Quietest mechanical HDD

Rys do you have esata, much quicker than usb
Esata has the additional problem of no power provided via its plug - an unforgiveable oversight IMO which basically dooms the connector into near-uselessness. Mainstream accessibility requires power to be provided directly in the plug, that's why USB became so widespread. (However, firewire having 20+ watts specced straight in the plug didn't help it to grow, but that was apple being stupid mainly asking for overly expensive license fees...)
 
Ummm, no. Looking it up it appears they are all now 5400 RPM and no longer 5900 RPM. Green drives have never been 7200 RPM.

I'm guessing this was done to reduce the cost of manufacturing and increased areal density means the boost in performance from going to 5900 RPM wasn't worth it anymore.

[edit] actually looking more, they might still be doing 5900 RPM as WD still isn't officially saying how fast they are, just that they are using Intellipower. Most sites just guess 5400 RPM. One site when the Green drives were first released actually tested it and came to the conclusion that it was doing 5900 RPM just like Seagate with their LP series.

Regards,
SB

That's interesting because the rated sustained data transfer speeds seem to indicate 7200.
 
That's interesting because the rated sustained data transfer speeds seem to indicate 7200.

The sustained sequential data transfer rate has gone up due to increases in areal density. I'm assuming the EZRX drives are using 1 TB platters.

For comparison the EADS line had 333 GB platters while the EARS line had 500 GB platters.

Sustained transfer speeds for EZRX is potentially twice that of EARS drives. All of my Caviar Green drives are EADS and EARS.

[edit] whoops looks like EZRX is using 750 GB platters. So it's potentially up to ~50% faster than EARS drives. In the real world it won't be nearly that much obviously.

If you want to compare, the WD Black and Blue lines of HDDs are 7200 RPM. Assuming same platter size, they should be noticeably faster. A comparable Black drive is ~35% faster than its Green counterpart which is just slightly higher than the speed difference in spindle speed (33% faster).

Regards,
SB
 
I have WD Green and Black and I have to get close with my PC desk open to even notice them. The oddball Samsung I have does make noise but again nothing that I ever hear when my desk is closed. Note: my PC is built into my desk, underneath 1/4" of glass.

Just built a PC for my son, used a Green and I would say his whole setup is htpc levels.

I have not had a Seagate since my P4 days, so no comment. ;)

Sent from my RM-820_nam_att_100 using Board Express
 
Yup, compared to hard drives of 10-15 years ago, today we have stupid speed and low noise in most cases.

Why am I the only guy who mentioned AAM? ;)

I do have a recent Seagate. I bought 2 of the 3TB ST3000DM001 drives. One is in my desktop, the other in a 1-bay Diskstation NAS. They have audible seek noise but it's certainly not Raptor-ish or anything like that. They are extremely fast compared to my Green 2TB, 2-3x the sequential transfer rate. Apparently Seagate does not implement AAM in drives anymore though.
 
Esata has the additional problem of no power provided via its plug - an unforgiveable oversight IMO

Agreed although mboard makers could easilly provide a work around (I use a usb/esata caddy myself)
ps: my soundcard had firewire you could even use it to network pc's together
 
I did the networking PCs thing during the win9x/XP era; lightning fast for its time since firewire is quite efficient, especially compared to USB, but unfortunately also horribly CPU intensive since there's no hardware acceleration whatsoever of IP packet generation/handling...

Then again, networking via FW was largely obsoleted in vista and onwards, due to MS dropping built-in windows support for it, and also the massive price drop in gigabit ethernet equipment that occurred around that era. That is probably the real reason for dropping support I think. It was pretty epic while it still worked, though. :D
 
Regarding 2.5" versus 3.5" drives...

Here is the StorageReview article on the Western Digital Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM drive.

