD and Seagate? Otherwise your post seems rather contradictory and redundant to me

That aside, I have the same mentality. You can't really go wrong with either WD or Seagate. I just like Seagate and that's the only thing making me buy their drives

 

Sorry, I do. Well spotted.

 

I'd also like to note that the Seagate Barracudas are slimmer as well. They make for better airflow

 

Yes, but mine is the wrong shape to fit in my external enclosure, so I have to leave the cover open, which sucks when you have to move it.

 

Well, they work awesome as internal drives ;P

 

my drive gets extremely loud and vibrates a lot, all i can hear is my gpu's fan and the drive. When it is writing and reading. It is so annoying

 

The seagate 7200.11's are much quieter than their older counterparts. Even with the noisy 70mm GPU fan turned off I can only hear the HDD if i stop and listen for it. I couldn't have asked for better noise insulation.

Been playing around with my rig lately, going to let it run two weeks for i put the tuniq in and start to OC it. Looking at what PC games to pick up though, any recommendations? Sacred 2 is a day one in a few days, but other than that I am open.

 

Crysis Warhead is a popular recent release, as for the others it depends what you haven't already played. My top picks are Call of Duty 4, Valve's Orange Box and GRiD.

 

I was definately leaning towards the crysis/warhead quite soon. I'm running into some problems with Realteks HD audio though. Thanks to some sort of change in the way Vista handles audio (Something to do with DirectSound) I am not getting surround for games such as FEAR, even with their "3D SoundBack" software. All it does is unlock the 2.0 audio options in the game. I'm running an RCA cable from the digital coax on the back to my receiver. My receiver doesn't let me change audio modes when it takes input through digital coax so I can't even mix my music to use the backspeaker or even the subwoofer!

This sounds like it might be fairly common, anyone else run into this? Music sounds tinny without the sub and FEAR was meant to be played in 5.1.