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What is the loudest hard drive you own that functions?

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k2x4b524[

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Figured i'd start this one as kind of a humor thing.

Loudest drive i've got is an old conner-30084 80mb that had a bare bones win 3.11 wfw on it. in a 2 story house, you can hear this sucker with all doors and windows closed, from outside the front porch, it spins that loudly, but has no bad sectors and the drive itself is in immaculate condition.
 
Not "loud" in the traditional sense, but not quiet, either--a Shugart SA-4010 drive. The floor shakes when it spins up. Some Priam/Atasi drives are pretty loud, as is the Maxtor XT-1140.
 
Mine would have to be a 18 gig 15K RPM U320 SCSI Seagate Cheetah. I've got MFM drives that are quieter than this thing; I have a 40 meg Bernoulli box that's quieter than this thing. It's about as loud as my Dremel when cutting through plexi... You can hear it in my garage from my bedroom -- which my garage is a separate building on the opposite side of the house.

I swear, the old DEC "Washing Machines" with the removable 12" platters weren't that loud.
 
I'm not sure if it's just the drive, or the drive plus the power supply fan, but starting up my IBM XT is reminiscent of a 747 getting ready for takeoff.
Also the Profile drive for the Apple /// and Lisa is quite loud. Has a lot of irritating high frequencies which fade in and out, making you feel like you are losing your hearing.. fun stuff.
 
I have a Western Digital Caviar 280 that screams like a banshee -- and has a lot of bad sectors, but otherwise works fine. Probably the bearings on the spindle motor are going bad. I have another Caviar 280 which has no bad sectors and is tremendously quieter.

But the loudest hard drives that I've experienced since they were new were the old 3.5" half-height MiniScribe drives. Not only is the spindle motor on these unpleasantly loud, but the stepper motor makes very annoying metallic chirping and scraping noises whenever it's seeking. Unfortunately these drives were extremely popular because of their combination of small size and cheap price. Even Apple used them in some of their Macs in the late '80s, before MiniScribe got caught shipping masonry and cooking their books.
 
k2x4b524[ said:
wow, one that shakes the floor?! The shugart sa-410, i can't even find a picture of that one.. And 747 on run-up, that is a lovely sound, bet that drive is a room cleaner
Click to expand...

SA-4010 - 14" drive. Nameplate on the thing is 120V, 15A (probably until the platters are up to speed).
 
My 20 MB ST-4026 HD on my IBM AT sounds like a jet engine throttling up when I first switch it on! Whoo ho...it sounds impressive and powerful.

(of course "impressive and powerful" could just mean shot bearing and bushes. It works ok though).

Tez
 
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I have an Imprimis 1GB SCSI drive that is quite noticeable. Unfortunately, all the older drives that I might compare it too have failed so I don't know if it was unusually loud for the time period.
 
deathshadow said:
Mine would have to be a 18 gig 15K RPM U320 SCSI Seagate Cheetah. I've got MFM drives that are quieter than this thing; I have a 40 meg Bernoulli box that's quieter than this thing. It's about as loud as my Dremel when cutting through plexi... You can hear it in my garage from my bedroom -- which my garage is a separate building on the opposite side of the house.

I swear, the old DEC "Washing Machines" with the removable 12" platters weren't that loud.
Click to expand...

I was just going to list my seagate SCSIs as being *the* loudest drives I have. One is ultra320 (70GB) and the other a SAS at 70GB too. They both grunt insanely loud, and the SAS one makes audible beeps and squeals when it defrags.
Both drives have no bad sectors and perform amazingly well.

Skuzzy GRUMBLE.
 
Interesting, none of my Seagate 15K\10K drives make any noise at all, and all are Cheetah drives. The only loud U360 drives I have are a couple Maxtor 10K drives and a couple Fujuitsu 15k drives.
 
By far the loudest I have are the drives in an old Compaq RAID array. I forget who made them, it wasn't the usual suspects but they are noisy. And if you get all five of them going you fast get a headache. All five are 10k RPM SCSI drives. If you can get all of the drives to seek in sync with one another you can make the cabinet rock back and forth like an off balance washing machine.
 
Awesome topic! My loudest is a Miniscribe RLL, I think 30 or 40MB (system is in storage so can't check right now). It was the hard drive in an AT&T PC 6300 WGS, and at first I thought the drive was dead. It turns out that it needs to warm up to an operating temperature for a few minutes before it will start working. It is the only drive I cannot run for long periods of time, too damn loud.
 
My loudest hard drive is a Hitachi Deskstar (aka deathstar) that keeps running for whatever reason. Sometimes when it's idle it makes this weird noise. My loudest drive overall is one of my cd drives. It vibrates the whole desk.

I think the most surprising sound I had come out of a working disk drive is when you format a disk in a Commodore 1541. It makes a buzzetratatatatatatat sound. Sounds like its stamping the bits onto the disk with a staple gun. Worked fine tho.
 
deathshadow said:
Mine would have to be a 18 gig 15K RPM U320 SCSI Seagate Cheetah. I've got MFM drives that are quieter than this thing; I have a 40 meg Bernoulli box that's quieter than this thing. It's about as loud as my Dremel when cutting through plexi... You can hear it in my garage from my bedroom -- which my garage is a separate building on the opposite side of the house.

I swear, the old DEC "Washing Machines" with the removable 12" platters weren't that loud.
Click to expand...

IBM 4.5 GB 10K RPM drive. Same thing - insanely loud. That high pitched whine does, now that you mention it, sound very much like a Dremel cutting...

Personally, I love the sound of the original Rodime drives that shipped in the first generation of Macintosh SE. Very distinctive sound. (Still often used today as the generic "computer processing" sound effect in movies.)
 
Another loud one i've got is one i've been having problems with, my st2383-a aka cdc-94244-383, the motor is nice and quiet, but onc it starts seeking, it sounds like it's hailing inside the house. Golf Ball Sized Hail. In Glass.
 
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