Western Digital vs. Seagate

[darksideleader]

Question for the Hard drive fanatics.
As i take it Western Digital has 4 main hard drive series.

Caviar Black - Fast Performance/Loud
Caviar Blue - Medium Performance/Quiet
Caviar Green - Slow-Medium Performance /moderately quiet/Eco-Friendly
Raptor/VelociRaptor - Best of the best/Expensive/Loud

If I'm wrong with any of the statements please correct me. As you can see, noise matters for me.

What i want to know is Seagate's counter parts and how it goes against Western Digital. The Velociraptors have no direct competition right? What's seagate's arsenal against each series of Western Digital?

I'm probably gonna get a new motherboard (680i chipset btw ) so i can raid my Caviar Blues for some fast and quiet performance. How does that go against say the Velciraptor?

[NyteOwl]

Velociraptors's don't have to be loud if they're mounted right. Not sure if the forum rules permit sending one to another forum but there is a lot of silencing drive info on silentpcreview.com | Index .

Seagate's main product line in SATA is the Barracuda. It comes in several incarnations based on rotational speed and generation, and whether it is consumer or enterprise grade. I have 4 Barracuda ES.2 drives in raid and they are fast, quiet and low powered so they fall outside WD's pingeonholes

[darksideleader]

thx for the site ill refer to it in the future.

I personally never had any problems with mounting my hard drives, the only sound i hear is the annoying blinking noises when the hd is seeking on my old Barracuda 320GB on my old athlon XP system.
My caviar blue's have this "Whisper Quiet" feature so no seeking noises, happy with them since the day i got em, just too bad i have the ICH9 south bridge on my p5k with no raid function.

So does seagate specifically have some type of "Whisper Quiet" feature on one of their line of hard drives?

[Chilly]

Originally Posted by darksideleader

thx for the site ill refer to it in the future.

I personally never had any problems with mounting my hard drives, the only sound i hear is the annoying blinking noises when the hd is seeking on my old Barracuda 320GB on my old athlon XP system.
My caviar blue's have this "Whisper Quiet" feature so no seeking noises, happy with them since the day i got em, just too bad i have the ICH9 south bridge on my p5k with no raid function.

So does seagate specifically have some type of "Whisper Quiet" feature on one of their line of hard drives?

"Whisper Quiet" is just a marketing term for a feature most modern drives have, but may not be enabled. Its called AAM, most *recent* drives have it. I'm not too sure with the Seagate drives, which ones have it enabled/disabled by default, BUT you can change and set this setting on, well any drive that supports it.

For example, on the "Black Edition" drives, its disabled/set to a high value(254/255), while on "Blue Edition" drives its set to to a medium setting(150). This is the main reason you'll notice a difference in the volume of noise a drive gives off, the higher the AAM value, the less the drive will do to reduce noise. You can change this value fairly easily with the right software.

Thanks to AAM it is possible to make a "Black Edition" drive as quiet as a "Whisper Quiet" enabled "Blue Edition". The reason most people don't do this is because it does degrade *SEEK* performance a little bit, and the fact that most people do not know about it. That being said, the "Black Edition" with AAM set to 150 will still be a good notch faster than a "Blue" or "Green" drive also set to 150.

I apologize if my response does not make as much sense as I usually do, I only woke up 5 minutes ago.

[DarKStar]

Originally Posted by Chilly

"Whisper Quiet" is just a marketing term for a feature most modern drives have, but may not be enabled. Its called AAM, most *recent* drives have it. I'm not too sure with the Seagate drives, which ones have it enabled/disabled by default, BUT you can change and set this setting on, well any drive that supports it.

That's correct - it's amazing how much companies play on words. The seeking is done slower, so that "whisper quiet" feature costs you longer seeking times too - It was possible to turn this feature on and off or adjust the level on some older drives. I could that on all of my Maxtor DiamondMax. As to Seagate, it is disabled by default (you can tell :D) and you cannot adjust it at least not on the barracudas and not aware if any line supports it now.

[enaberif]

I have at least 6 Seagate drives of different models ranging from .7 to .11 and they are all quiet imho and never had a problem with them.

[DarKStar]

Originally Posted by enaberif

I have at least 6 Seagate drives of different models ranging from .7 to .11 and they are all quiet imho and never had a problem with them.

Never had problems with Seagate either but compared to my old Maxtor DiamondMax, they are noisier - the maxtor fluidmotors enabled drives where truely whisper quiet you could barely them running - the seagates you do hear them running and they are louder when seeking - despite having always turned off AAM on my old Maxtors.

[enaberif]

I only have 1 drive that is slightly noisy when seeking and its a 500gb .10 but the rest I can't hear.

[Moneyless]

I have never had a problem with any of my Seagate drives, they have always been 110% rock solid.

[miggs78]

I have a WD 250GB at the moment, god damn I swear I want to kill it. It's noisy, whenever it is busy reading/writing/seeking information... sure makes noise.