# Can You Recommend a Quiet 7200 Internal Hard Drive?



## Reid Rosefelt (Mar 30, 2021)

I'm shopping for a 4TB 7200 internal drive. If the price is right 6TB. This is just to hold data, not sample libraries.

I want a drive that is quiet, plus also has the other good stuff, like speed, reliability and a decent warranty.

What do you recommend? And where would you buy it? I read bad things about Amazon selling drives without warranties.

Thanks!

It's been a long time since I've bought anything that wasn't an SSD, but that is just overkill for how this will be used.


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## MartinH. (Mar 30, 2021)

I always buy WD40EFRX. Only 5400rpm, but imho that's enough and a good tradeoff for noise, heat, and hopefully reliability. Don't buy from amazon, not only because of warranty. Here in Germany I always buy from Alternate, I can't recommend any non-german resellers though. Make sure to buy a "retail" drive instead of a "bulk" drive, if you care about manufacturer warranty. Afaik only the retail drives get the full warranty. I always buy bulk, because I normally don't use these drives till they break and I wouldn't trust them with my data, so I'll never send them a drive to make any claims anyway.


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## José Herring (Mar 30, 2021)

Any good brand is fairly quiet. I always go for WDBlue.

Don't buy from Amazon. It's a 50/50 in my experience on whether or not you get what you ordered. I ordered a CPU from amazon and the box came with the CPU missing! It may be a little cheaper but the few bucks savings isn't worth the headache.

I get everything from Best Buy, Tiger Direct or Newegg.


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## marclawsonmusic (Mar 30, 2021)

I always buy Glyph drives. I first saw them in a pretty big Pro Tools rig and figured if they were good enough for live audio... they'd be fine for my little studio. I haven't had any noise issues.


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## ironbut (Mar 30, 2021)

I think there are plenty of 5400 rpm drives that are quiet (I have a Seagate that's very quiet).
But Tiger was asking about a 7200.
I'd love to find a quiet, cool running 7200 also.


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## Reid Rosefelt (Mar 30, 2021)

José Herring said:


> Any good brand is fairly quiet. I always go for WDBlue.


I'm asking because people say that the WD Black is really loud. And then some drives are only 7200 up to 2 TB and then are 5400 for larger drives. This purchase is a bit more complicated than I thought it would be.


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## José Herring (Mar 30, 2021)

TigerTheFrog said:


> I'm asking because people say that the WD Black is really loud. And then some drives are only 7200 up to 2 TB and then are 5400 for larger drives. This purchase is a bit more complicated than I thought it would be.


Hmmmm...Interesting. 

Yes I only use HDD for back up these days but you are correct. My 4tb Blue drive is only 5400.


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## Reid Rosefelt (Mar 30, 2021)

marclawsonmusic said:


> I always buy Glyph drives. I first saw them in a pretty big Pro Tools rig and figured if they were good enough for live audio... they'd be fine for my little studio. I haven't had any noise issues.


I just checked and, aren't these external? I'm looking for internal. I'll revise my first post to make that clear.


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## easyrider (Mar 30, 2021)

MartinH. said:


> I always buy WD40EFRX. Only 5400rpm, but imho that's enough and a good tradeoff for noise, heat, and hopefully reliability. Don't buy from amazon, not only because of warranty. Here in Germany I always buy from Alternate, I can't recommend any non-german resellers though. Make sure to buy a "retail" drive instead of a "bulk" drive, if you care about manufacturer warranty. Afaik only the retail drives get the full warranty. I always buy bulk, because I normally don't use these drives till they break and I wouldn't trust them with my data, so I'll never send them a drive to make any claims anyway.


The WD red are designed for NAS so 24/7 operation.


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## marclawsonmusic (Mar 30, 2021)

TigerTheFrog said:


> I just checked and, aren't these external? I'm looking for internal. I'll revise my first post to make that clear.


Yes, external. Sorry for any confusion.


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## MartinH. (Mar 30, 2021)

easyrider said:


> The WD red are designed for NAS so 24/7 operation.


Good point, forgot to mention that. It's actually part of the reason why I started buying them. My PC is on ~15 hours per day, no sleep mode. I must have bought almost 10 or so of those drives over the years, never had one die on me as far as I can remember.
Under what exact scenario would you consider drives designed for 24/7 use detrimental? Or what would you consider a safe range for the start/stop cycle count in the SMART data? I've recently switched to a dual boot win7+win10 setup and I'm restarting more often now, and was wondering if I should be worried about unnecessary start/stop cycles hurting the drives. 
It was a long time ago when I talked this through with my sysadmin friend and his recommendation was to go with the 24/7 drives based on my PC usage. However that usage recently changed.


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## Captain Oveur (Mar 30, 2021)

> quiet


Even among the same model, different units will have different noise levels. One lesser known noise source is - as Western Digital call it - Preventive Wear Leveling. It's a seemingly random process that will generate a thunk once every five seconds. Seagate has the same tech, but I forget its name. There's no definitive list of which models use it.

Beyond winning the noise lottery, you can dampen a lot of sound with paracord instead of standard mounting hardware.



> speed


Unless you have some minimum requirement, all HDDs will be fast enough for your undefined use case.


> reliability


They're all the same. You always have a low chance of getting a bad disk that either got damaged in shipping or slipped through quality control. A full sweep with a utility like badblocks or vendor tool such as Data Lifeguard Diagnostic will tell if the drive is unsuitable from the get go.


> decent warranty


Doubtful that you'll find anything beyond 5 years. I recommend a model with at least 3. Executing the warranty is another lottery for a good support rep, repair tech, shipping, etc.


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## MartinH. (Mar 30, 2021)

Captain Oveur said:


> Beyond winning the noise lottery, you can dampen a lot of sound with paracord instead of standard mounting hardware.


