Thinkpads Forum

I'm about to replace the hard drive in my X60S because the current one is too noisy. I'm looking for a replacement that is as near silent as possible.

Doing a bit of research, this Western Digital Scorpio drive seems like a good choice:

http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/std ... drive.html


If anyone has any other recommendations, or has experience of this Western Digital drive, I'd be very interested to hear.

I have a 40GB PATA WD Scorpio WD400VE as well as 40GB PATA Seagate Momentus 5400.2 hard disks.
Both are absolutely whisper-quiet, but I think the Seagate is just that tiny bit quieter.
Look at the Seagate Momentus 5400.3 SATA with perpendicular recording. 2.4 bels at idle, 2.6 bels at seek
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/produc ... us_5400.3/

No need to go to a 7200rpm disk, and they use very little power as well!

You are caught between a rock and a hard place here, you need to listen to both in your own environment.
Another argument for the Seagate is their 5 years warranty, as opposed to WD's only 3 years.

I have a WD Scorpio 320g/5400 drive and it is not silent - when the heads park, it makes an audible (not loud, but annoying) sound.

If you want silent, get an SSD.

I have used about half a dozen Hitachi 7K200 SATA drives and all have made no noise. I have to look at the hard drive light to see if there is any activity.

I also tried a WD 320gb SATA drive and it was noticiably louder but still very quiet. I didn't use any speed benchmark tools. The WD felt a tad slower, not much, just a tad.

Brad

You may find this list to be somewhat helpful, although it lacks many of the newer drive lines.

Thank you all for your kind and helpful responses to my question.

It sounds like the Western Digital drive is not such a good choice after all. I am going to go with a 120GB Seagate Momentus 5400.3.

I'll post an update once I've got the new drive installed.

Thanks again.

Nothing can beat the original 40 GB 4200 rpm Hitachi HDD in X31 regarding noise. But the drive is dog slow ...

Brad wrote:I have used about half a dozen Hitachi 7K200 SATA drives and all have made no noise.

Agreed, I also find the 7K200 to be very quiet.

Seconded on the 7,200rpm drives! But what about a nice solid state drive?? No moving parts, no noise!

Crunch wrote:Seconded on the 7,200rpm drives! But what about a nice solid state drive?? No moving parts, no noise!

And very fast to boot! I would love to have one, but they are simply too expensive for the limited capacity you get

boffo wrote:Doing a bit of research, this Western Digital Scorpio drive seems like a good choice:

http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/std ... drive.html


If anyone has any other recommendations, or has experience of this Western Digital drive, I'd be very interested to hear.

That's the same HD that came in my new x61 recently! I haven't been outside my downtown area with it yet but from what I can tell here I have found it to be very quiet. And I definitely am picky about noises, but in general that is -- I probably wouldn't be considered very experienced in this area in particular. So my standard/criteria may not be the same as that of a true 'silent' computing aficianado. Hmmm, hard to convey! I can hear it easily if I put my ear near it, and sitting upright I guess I can hear a low-level, unobtrusive whooshing if I pay attention... but those may be typical in reality, since I take it silent doesn't *literally* mean silent. It's certainly not bothersome to me.

I just know that I am happy with its noise level, and was specifically relieved to find I could lay that consideration to rest. I had no idea this laptop's HD would be a WD, so I also looked into this model afterwards. And as you probably did, I saw lots of positive comments/reviews on it from seemingly knowledgeable users, from quietness to performance. Many more than negative. Probably no reason really to just disregard all those now.

As has been said, I have also been seeing a lot of comments that the Hitachi 7200rpm is quiet. From past Lenovo experience I had assumed my x61 would come with a 5400rpm Hitachi... but wasn't assuming that would necessarily be a good thing as far as noise, actually. 'Historically,' or until a couple years ago maybe, Hitachi seemed to commonly be considered one of the noisiest. I had looked into that after installing the 80GB 5400rpm Hitachi replacement that Lenovo sent for my parent's 3000 machine, and noticing how clicky it was compared to the original (which I think was a Fujitsu. Don't know if that's typical but that one had been strikingly quiet).

I almost used the Hitachi tools to quiet it down, but my parents couldn't have cared less about it... and soon I didn't either, as I had definitely been going out of my way to focus on it. (Just something to do during a long holiday stay at the folk's place!) Anyway, from many user comments I've seen lately it does sound like current Hitachis, or maybe certain ones including the 7200rpm anyway, must be much quieter.

Here's the promised update -

I just replaced the HD in my X60S with a Seagate Momentus 5400.3, using Acronis True Image to clone the drive. This worked flawlessly first time, so I'm very impressed with the Acronis software.

The bad news is that although this disk is quieter, it certainly isn't quiet enough to justify even the modest expense and trouble of the upgrade. In particular, it is still loud enough to be distracting while listening to music.

My conclusion is that I am hypersensitive to noise, and am expecting too much in terms of the quietness of hard disk drives.

I will be the first in the line for a 256GB SSD as soon as the price falls below GBP500.

Sorry, this is a bit late. My T61 came with a WD 80GB SATA, which I found quieter than any drive I've owned. In particular, quieter than

Seagate Momentus 7200.1
Seagate Momentus 5400.3
Samsung 100MB ATA
Samsung MP0804H ATA

However, I didn't much like the T61 --- bigger, heavier, uglier, noisier, with a worse screen than my T42 --- so I bought an ATA WD 80GB and put it in the T42. It's not silent but it's probably the best one can do until SSD prices come down.