Not all hard drives are the same. Some use special technology to ensure silent operation and maintain top performance.
There is only one pioneer when it comes to silent hard drives, and that's Seagate. For the longest time, they have been building hard drives with sound levels in mind, as well as performance. So if you're building a silent PC, you need to keep them in mind over everyone else.
The best buy right now is probably the 250GB version:
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. Seagate's solution is what they call "Sound Barrier Technology". This basically means that they 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, Seagate is able to create a drive that makes no more than 24 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.
I personally think Seagate drives are also the most reliable, so that's another plus. Their Barracuda V drives are available in Serial ATA and Parallel ATA versions (serial being the faster, but make sure your motherboard supports it, or buy an addon card). Find a SATA or IDE Seagate drive that suits you on this page. They are all silent, and come in many sizes (usually the smaller they are, the quieter). You will almost certainly find a better deal on eBay though.
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 cannot 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!
