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Quietest 500GB Firewire drive?

I'm researching external drives for my music room (Firewire drive > PowerBook G4 > [USB DAC when I have more $] > Arcam FMJ). I want it to be as quiet as possible. (I would be very happy if it were as quiet as the PowerBook.) I have an older Lacie Big Disk in my office and, even though it is fanless, it isn't sufficiently quiet for my music room (I can hear the disks spinning and electrical hum).

Here are the drives I'm comparing so far:

- LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Disk
- Western Digital My Book Studio Edition
- Seagate FreeAgent Go for Mac

Can anyone speak about their relative noise levels? Lacie tells me the Quadra is much quieter than my older Big Disk, but I would like to hear from actual users.

Thanks!
syncrasy
danlib1
819 posts
 
Simpletech Pro Drive, 1TB. Use it with my IMac, quiet, beautiful, efficient, inexpensive.

Don't like it? Take it back to Best Buy.
djwong
3 posts
 
If you are looking at SATA drives, I like Western Digital Caviar drives and put them in ICY DOCK Firewire enclosures. These WD drives are very quiet because they have variable rotational speed. The drive should be more than sufficient for an audio bitrate. The ICY DOCK enclosures seem to be very good and you can get Firewire 800 and USB2 and eSATA.

I recommend several full low level format of any new drive. This will cause every block on the drive to be read and written, sparing out any bad blocks. Also helps as a "burn-in" process, to make sure your drive does not die on you when you reach a certain spot on the drive. Anything you can do that will cause repeated reads and writes to the entire drive over an extended period of time (a few days to a month), will tend to weed out bad drives.

Western Digital Caviar Link.
prpixel
876 posts
 
Another vote for 2.5" drives in external enclosures. They are dead silent, use very little electricity and produce virtually no heat. I use a couple of 500GB drives hanging off of my music server. I like them so much, I'm in the process of swapping out the 3.5" drives in my desktop machine.
guidocorona
4,298 posts
 
Prpixel, which 2.5 inch 500Gb drive do you use? G.
ejlif's avatar
ejlif
1,377 posts
 
I just ordered a 2TB WD my book studio to replace a stack of 6 Lacie drives I am using now. I have been searching all over the net trying to decide what to get. From the data I gathered the Drobo looked very interesting, but was to noisy to consider. I don't really hear my 6 stacked drives at all in my system now and I'm hoping with fingers crossed that the WD drive will be as good in that regard and hopefully better in the reliability.
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