And here is the StorageReview article on the Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB 2.5" 5400RPM drive

Here's the breakdown:
Code:
Test           2.5"       3.5"

2Mb Seq Read     112Mb/s    131Mb/s
2Mb Seq Write    111Mb/s    130Mb/s
2Mb Rnd Read      60Mb/s     60Mb/s
2Mb Rnd Write     71Mb/s     53Mb/s
4K Rnd Read     0.52Mb/s   0.29Mb/s
4k Rnd Write    0.99Mb/s   0.48Mb/s
4k Rnd ReadIO    133IOPS     74IOPS
4k Rnd WriteIO   253IOPS    123IOPS

The 2.5 drive, despite having 33% less spindle speed, is having no problem outrunning the larger faster drive except for absolute fastest outer-track performance. Given the delta, I'd take the 2.5" drive all day every day. Especially after considering the massive power difference between the two.

My home server is all 2.5" drives (12 total spindles) and I love it. The whole thing also consumes 35W at idle with all the drives running, which includes 32GB of ram and a 3570k on a Z77 uATX board.
 
I wouldn't make such conclusions without short-stroking the 3.5" drive first to the same capacity as the 2.5" drive...but regardless, any mechanical HDD is crap at random I/O so it doesn't really matter either way.
 
Regarding 2.5" versus 3.5" drives...

Here is the StorageReview article on the Western Digital Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM drive.

And here is the StorageReview article on the Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB 2.5" 5400RPM drive

Here's the breakdown:
Code:
Test           2.5"       3.5"

2Mb Seq Read     112Mb/s    131Mb/s
2Mb Seq Write    111Mb/s    130Mb/s
2Mb Rnd Read      60Mb/s     60Mb/s
2Mb Rnd Write     71Mb/s     53Mb/s
4K Rnd Read     0.52Mb/s   0.29Mb/s
4k Rnd Write    0.99Mb/s   0.48Mb/s
4k Rnd ReadIO    133IOPS     74IOPS
4k Rnd WriteIO   253IOPS    123IOPS

The 2.5 drive, despite having 33% less spindle speed, is having no problem outrunning the larger faster drive except for absolute fastest outer-track performance. Given the delta, I'd take the 2.5" drive all day every day. Especially after considering the massive power difference between the two.

My home server is all 2.5" drives (12 total spindles) and I love it. The whole thing also consumes 35W at idle with all the drives running, which includes 32GB of ram and a 3570k on a Z77 uATX board.

Not terribly surprising considering that 2.5" drive has significantly higher areal density than the 3.5" drive. Back during that time WD was the slowest (along with Hitachi) of the 4 HDD manufacturers to move to higher areal density on their 3.5" drives. So, it doesn't surprise me that in the synthetic benchmarks that it does fairly well in comparison to one of the slowest 7200 RPM 3.5" drives you could get.

Unfortunately in real world situations the 2.5" drive falls far behind the 3.5" drive in those same reviews.

Both the HTPC and Gaming benches that they do show the 3.5" drive being up to 2x faster in transfers and IOps. Unfortunately they don't subject their 2.5" drives to the productivity bench. Shame. But that's pretty bad considering that generation of WD Caviar Blue was perhaps the slowest and worst 7200 RPM 3.5" dive you could buy at the time. Then again, no one was really expecting the 2.5" drive to match a 7200 RPM 3.5" drive in real world performance.

Regards,
SB
 
Keep in mind, it's a 2.5" 5400RPM drive, and I kept it to the same manufacturer for simplicity sake. A 2.5" 7200RPM drives perform considerably better than the 7200RPM 1TB example I just gave. The only problem, of course, is total storage capacity.
 
Keep in mind, it's a 2.5" 5400RPM drive, and I kept it to the same manufacturer for simplicity sake. A 2.5" 7200RPM drives perform considerably better than the 7200RPM 1TB example I just gave. The only problem, of course, is total storage capacity.

That's not true.

http://techreport.com/review/18467/western-digital-6gbps-caviar-black-1tb-hard-drive

versus a 1 year newer

http://techreport.com/review/20255/western-digital-scorpio-black-750gb-notebook-hard-drive

Both are 2 platter designs to keep the comparison more fair. The 2.5" drive is 1 year newer, with higher areal density, yet still struggles to come close to the older 7200 RPM 3.5" drive. But it does turn in a respectable showing for a 2.5" drive in desktop workloads. It's difficult to find reviews on newer drives on sites that I regularly visit as most reviews are focused on SSDs now.