Isn't that bad for their lifetime? I vaguely remember reading it's better for them to be screwed down tight to the case (unless maybe there's many other vibrating disks, there might be a point where it becomes detrimental).


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## easyrider (Mar 30, 2021)

MartinH. said:


> Good point, forgot to mention that. It's actually part of the reason why I started buying them. My PC is on ~15 hours per day, no sleep mode. I must have bought almost 10 or so of those drives over the years, never had one die on me as far as I can remember.
> Under what exact scenario would you consider drives designed for 24/7 use detrimental? Or what would you consider a safe range for the start/stop cycle count in the SMART data? I've recently switched to a dual boot win7+win10 setup and I'm restarting more often now, and was wondering if I should be worried about unnecessary start/stop cycles hurting the drives.
> It was a long time ago when I talked this through with my sysadmin friend and his recommendation was to go with the 24/7 drives based on my PC usage. However that usage recently changed.


How much data storage do you need? How big are the files etc...?

What about backup?


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## Reid Rosefelt (Mar 30, 2021)

I'm just looking for a drive similar to the one I have now, which is 3GB 7200. It works very well for a variety of things, from data to hosting some undemanding sample libraries. I don't want a 5400 drive. 

This is for use, not backup. Maybe I'll add a 5400 to my setup at some point for additional backup to my external drives. 

At this point I'm looking at the Seagate BarraCuda Pro 4TB. It's supposed to be quiet.


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## MartinH. (Mar 30, 2021)

easyrider said:


> How much data storage do you need? How big are the files etc...?


This is what I have installed currently. Filesize varies wildly, from less than 1mb to over 1gb. Samples are the tiniest part, most is Photoshop files, games, videos, screenshots etc.. Since I never had a total drive failure, I have some very old data that I keep mostly for sentimental reasons.









easyrider said:


> What about backup?



Some of this data already are redundant backups (against accidental deletion/overwriting or hard disk failure), some stuff I also back up online (against theft, fire or catastrophic hardware failure), and every couple of months I update a backup drive in a bank vault.


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## vitocorleone123 (Mar 30, 2021)

A large capacity 5400rpm drive will be competitive with "non-gamer" (ie quieter) 7200rpm drives on a lot of measures. Probably a WD Red. I use 4 of them in my NAS.


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## easyrider (Mar 31, 2021)

MartinH. said:


> This is what I have installed currently. Filesize varies wildly, from less than 1mb to over 1gb. Samples are the tiniest part, most is Photoshop files, games, videos, screenshots etc.. Since I never had a total drive failure, I have some very old data that I keep mostly for sentimental reasons.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Are all those SSDs?


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## MartinH. (Mar 31, 2021)

easyrider said:


> Are all those SSDs?



No, only the 930gb and 465gb drive (I am aware they are probably fuller than they should be for wear leveling purposes). The rest are all WD30EFRX or WD40EFRX. The oldest one is... _very_ old. I'm gonna replace it soon:


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## easyrider (Mar 31, 2021)

MartinH. said:


> No, only the 930gb and 465gb drive (I am aware they are probably fuller than they should be for wear leveling purposes). The rest are all WD30EFRX or WD40EFRX. The oldest one is... _very_ old. I'm gonna replace it soon:


I would pool all of the mechanical drives into one big volume and build a cheap a NAS....

Having all that data dotted over multiple drives would drive me nuts!

I’d Just keep the SSDs local for noise and my sanity!


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## Reid Rosefelt (Mar 31, 2021)

I'm considering a 5400 more than I was at the start. I think I can leave all the things I need to run a little faster on the 3GB 7200, and move over everything else to the 5400. Something to think about.

I've also learned there are these hybrid drives things. Between "not buy it on Amazon" and all these other things, this is a complicated decision and I'm very appreciative of all the advice I'm getting here.


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## vitocorleone123 (Mar 31, 2021)

TigerTheFrog said:


> I'm considering a 5400 more than I was at the start. I think I can leave all the things I need to run a little faster on the 3GB 7200, and move over everything else to the 5400. Something to think about.
> 
> I've also learned there are these hybrid drives things. Between "not buy it on Amazon" and all these other things, this is a complicated decision and I'm very appreciative of all the advice I'm getting here.


For what it's worth, I've never had an issue buying new from Amazon (ships and sold by - avoid 3rd parties). Same for Newegg (again, I only buy ships and sold by).


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## Reid Rosefelt (Mar 31, 2021)

I'm now looking at the WD RED PRO 7200. It comes in a 6TB version in my under $200 price range. 

I could get 8TB in a WD RED 5400 in the same $$ range, but what would matter more to me than the extra 2 TB is if the 5400 is going to be quieter.

Going to buy either from B&H, as it will come in a WD box, with screws, and more importantly, a warranty. And I have had great experiences over the years with B&H, which is in my town.

Any thoughts? I feel like I'm closing in on a decision.


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## vitocorleone123 (Mar 31, 2021)

TigerTheFrog said:


> I'm now looking at the WD RED PRO 7200. It comes in a 6TB version in my under $200 price range.
> 
> I could get 8TB in a WD RED 5400 in the same $$ range, but what would matter more to me than the extra 2 TB is if the 5400 is going to be quieter.
> 
> ...


I’d be hesitant about the Pro if concerned about noise. You can check the manufacturer db ratings but I seem to anecdotally remember people mentioning them as noisier than the standard ones, which makes sense to me given the increased performance.

Chances are some one has reviewed and taking measurement s from at least 3 feet away etc in a “real world” context.


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## easyrider (Mar 31, 2021)

Get an 8TB WD My book and shuck it....You will find inside a lovely WD white label drive that is a WD Red in disguise....


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