Not all hard drives are the same. Some use special technology to ensure silent operation and maintain top performance.

A Paradigm Shift

I will get to the best silent mechanical hard drives in a minute. But in case you haven't heard, a huge paradigm shift has occured in the last year. As you now know with Silent PC's - movement = noise. Whether it comes from spinning fans to cool chips or power supplies, or spinning platters in a hard drive. I used to say that no matter how silent you managed to get your PC, you were always going to hear the hard drives. Not any more!

As you can see, the drives are a bit on the pricey side. But if you can afford it, they are worth every penny. Not only are they literally silent, they are also much faster than mechanical drives. I use an X-25M in my system, with a Caviar Green attached to an external E-SATA enclosure for times I need access to more space (which isn't very often these days).

Speaking of quiet mechanical drives:

It seems that every year or so, a different hard drive maker has the quietest drives. Last time I updated this site, nobody could beat Seagate. Now we have the Green series from Western Digital, which not only runs cooler, but does so quieter, even when accessing data. Anyone can make a drive with quiet platters, but WD manages to keep the seek speeds up while maintaining quiet operation.

The Caviar Green is available with various cache sizes, so keep an eye on that as well as total size. It maintains a low temperature, which aids in keeping the total system cool (some hard drives generate a LOT of heat, and can ruin a silent system). I would highly recommend switching over to these drives for those looking to build a silent PC.

Fluid Dynamic Bearings

With a hard drive spinning at 7200 RPM full time, the noise and vibration created would be unbearable in our silent system, even with the aide of the rubber grommets used in the silent Antec case we are using. Newer hard drives like the Caviar Green have replaced the traditional ball bearing motor used in most hard drives with one using Fluid Dynamic Bearings.

With the use of Fluid Dynamic Bearings, they are able to create a drive that makes no more than 20 dB in silent mode. This essentially makes it completely silent, since there's no way we'd be able to hear it in all but the most quiet environments. Coupled with the silent Antec case, there is no way you're going to hear this drive.

Cooling Hard Drives Silently

You may be wondering if heat is an issue with hard drives. In many cases, it can be, especially when you're running more than one in a system. Count on Zalman once again to come up with a perfect solution to this problem:

The Zalman ZM-2HC2 is a totally silent hard drive cooler. Once again using heatpipe technology, it is able to spread the heat from your hard drive, eliminating the need for fans blowing over your drives.

It also helps eliminate hard drive vibration further; the combination of this and the Antec case we looked at on the Silent Enclosure Page simply can not be beat.

If you followed our guide step by step, you now have a VERY quiet, if not totally silent PC. This site will constantly be updated with the latest info on silent computing, so bookmark us, and come back later for more info!

Next Page: Now that you have a silent hard drive, you need to get as quiet a CDROM as possible! Check out our new guide on silent optical drives!