In server workloads 2.5" drives are attractive due to the lower seek times. In desktop and most workstation duties however, the higher transfer rates you can get on the outer tracks (same on the inner tracks assuming same areal density) usually leads to better overall performance.

As well, once you start adding in more platters, the advantage overwhelmingly swings into 3.5" drives favor in all but the most random seek limited workloads. 2.5" drives are generally limited to 2 platters unless you bump up the thickness to 12.5 mm which is pretty rare.

The Blue line of drives from WD is an odd one. The 3.5" line usually uses incredibly outdated platters while the 2.5" line usually uses newer platters for the same model year. The Black line doesn't suffer from that discrepancy usually. Basically the Blue line is generally one of the slowest 7200 RPM drives of any given generation. Which isn't surprising as they are marketed as the "budget" 7200 RPM drives.

Regards,
SB
 
That's not true.

http://techreport.com/review/18467/western-digital-6gbps-caviar-black-1tb-hard-drive

versus a 1 year newer

http://techreport.com/review/20255/western-digital-scorpio-black-750gb-notebook-hard-drive

Both are 2 platter designs to keep the comparison more fair. The 2.5" drive is 1 year newer, with higher areal density, yet still struggles to come close to the older 7200 RPM 3.5" drive. But it does turn in a respectable showing for a 2.5" drive in desktop workloads.

I must be missing something.

If you look at the 2.5" scorpio black review, it actually does contain the benchmark entry for the 3.5" caviar black drive in it. The only place where the 2.5" drive isn't within 5% of the 3.5" drive for all the "real world" tests was in the Nero 7 section. LInk to the exact page is here. Every other "real world" test, from boot times to game load times had the 2.5" drive within 5% of the 3.5" drive score. This doesn't look like any sort of struggle to me.

The 2.5" drive uses a fifth of the power at idle and under load, which means it's also far cooler. It also generates around 4db less noise under full IO. Using acoustic management to help the drives stay quieter actually even more severely hampers the 3.5" drive; the 2.5" drive barely notices.

Sooo... What am I missing?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Sooo... What am I missing?

This...

Keep in mind, it's a 2.5" 5400RPM drive, and I kept it to the same manufacturer for simplicity sake. A 2.5" 7200RPM drives perform considerably better than the 7200RPM 1TB example I just gave. The only problem, of course, is total storage capacity.

By comparing to one of the slowest consumer 7200 RPM drive and then claiming that 2.5" 7200 RPM drives are faster.

I was showing that even when the drive itself is outdated and using a generation older HDD platter with far less area density, that 3.5" 7200 RPM drives that receive the same design constraints as the 2.5" drives, they are faster.

Now, in that example there, the gap would widen quite a bit further if it was a comparable generation of Caviar black drives having roughly the same areal density as the Scorpio black.

I called it struggling because it is comparing it to an older drive using older platters, both things that put the 3.5" drive at a very significant disadvantage, especially when you take into account 2.5" drives inherent advantages with regards to random seeks. Yet even with those disadvantages the older 3.5" drive comes out ahead in all desktop use cases.

Hence, when comparing drives of equal heritage (technology, areal density, generation, etc.) and spindle speed a 3.5" drive will always be quite a bit faster than a 2.5" drive except in use cases that heavily rely on huge numbers of random reads of small transfers (database for example).

And yes, 2.5" drives have obviously advantages with regards to power (and thus heat generated) as well as size. That comes at a disadvantage of lower speed in desktop use cases, lower overall max storage capacity, as well as a significantly higher cost per GB when compared to 2 and 3 TB 3.5" drives. 1 TB drives, both 2.5" and 3.5", are generally bad value all around.

So yes, due to those tradeoffs I have some 2.5" drives for certain uses while 3.5" drives serve the majority of my use cases.

Regards
SB
 
On the other hand you need to be careful with some 7200 RPM drives in enclosures without fan cooling.

