Quiet Hard Drive Options
Hard Drives are one of the noisiest components of your computer. They are also an essential piece, working seamlessly between your power supply, motherboard, and other critical components. We've gathered the quietest drives available on the market, which happen to be the most reliable! Western Digital offers the largest drives with the lowest decibel ratings. If you're looking to build a completely noiseless system, then the Intel Solid State Disk Drives are perfect for you. The SSD drives have no moving parts; ideal for those noiseless computers. Please and we can help you configure the perfect computer for you.
| Quick Compare — Quiet Hard Drives | ||||||
| Type | Model Number | Capacities | Cache | Speed | Decible Range | |
 |
Western Digital Blue Drives |
WD1600AAJS WD3200AAKS WD6400AAKS WD3200BEVT |
160GB 320GB 640GB 320GB 2.5' |
8MB 16MB 16MB 8MB |
3 Gb/s 3 Gb/s 3 Gb/s 3 Gb/s |
25-28 dBA* |
 |
Western Digital Green Drives |
WD10EARS WD15EARS WD20EARS |
1TB 1.5TB 2TB |
64MB 64MB 64MB |
3 Gb/s 3 Gb/s 3 Gb/s |
24-29 dBA* |
 |
Western Digital Velociraptor Drives |
WD1500HLFS WD3000HLFS WD6000HLHX |
150GB 300GB 600GB |
16MB 16MB 32MB |
3 Gb/s 3 Gb/s 6 Gb/s |
29-37 dBA* |
 |
Intel SSD Drives |
SSDSA2MP040G2R5 SSDSA2MH080G2C1 SSDSA2MH160G2C1 SSDSA2SH032G101 SSDSA2SH064G101 |
40GB 80GBGen2 106GBGen2 32GB 64GB |
N/A | 3 Gb/s 3 Gb/s 3 Gb/s 3 Gb/s 3 Gb/s |
0 dBA* |
 |
Seagate SAS Drives |
ST973452SS ST9146803SS ST9300603SS |
73GB 146GB 300GB |
16MB 16MB 16MB |
6 Gb/s 6 Gb/s 6 Gb/s |
33-40+ dBA* |
Western Digital Caviar Blue
Ideal For:
Family and business computing
Performance and reliability for everyday computing.
With SATA and PATA interfaces and cache sizes up to 32 MB, this series of drives offer a full range of performance features. Pick the drive that suits your needs with the confidence in knowing that all WD Caviar Blue drives are built to the highest standards of quality and reliability.
To make drive selection simple, we've gathered all our popular WD Caviar SE16, WD Caviar SE, and WD Caviar drives under one umbrella we call WD Caviar Blue. Built to Western Digital's awarding winning quality standards, these drives are available in a full range of performance features.
Key Features
SATA
Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives are quickly becoming the new standard. Motherboard manufacturers now include SATA inputs on their boards. Because of their considerably narrower cables, SATA hard drives provide increased airflow and less clutter and in the computer system compared to PATA drives.Solid performance
With SATA and PATA interfaces and cache sizes up to 32 MB, this series of drives offer a full range of performance features.Capacity
We offer WD Caviar Blue drives with capacities up to 640GB because you can never have too much storage space.Reliability
We understand the importance of your data, and we are committed to protecting that data with exceptionally reliable products, advanced data protection technology and superior customer support.Cool
Keeping the drive cool enhances reliability. WD continues to develop new and innovative ways to keep drives cool while they are operating.Quiet
The technology that Tom's Hardware Guide called "very fast and nearly silent" is used throughout this family of drives. Our WhisperDrive technology minimizes noise to levels near the threshold of human hearing. To cut seek noise, SoftSeek technology streamlines read/write seeking algorithms, resulting in more efficient operation.NoTouch ramp load technology
The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit. (Available on 120 GB capacities and above)IntelliSeek
Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration. (Available on 120 GB capacities and above) [View demo]Compatible
We perform tests on hundreds of systems and a multitude of platforms in our FIT Lab and Mobile Compatibility Lab to give our customers confidence that our drives will work in their systems.Back To Top
Western Digital Caviar Green
Ideal For:
Environmentally friendly PCs and external storage requiring lower power consumption and cool, quiet operation.
Cool, quiet, eco-friendly.
WD Caviar Green drives use less power and support quieter, cooler-running desktop PCs and external storage devices.
As hard drive capacities increase, the power required to run those drives increases as well. WD Caviar Green drives make it possible for energy-conscious customers to build systems with higher capacities and the right balance of system performance, ensured reliability, and energy conservation.
