SATA advice please!

[DentyCracker]

Which drive do you have, I can't really hear too much from the platters spinning, just the seeks from that torrent I'm downloading. Granted, I have two 80mm case fans, the Zalman Flower fan and the power supply fan (PSU fan is quite annoying). I'm pretty sure if I got a quiet power supply the dB level would go down significantly. I must have the 80GB/platter one which is supposedly quieter than the 60 GB/platter one. I can only hear the whine if I put my ears up to the drive. By the way I have or at least had above average high frequency hearing as tested by audiometry in the physiology lab 10 years ago in med school. Maybe in the intervening years I have listened to too much loud music . Televisions still annoy me with that 13-15 kHz whine, so I guess it hasn't gone all pear shaped yet. This has just served to remind me how annoyingly loud my machine is, though nowhere near as loud as my old machine with the WBK38 in it.

[GNEP]

I am about to start swapping drives in and out... this has come about because the rest of the system is near-silent now (watercooled with a 5V 120mm fan on the radiator tucked away from the machine; 2x v slow 80mm case fans and a quiet PSU) - before I made the effort and quietened things further down I had a zalman flower - which along with the Parhelia fan and the case fans on 12V meant the HDD was not an issue. Now it is (The problem with making machines quiet - you fix one bit only to then be able to fix the next...).

There are 2 HDDs:
6Y080P0 (DiamondMax Plus 9 - 80GB/8Mb cache)
5T030H3 (DiamondMax Plus 60 - 30GB)

I will pull them in and out now to confirm that it really is the 80GB one... if it's the 30 then I can live without that in there!

[GNEP]

Hmmm that's interesting...

I just disconnected the 30GB drive (the OS is on the other one so kinda had to do it that way) and it's THAT one that's making all the noise! Plug power into it and off it rockets as it spins up...

So either:

a) I dislodged it or knocked it or something when pulling stuff in and out to make the rest of the PC quiet

or

b) The drive is on its way out. Interestingly no data problems with it to date - luckily all the data on that drive is backed up thrice over anyway...

Will try mounting it differently or running it on the floor to see if I can isolate its problem.

Anyway, my little bro can have that one for xmas (hehe cheapskate alert ) - after all he only has a 300MHz P2 with a 6GB drive at the moment so anything will be welcome As an interim measure of course until I sort him out with a proper machine...

[Marshmallowman]

I have a 160G seagate SATA its is quite a bit louder than the 80G PATA samsung spinpoint drive I have in the same box.

When I say louder, its purely the chirpy seek noises, but my machine is very quiet in general so it stands out a lot more. Its water cooled, and has quiet fans.

[GNEP]

Now that's MUCH better. The seek noise of the good drive is starting to irk now....

The 30GB drive was still noisy even when running isolated from the case - so it was definitely the drive not the mounting. Guess that means it's on its way out and so I am going to have to rethink christmas pressies...

Oh the joys of making a computer quiet - get one source... move on to the next... ad infinitum

Thanks for the help folks. Just goes to show it's worth fiddling around with the hardware first and theorising later...

[az]

GNEP, older drives' bearings do this when they get older. This is not really a sign of a dying drive, it just means it's getting old, no need to worry.

My GF's 5400rpm deskstar is WAY louder than my 180gxp, and has a higher whine, too! BTW, the 180GXP is also WORLDS apart from my 60GXP in terms of noise (and performance). And Pit, no, the 180's weird noises are normal.

AZ

[GNEP]

Thanks az - I didn't know that (although should have guessed...) - that drive is probably 3ish years old so not too old but getting there; and has been run for the majority of that time.

[fleabus2]

Hi:
I had been a Quantum Fireball user and when they were bought out by Maxtor I had no qualms about using Maxtor drives when it came time to upgrade.
See sig for the drives on my main system bought in Sept03.
On my second system I have:
Promise Ultra66 PCI IDE Controller
2x30GB Maxtor +40 7200RPM ATA-66 HDDs
In use since Aug00.
All four drives are fast, cool and quiet.
I'm waiting for Prescott and on-board support for SATA to upgrade my drives.
Maxtor will be at the top of my HDD list.

Happy trails,

[Ssin]

GNEP - I own a computer shop and all I can tell you is that 50% of the returning HDD's are Maxtor's and we don't sell more Maxtors than other brands. New Seagates and WDC are quiet. I didn't say others weren't, simply that following my own experience with 40-60-80 GB, those two brands seem to get their own share of merit. Again, oddly the customers buying SATA drives are the ones buying cheap cases, so there's no way I could compare the system's quietness.