Beware, a 3.5" external WD green can suffer this.
A friend's one died, two weeks out of the two year warranty, in a WD case no less. Tiny, no fan, no breathing space even - no vents! Allegedly, the electronics board overheats.

Just go for a "slow" 2.5", they should be around 100MB/s these days, else a 3TB 3.5" in a big ugly case. Performance is a non issue if you just rsync your music collection once in a while, but you get high performance no matter what.

You could use a bottom of the barrel NAS too, or a funny solution where you snap a 2.5" drive into a "rack" that functions more like a cartdrige slot. The USB equivalent is the "dock" ; then you could put the drive (either 2.5 or 3.5) in a dead simple plastic box such as this one.

http://www.materiel.net/boitier-pou...de-protection-pour-disque-dur-bleu-55735.html

This means doing away with those garbage USB cases and is easier if you want a second back up drive.
 
I called it struggling because it is comparing it to an older drive using older platters, both things that put the 3.5" drive at a very significant disadvantage, especially when you take into account 2.5" drives inherent advantages with regards to random seeks. Yet even with those disadvantages the older 3.5" drive comes out ahead in all desktop use cases.
Ahead by how much, exactly? Single digit percentages? Is the workload that is targetting the "quietest mechanical HDD" going to be so performance sensitive that a few percent is a terrible issue? There were a number of cases where the 3.5" drives and the 2.5" drives were within 10% of the first generation of SSD drives in that same benchmark. Also in that benchmark were other 3.5" drives of varying age and capacity, and the 2.5" spindle drives were having no issues keeping within single-digit performance differences.

I firmly believe that you're trying to split a very fine hair here. The first post asked about the quietest of drives, which stemmed worry about heat in an enclosure, which equates to power and spin speed. Given all the criteria mentioned, why are we even having this discussion about "OMG a 2.5" drive is a few percent slower than a 3.5" drive?"

The 2.5" drive will be quieter, will use less power and generate less heat while maintaining the performance that is expected, hands down.
 
Ahead by how much, exactly? Single digit percentages? Is the workload that is targetting the "quietest mechanical HDD" going to be so performance sensitive that a few percent is a terrible issue? There were a number of cases where the 3.5" drives and the 2.5" drives were within 10% of the first generation of SSD drives in that same benchmark. Also in that benchmark were other 3.5" drives of varying age and capacity, and the 2.5" spindle drives were having no issues keeping within single-digit performance differences.

I firmly believe that you're trying to split a very fine hair here. The first post asked about the quietest of drives, which stemmed worry about heat in an enclosure, which equates to power and spin speed. Given all the criteria mentioned, why are we even having this discussion about "OMG a 2.5" drive is a few percent slower than a 3.5" drive?"

The 2.5" drive will be quieter, will use less power and generate less heat while maintaining the performance that is expected, hands down.

Obviously speed isn't a factor for the OP. His requirements is a quiet drive to use for backups and data storage.

In which case the best value for money is a 3.5" 5400 RPM drive in the 2-3 TB range. If money is no object and you don't need more than 1 TB of storage then a far more expensive per GB 2.5" drive would be suitable obviously.

So, yes, I agree, as long as his storage needs fits within the storage limitations of a 2.5" drive then it could certainly be the best choice.

The whole sidetrack of speed was brought up by you. And no, any modern 2.5" 7200 RPM drive would not match up well against any modern 3.5" drive. To claim otherwise is patently false. Well, unless you compare only the slowest 3.5" drives to the fastest 2.5" drives. And even then it isn't always close.

Compare the results from this in the HTPC and Gaming capture tests.

A variety of 2.5" 7200 RPM drives, the fastest on the market as of March 2013.
http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_sshd_thin_review_gen3_500gb_st500lm000

A variety of 3.5" 7200 RPM drives, the fastest on the market as of May 2012.
http://www.storagereview.com/hitachi_deskstar_7k4000_review

The results aren't terribly close. The only 7200 RPM drive that compares favorably is the Hybrid Drive with 8 GB of flash and even that doesn't do well in the HTPC tests.

