2. pc-audio
  3. 1259267050

Best Hard Drive and Enclosure for Music Server

I'm going through the muck dealing with a faulty OWC miniStack. It's a great idea since it fits perfectly under a Mac Mini. But I had lots of problems with its connection to the computer dropping. I returned it for repair, they said the controller board failed its tests, replaced it and sent it back. Now the thing is giving me trouble again. The drive just disconnects.

Also just bought a Western Digital 1.5TB Green Caviar drive that's supposed to be really quiet. So far it's so-so. On idle it sometimes has a high pitch that goes away once it's accessing the disc.

Looking for a relatively rock solid solution that's not too noisy. Any suggestions or experiences to share?
cutterfilm

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I think you would have good luck with the aluminum enclosures from Other World Computing (http://macsales.com). They specialize in Macs, but their external drives will work with any computer, and you can spec out the HD inside the case (call them if you need a specific drive that is not listed).

I would choose a Seagate drive for the least drive noise. In my experience they are much quieter than those offered from other manufacturers. I know they sometimes get a bad rep, but all consumer level drives fail on occasion, and this is not unique to Seagate.
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Dmailer: You are probably right about 5400 rpm drives being quieter. Also, I really doubt that you would see any problems in music from a 5400 rpm drive. Common interfaces for external drives (USB and Firewire) may not be able keep up with the read speed on a single file (like a song) of modern SATA drives even with the slower 5400 rpm spindle speed. This means that there would probably be no performance penalty for the 5400 rpm drive for this use. E-SATA interfaces can outpace some slower drives, but this level of performance is not necessary for playing music files, even at very high resolutions.

I believe that the aluminum enclosures from Other World Computing that I recommend above do not have fans, which would make them very quiet. They normally don't sell them with 5400 rpm drives, but you could get them to install one, or buy just the enclosure and do it yourself.
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