Quietest 500GB Firewire drive?

Prpixel, which 2.5 inch 500Gb drive do you use? G.

Lacey does not make drives. . . they package third party drives in their own enclosures. major Drive manufacturers are Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Toshiba. Packagers of external drives tend not to source the newest/quietest/fastest drives on the market. . . but the most attractively priced. There are now 500GB drives available in 2.5 inch format from several major manufacturers, including Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, Hitachi. Seagate even sells a FreeAgent Go external that uses its 500GB 2.5 inch internal drive. I personally prefer to source naked OEM internal drives and mount them myself in external enclosures of my choice. . . I like Vantech/NexStar enclosures for fanless solidity and looks. I have recently purchased a Seagate Momentus 2.5 inch 7200 RPM 250GB internal drive and put it in a Vantech enclosure. . . I use it in my very quiet office for backup. . . and I can't hear it spinning while it sits 14 inches from my left ear. Seagate Momentus 2.5 currently has the lowest latency on the market for this category, at 4.17ms. I have just ordered the 320Gb version. . . and I expect we may see a 500Gb Momentus 7200 version in the next several months. The current Seagate 2.5 inch 500Gb drive has a lower rotational speed of 5400 RPM and a latency of 5.6ms.
Http://www.newegg.com
sells most of these wonderous critters. a set of 3 sorbitane feet under the enclosure would quiet things down even further. G.

It appears Lacie may have released a 1Tb external drive in the 2.5 inch format. The device actually contains 2 500Gb hard drives in a single box package weighing 1.4Lbs. It is sold by NewEgg for $575.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822154295

I agree. . . prices are usually high upon release. It's just the novelty/convenience factor. . . I also do not know if the Lacie 2X500Gb 2.5 inch external package is quiet or not. G.

Hi Kijanki. You mention 1Tb Hitachi drive. . . is that a 2.5 inch drive? Do you have the part number or a link to its description? Thanks, G.

Merlocpm, I believe Quadra contains 2 physical 3.5 inch drives. Such arrangement will always yield a little more than twice the noise/vibration of a single drive. That is because it is unlikely that the two drives are perfectly aligned on the same rotational plane. In addition there may be microscopic rotational speed differences between the drives. . . all of this will cause. . . mechanical intermodulation, which will translate into a little additional noise and vibration. Try to place the quadra on top of a sheet of sorbithane. The lower mass of 2.5 inch drives is likely to yield less vibrations. The largest 2.5 inch drives on the general market today seem to be 500GB with 5400RPM rotational speed, with prices as low as $109 for the Hitachi offering. See:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150380+1309740009&Configurator=&Subcategory=380&description=&Ntk=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=
The drives are sold unformatted and can be fitted into an external SATA 2.5 inch USB or Firewire enclosure for use on Mac, Windows, and LINUX variants. On Windows the only file system supported for large partitions is NTFS

Western digital offers now 500GB 2.5 inch Scorpio internal drives at just over $100. . . and so do Samsung and Seagate. See Newegg.com at:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150380+1309740009&Configurator=&Subcategory=380&description=&Ntk=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=