Originally posted by Gallstaff@Oct 12, 2003 @ 12:50 AM
Dude you can't hear hard drives. They are silent unless they are activly doing something. Like just sitting there or browsing a website or some crap isn't gonna make it make noise.
You can hear a lot of HDDs. Some of them are just noisier than others. A lot of the discussion here was about avoiding noisy drives. Typically the problem is that some drives emit a high-pitched whine. Its not loud when you talk about dB, but its high pitch makes it seem louder and more annoying. Also, they were talking about being able to hear the HDD through analog output with certain onboard sound setups. It picks up the interference and that goes right to your speakers/headphones, I've only really noticed it on my friend's PC with his nice expensive full-range headphones. He no longer uses his onboard sound, though, so he doesn't have that problem anymore.
I'm currently using an IBM 120GXP 120GB 7200RPM drive, and have had no problems with it, besides the noise. Well, I should say former noise, more on that later. Anyway as others have said you can hear horror stories about all the manufacturers. IBM drives are now being manufactured by Hitachi, they still sell 180GXP drives. Though, they also have the new, faster, cooler, quieter Deskstar 7K250 drives. They whoop some butt. Tom's hardware did a review recently.
http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20031001/index.html if you're interested, it is a latecomer but an excellent drive. Not noisy like mine, and not hot like the 180GXP, and faster than the competition, excepting the 10,000 RPM Raptor - which is great for speed, but lacks capacity at only 36GB. So that's more of a primary drive situation, maybe with RAID 0, for people who can afford 1-2 Raptors for speed and 1-2 large slower drives for storage. Although... that does make me
!
As for the Zalman ZM-2HC1, it does help quite a bit. It doesn't cool as much as an active cooling solution, but it does cool better than nothing by a decent amount. Also, it DOES quiet the drive down, meaning the high-pitched whine my drive produced has disappeared. If you'll look at it closely, you'll notice it doesn't directly connect the drive to the bay - it uses RUBBER pieces to dampen the vibration. You see, my drive itself (and others that do this) doesn't really produce the high-pitched whine, but the vibrations it transfers to the metal drive bays causes it to do this. That's why decoupling it from the case works. Loosening the screws helps a little bit, but that didn't strike me as safe and the screws themselves would then make a rattling noise. So I figured I'd go with a solid-piece, all-in-one passive solution like the Zalman. End result? A HDD silencer that also HELPS cool (instead of heating the drive up), and its passive. Plus its sturdier for transportation than just suspending the drive (although that IS a more complete decoupling method). Check out
http://www.bit-tech.net/review/233/4 for a little review, I didn't have a nice transparent case, but it still works great for me.