Quieter hard drives?

[Justiceinacan]

Hey all, I'd like to expand my storage (only running off 250 GB ssd and a slowly failing old seagate 250 GB hdd) and I read that Western Digital Red series are pretty quiet. At 7200 RPM that leaves me with the red pro series... is there a noise difference at all? I'd prefer things to be under 40 db or lower if possible.

 

[abaday789]

If you want pure silence go SSD. No moving parts. No noise

 

[Eximo]

Depends on a lot of factors. Larger drives (capacity) have more platters (motor will be a little louder). Which means heavier read/write heads, so more power into moving them, and that motor will also be louder (the familiar clicking/crunching noises come from the stepper motor). Vibrations can also be heard in the case, so isolated mounting can help a lot.

Your average 3.5" 1TB 7200 rpm drive is usually single platter these days and would be your quietest option.

 

[dudeman509]

My WD blue is a little bit noisy, as is my Toshiba.

Actually, I find that Seagate makes some very quiet drives, but in my experience they haven't been the most reliable.

 

[James Mason]

I'd just get an SSD if you're gonna worry about the sound an HDD makes, only bad/dying HDDs really make any sound:
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/2VWrxr/crucial-mx300-525gb-25-solid-state-drive-ct525mx300ssd1
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/NLs8TW/crucial-mx300-750gb-25-solid-state-drive-ct750mx300ssd1

 

[Justiceinacan]

I was asking hard drives mostly because of the price, my system right now runs really quiet (Cryorig H7, some 120 mm fans, NZXT S430) and I'd like to really expand storage space so I can save more things without exceeding 150 (at least 1 TB). The seagate makes a clunking noise when browsing files but not really notable when running games. WD black or blue good choices? Did seagate improve much?

 

[Eximo]

Seagate, Samsung, Maxtor
WD, Hitachi
Toshiba, Fujitsu

Take your pick, really depends which factory it came out of. Since so many are now completely new factories not sure it is easy to tell. Most people will parrot the BackBlaze reports, but their application and implementation was beyond ludicrous, and they kept buying the most economical drives. There was a particular batch of 1.5-3TB Seagates that seemed to be the most failure prone (when operating in huge unsupported racks as giant drive arrays)

I happen to have one of the 1.5TB ones, and it is still happily running and I keep my OS backups on it.

I haven't had a true drive failure since WD in the early 2000s though, kept sending me refurbished crap that would break in six months. Got a few Seagate and WD drives now.

My friend just recently replaced a nearly 10 year old Samsung spinpoint, that thing has been reporting SMART errors for years now and kept going. Still working as far as I know.

 

[dudeman509]

My Seagate 3 TB external is very quiet aside from when it spins up. Actually been rock-solid for ~3 years now and still shows no SMART errors.

The WD Black drives are fast, but they are generally quite loud when seeking. Blue is quieter, and Green quieter still. I have no experience with the Red.

My Toshiba is a rebranded Hitachi 3 TB, and it does make a little bit of noise, but very quiet at idle.