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Quietest 500GB Firewire drive?

I'm researching external drives for my music room (Firewire drive > PowerBook G4 > [USB DAC when I have more $] > Arcam FMJ). I want it to be as quiet as possible. (I would be very happy if it were as quiet as the PowerBook.) I have an older Lacie Big Disk in my office and, even though it is fanless, it isn't sufficiently quiet for my music room (I can hear the disks spinning and electrical hum).

Here are the drives I'm comparing so far:

- LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Disk
- Western Digital My Book Studio Edition
- Seagate FreeAgent Go for Mac

Can anyone speak about their relative noise levels? Lacie tells me the Quadra is much quieter than my older Big Disk, but I would like to hear from actual users.

Thanks!
syncrasy

Showing 3 responses by prpixel

prpixel
876 posts
 
Guido,

I use Western Digital Scorpio Blue drives with my music server. Music server consists of a Vulcan Flipstart UMPC running Vista business. The Flipstart and two external drives only draw about 15 watts in low power mode which is fine for serving music. Cost pennies a day to run.
prpixel
876 posts
 
Another vote for 2.5" drives in external enclosures. They are dead silent, use very little electricity and produce virtually no heat. I use a couple of 500GB drives hanging off of my music server. I like them so much, I'm in the process of swapping out the 3.5" drives in my desktop machine.
prpixel
876 posts
 
Guido,

That's about $200 more than buying 2 500GB drives and mounting them in the case of your choice. Of course, that Lacie case is very sexy and it has USB, FW and Esata interfaces.
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