Excluding the hybrid drives. In HTPC the best 7200 RPM 3.5" drive is about 108.4% faster than the best 2.5" drive. In gaming at least it's closer where the best 7200 RPM 3.5" drive is only about 26.4% faster than the best 2.5" drive.

Comparing the slowest 3.5" to the fastest 2.5" at least the gap closes to only a 12.7% performance advantage. The Hitachi 5k4000 is a 5400 RPM drive. There is still a quite sizeable lead in the HTPC trace at about 48.7%.

And this is with 3.5" drives that are approximately 1 year older than the 2.5" drives.

And looking at that it's definitely easy to see why Seagate are abandoning the 7200 RPM 2.5" drive market and instead focusing their efforts on Hybrid 2.5" drives.

Regards,
SB
 
You're comparing a five platter 3.5" drive to a two platter 2.5 drive, and then somehow NOT curious about how the 3.5" drive could only deliver, at best, 100% gains? This seems quite contrived, at least in my opinion.

But then again, move to a four platter 2.5" drive and the tables turn yet again when compared to an identical 3.5" drive.

My speed contention was only this: for the usage model dicated in this thread, nobody will notice the difference in performance between the 2.5" and 3.5" drives. Even in real world scenarios where performance wasn't allowed to be slow, you'd still be hard pressed to notice the performance difference.
 
You're comparing a five platter 3.5" drive to a two platter 2.5 drive, and then somehow NOT curious about how the 3.5" drive could only deliver, at best, 100% gains? This seems quite contrived, at least in my opinion.

But then again, move to a four platter 2.5" drive and the tables turn yet again when compared to an identical 3.5" drive.

My speed contention was only this: for the usage model dicated in this thread, nobody will notice the difference in performance between the 2.5" and 3.5" drives. Even in real world scenarios where performance wasn't allowed to be slow, you'd still be hard pressed to notice the performance difference.

Absolutely for the op's requirements any 5400 RPM drive whether 2.5" or 3.5" will do just fine assuming his storage needs don't exceed 1 TB. There's a couple 1.5 TB and 2.0 TB 2.5" drives but they are obscenely expensive, IMO.

And yes, why not the multi-platter drives? For roughly the same cost as a 2 platter 2.5" drive, you can get a 3-4 platter 3.5" drive. 2.5" drives with more than 2 platters are rare because that necessitates a move to a 12 mm thick case which makes them unsuitable for most 2.5" drive use cases (mobile computing). Even on the desktop it becomes somewhat cumbersome if you use HDD docking bays built for 2.5" drives (like the one I use that has 4x 2.5" bays which slots into a 5.25" drive bay.

As to speed, well I suppose it just depends on how tolerant you are for waiting on data. From my experience the difference is quite noticeable, at least with gameplay depending on the game.

Regards,
SB
 
You're comparing a five platter 3.5" drive to a two platter 2.5 drive, and then somehow NOT curious about how the 3.5" drive could only deliver, at best, 100% gains?
The number of platters don't matter as far as drive performance is concerned - well actually, having five platters is likely a detriment to performance rather than a boon as typically the only reason to stuff five platters in a drive is to use lower-capacity platters to reach a higher level of total storage capacity. Also, six R/W arms on the actuator is additional mass to move which can lead to slower seeks (and higher power consumption.)

Harddrives don't actually read from more than one platter at a time, so stacking platters isn't the same as an internal RAID configuration. Why don't they do that, wouldn't it be an obvious way to greatly expand transfer speeds?

It's because of tracking, and heat expansion. (And data processing as well, incidentally.) Tracks in modern HDDs are extremely narrow, they pack in tens of thousands per side and it would be impossible to accurately aligning them across all platters. Also, since the motor is located in one end of the platter stack the lower platters are going to run hotter than the top, meaning they'll expand somewhat; very slightly, but enough to make a difference on these scales.

But then again, move to a four platter 2.5" drive
AFAIK the highest platter count for 2.5" drives is 3. That's 12.5mm tall drives, which won't fit in many laptops. They thus tend to be relatively expensive.
 
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