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Best Hard Drive and Enclosure for Music Server

I'm going through the muck dealing with a faulty OWC miniStack. It's a great idea since it fits perfectly under a Mac Mini. But I had lots of problems with its connection to the computer dropping. I returned it for repair, they said the controller board failed its tests, replaced it and sent it back. Now the thing is giving me trouble again. The drive just disconnects.

Also just bought a Western Digital 1.5TB Green Caviar drive that's supposed to be really quiet. So far it's so-so. On idle it sometimes has a high pitch that goes away once it's accessing the disc.

Looking for a relatively rock solid solution that's not too noisy. Any suggestions or experiences to share?
cutterfilm
dmailer's avatar
dmailer
235 posts
 
I am using two 1tb western digital green enterprise drives in an Icy Dock enclosure. The Icy Dock has a variable speed fan which I keep at the lowest level. It is rather quiet.
cutterfilm OP
59 posts
 
I wish I could put my DirecTV receiver and computer stuff in another room, but there's no space. I'm also in a 1 bedroom set-up. And even with Wireless-N running I still get weird dropouts now and again due to the fact that there's at least 8 other wireless networks within reach of my place. That's what drove me to drop sending my audio wirelessly through an Airport Express.

Maybe I could move the fanned components off my rack and into a cabinet below the TV that has a glass door or just a regular door and I could stick IR extenders on them.

I might look at the Icy Docks. I actually have an old version of their stuff in an 8 drive RAID and it's been rock solid for 4 years.

It'd be cool if someone designed an enclosure for MacMinis & storage that allowed for heat dissipation with little noise. It'd be kind of specialty, but hell, I want to stop fussing with it all and listen to music.

Of course everyone is wondering when/if Apple will make a more flexible product out of the AppleTV.
bryoncunningham
893 posts
 
I use 2 LaCie d2 Quadras, 500GB each, and I've had good results. They are fanless and very quiet. They are 8 feet from my listening position and I cannot hear them (I only have one drive on at a time, and that helps). No failures so far after 6 months, but that is of course inevitable. I second Blindjim's suggestion to use isolation under your drives. I use Bright Star isonodes under both my drives - inexpensive and effective.
blindjim
3,092 posts
 
also check out the computeraudiophile dot com for more on this topic.
cutterfilm OP
59 posts
 
I've read a lot over at computeraudiophile but there's nothing about measured noise and little anecdotal info about quiet Firewire drives. there is a website that fastidiously rates computer equipment for noise, but they don't test external enclosures.

this morning i was looking at Caldigit and EZQuest. both market their products to audio/video production. EZQuest has two tempting single drive products. One is the Thunder Pro with no fan and the other is the simply named Pro with a ball bearing fan.

I have a Fantom Drive that works great with no fan but it's front grill exposes the drive and the drive noise echos outward.

Macworld and MacNN both gave nice reviews to the Thunder so I might give it a shot and report back.
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