New Hard Drive - Noise?

[600+]

Following on from my previous thread I bought a 1TB Maxtor SATA and plugged it in.

Have formated it and it's visible and everything. Only problem is that every 30-40secs it makes a noise like something is being read on it......though it's empty.

Issue is that I have an almost silent PC and with this the silence has gone!! Any ideas....apart from taking it back?

[John 675]

all hard drives refresh themselves every so often i can imagine a 1TB jobby does it allot more often.. at least its not making a constant clicking or knocking.. i know its negative advice but if you want something deadly silent.. solid state is the only way for you.

you could use it as a backup drive and only plug it in when you need it? lol, bit silly to have TB's worth of space as backup mind

[Dave20046]

That's a hell of a porn collection
Take it back buy a different model see if there's anything any quieter

[MiniMatt]

Double check Windeeze hasn't stuck a page file on there. If not that then as suggested above, it's probably just an "are you still there" type check you'll not easily avoid.

If it's purely for pr0n collection and not OS or apps then it doesn't need to be a particularly fast drive and as such the current wave of "green" drives might stand you in good stead (low power very often correlates directly with low noise). Western Digital do a "green" range as do a number of others.

De-coupling the drive from the chassis is often an answer - is it possible to suspend the drive with laggy bands in a 5.25" bay? There are commercial solutions that achieve the same end but ultimately the DIY solution is just as good and much cheaper. Much of the perceived seek noise is actually amplified vibrations transmitted to the echo chamber that is the typical PC case.

www.silentpcreview.com (http://www.silentpcreview.com) and www.quietpc.com (http://www.quietpc.com) might help in finding a quieter drive.