74G WD Raptor

[The PIT]

Originally posted by Admiral
Now, WD wouldn't happen to have a utility that lets you play with your drive's noise level like other manufacturers do, would they ?

Don't need it. I was expecting it too be noisy very happy to find that it isn't.

[Jon P. Inghram]

Intel Application Accelerator lets you turn HD acoustic and/or power managment features on too.

[Admiral]

@Jorden: it's a 36GB SATA Raptor "diverted" as secondary master on the onboard ICH5R IDE controller. The amset tool found nothing on all channels.
Updating with other manufacturer's firmware is where I stop, I'll have to cope till I replace it with a Seagate. The case is under desk anyway so most of the time I don't hear it, it's just when I sit in bed and watch TV on the PC or play some movies that it bothers me, nothing that cranking up the volume a bit won't solve.

@PIT: We'll see in a few months, though I wish Gurm and I are proved wrong, you bought too many lemons already

[Admiral]

Originally posted by Jon P. Inghram
Intel Application Accelerator lets you turn HD acoustic and/or power managment features on too.

The RAID Edition doesn't seem to and the normal one... last I knew it was discontinued (checking on Intel's).

[Liquid Snake]

OMG Jord is back!

As some of you might remember, recently I've been looking for ways to reduce the noise level of my main PC. My WD 400JB and 800JB HDDs are probably the most annoying noise producers in my PC. From what I've read the 36G Raptor is pretty loud and the 74G is an improvement, but neither can be described as quiet.

[Chucky Cheese]

Raptor Drives

i have 3 of these drives...36 GB(BOOT) and 2 74GB drives, what ever noise these drives are generating isn't that bad, of course i will admit to not being sensitive to it.

my case came with high-density plastic rails that require no screws and provide a snug fit in the HDD cage...these also serve to isolate the disk.

doing very basic disk test i believe my scsi disk(U160) in my other system are slightly faster, still i'm enjoying SATA as a replacement to the premium you pay for scsi.

cc

[The PIT]

The only downside is that my Linux won't boot any longer. This is becuase it doesn't like enhanced mode in the bios setup to enable sata.
Possibly re-installing it will help but at the moment I can't be bothered.

[Kooldino]

How do these acoustic features work exactly?

[Jon P. Inghram]

It won't get rid of platter drive motor noise, but it will quiet down seeks, just makes the heads move slower I think.

[Ajax]

How do the IBM drives compare? I've always used IBM, and I've always been extreemly pleased with them. Reliable, quiet.
Edit: Yes I know Hitachi makes the IBM drives now.

[Admiral]

Ah, crap, then it won't be of use to me anyway, it's the platter/motor noise that bugs me.
I actually enjoy the heads noise, I like to hear my drive read/write instead of watching the case led.

[The PIT]

Except you won't hear any noise. I suppose I could tape a mike to it and feed through my hifi.

IBM drives yuk dunno what they're like these days but it will some time before I use one again even if Hitachi make them.