R there any fast & quiet SATA drives out there?

[sticker]

Hi,
Next decsion I have to make in my HTPC is to replace my noisy 40Gb IBM 60XP HD. Was looking at putting in a minimum of 120Gb, but obviously I need a quiet one, but in addition I want one that has very good performance as well.

Is it worth going the SATA route or isn't it worth it from a cost/performance point of view. One thing I should add was that I am looking to put in an additional disk in the near future so that I can have the OS on the main drive and the apps/documents on the second larger drive.

I'm running XP pro

Regards
John

 

[Big Adam]

Samsung Spinpoints are the way to go!

 

[Kramer]

I have 2x WD "Raptors", 10k RPM (Raid 0) which are as quiet as regular 7.2k drives when isolated in an Antec Sonata case. Little access noise but not intrusive.

Seagate's are very quiet in operation as are the Samsungs. I'd definitely go with Seagates though (had/have lots of problems (noise) with WD PATA drives )

 

[sticker]

Thanks guys for your view.

Can you explain or point me somewhere to explain what SATA offers over regular flavour IDE?

John

 

[probedb]

Try www.neoseeker.com for reviews.

When people have compared things like the Maxtor DiamondMax9 range the SATA is faster than the regular PATA, presumably because even tho it's still technically PATA it can work faster.

 

[Kramer]

SATA is ATA 150 as opposed to PATA which is just 133. Theoretically 12.8% faster transfer speeds.

No more awkard ribbon IDE cables either, just nice slim/thin SATA cables. Also other "benefits" such as "hot swap" (although I've never tried this ).

 

[Pootle]

This website has disc reviews which include simple noise measurements.

I've been buying only Seagate's because they are so quiet, and the most recent one is SATA, but an HTPC doesn't go anywhere near stretching the performance of any modern disc drive so I've not bothered about performance at all.

 

[Joe Pineapples]

Also other "benefits" such as "hot swap

If you want this option, check your motherboard - not all support this feature, even if they support SATA drives.

I'd recommend the Maxtor range - cheap to buy, fast, 3 years warranty & very quiet indeed (actually got the side of my case off, and no sound proofing needed). I got the 160gig 8meg cache one (probably only cache size they do in that range?)

Dean

 

[GagHalfrunt]

I've been looking into this and will probably go for one of the Seagate SATA 7200.7 drives I think.

They seem quieter than most on average and this includes the 160GB.