I know that others use elastic cord clad in fabric to ensure there is no chance of the drives dropping.
That'd be a very sensible precaution, one I would approve of myself.
Fortunately, my Antec chassis has rather thick grommets pre-installed as standard so I don't need to faff with elastic cords, cloth-clad or not...
I love those grommets, they really made a huge difference on my 3.5" drive. I was surprised how muffled seeks were, actually. My WD velociraptors weren't as affected, likely due to the smaller and lighter actuators I would imagine.
The 2.5" drives actually tend to be faster than their 3.5" equivalents due to the sheer density of data on the disks.
Do you have any sources backing that claim up? Because logic says this is not true.
A 3.5" drive has much larger discs with longer outer tracks that hold much much more data. You can read more data before the drive needs to seek, and seeks are really really slow in a harddrive. Just switching to the neighbor track is typically 1-2 milliseconds, plus average rotational latency before you can read the sector you need.
Also, laptop drives should not have higher areal density compared to a desktop drive of the same generation, that does not make sense.
2.5" laptop drives, especially 5400RPM drives, have historically had much slower actuators compared to desktop drives (maybe a power consideration as much as a size/weight one...) Plus 5400RPM spindle speed means longer rotational latency ofcoz.
If Rys wants absolutely the quietest drive around he'll be looking for one spinning at 5400rpm.
Yeah, a 2.5" 5400RPM drive spindle is bound to be almost dead quiet. You could maybe hear it seeking over case fans if it is screwed in tight to the chassis without suspension, but I doubt it and it wouldn't be bothersome in the least anyhow.