Key Features
Reduced power consumption
WD has reduced power consumption by up to 40 percent compared to standard desktop drives with the combination of WD's IntelliSeek, NoTouch, and IntelliPower technologies.Helps enable eco-friendly PCs
WD Caviar Green drives yield an average drive power savings of 4-5 watts over standard desktop drives making it possible for our energy-conscious customers to build systems with higher capacities and the right balance of system performance, ensured reliability, and energy conservation.Cool and quiet
WD GreenPower Technology yields lower operating temperatures for increased reliability and low acoustics for ultra-quiet PCs and external drives.Massive capacity
Capacities up to 2 TB offer the most available capacity for storage-intensive programs and space-hungry operating systems, like Windows Vista®, with plenty of room left over for photos, music, and video. Perfect for external drives - External drive manufacturers can eliminate the need for a fan in a high-capacity product with a WD Caviar Green drive, the coolest and quietest in its class.IntelliPower
A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance.IntelliSeek
Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise, and vibration. View demo >NoTouch ramp load technology
The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR)
Employs PMR technology to achieve even greater areal density.StableTrac
The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations. (2 TB models only)Low power spin-up
WD Caviar Green drives consume less current during startup allowing lower peak loads.Advanced power technology
Electronic components deliver best-in-class low power consumption for reduced power requirements and increased reliability.Back To Top
Western Digital VelociRaptor
Ideal For:
Performance enthusiast systems, workstations, and low-end servers.
Bigger. Faster. Hungrier.
WD Caviar Green drives use less power and support quieter, cooler-running desktop PCs and external storage devices.
The PC enthusiasts' favorite 10,000 RPM hard drive is still the fastest, most dangerous carnivore around - now with an ultra-fast 32 MB cache and SATA 6 Gb/s interface and twice the capacity of previous generations.
Key Features
Killer speed
SATA 6 Gb/s interface and 32 MB cache enhance the next generation 10,000 RPM WD VelociRaptor making it up to 15% faster than the award-winning previous generation.Monstrous capacity
WD VelociRaptor SATA drives are available in capacities up to 600 GB, double the capacity of the previous generation.Rock-solid reliability
Designed and manufactured to mission-critical enterprise-class standards to provide enterprise reliability in high duty cycle environments. With 1.4 million hours MTBF, these drives have the highest available reliability rating on a high capacity SATA drive.Ultra-cool operation
Consumes less idle power and uses similar active power as the previous generation WD VelociRaptor, while offering double the capacity and higher performance.IcePack mounting frame
The 2.5-inch WD VelociRaptor is enclosed in a backplane-ready 3.5-inch enterprise-class mounting frame with a built-in heat sink that keeps this powerful little drive extra cool when installed in high-performance desktop chassis.Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF)
Optimizes operation and performance when the drives are used in vibration-prone, multi-drive chassis.NoTouch ramp load technology
The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.Environmentally conscious
In addition to being ROHS compliant, this generation of WD VelociRaptor is also a halogen-free design.Back To Top
Intel SATA Solid-State Drive
Ideal For:
Small operating system drive.
Extreme performance, reliability, and power savings for servers, storage and workstations
The Intel® Extreme SATA Solid-State Drive (SSD) offers outstanding performance and reliability, delivering the highest IOPS per watt for servers, storage and high-end workstations.
Key Features
Reduce your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Enterprise applications place a premium on performance, reliability, power consumption and space. Unlike traditional hard disk drives, Intel Solid-State Drives have no moving parts, resulting in a quiet, cool storage solution that also offers significantly higher performance than traditional server drives. Imagine replacing up to 50 high-RPM hard disk drives with one Intel® X25-E Extreme SATA Solid-State Drive in your servers - handling the same server workload in less space, with no cooling requirements and lower power consumption. That space and power savings, for the same server workload, will translate to a tangible reduction in your TCO.Better by design
Drawing from decades of memory engineering experience, the Intel X25-E Extreme SATA Solid-State Drive is designed to deliver outstanding performance and reliability, featuring the latest-generation native SATA interface with an advanced architecture employing 10 parallel NAND flash channels equipped with single-level cell NAND flash memory for even greater overall performance and reliability. With powerful Native Command Queuing to enable up to 32 concurrent operations, these Intel SSDs deliver higher Input/Output Operations per Second (IOPS) and throughput performance than other SSDs on the market today - and drastically outperform traditional hard disk drives. These Intel drives also feature low write amplification and a unique wear-leveling design for higher reliability, meaning Intel drives not only perform better - they last longer.Validated and tested by Intel, on Intel
All Intel® X25-E Extreme SATA Solid-State Drives are tested and validated on the latest Intel-based server and workstation platforms, for your peace of mind.Back To Top
Seagate® Savvio® 15K.2 6-Gb/s Hard Drives
Ideal For:
Performance enthusiast systems, servers.
SAS performance, enterprise storage
The 2.5-inch Seagate® Savvio® 15K.2 hard drive is the highest performing, greenest drive for enterprise storage systems and the only second-generation 15,000 RPM 2.5-inch drive. It provides the world's highest performance and reliability while delivering ultra-low power consumption. The Savvio 15K.2 drive delivers more transactional performance density than any other drive, making this a best fit for high-end and mainstream server and external storage solutions.
Key Features
- 115 percent improvement in system-level performance over 3.5-inch 15K drives
- PowerTrimT technology dynamically reduces power up to 70 percent over comparable 3.5-inch 15K drives
- IOPS/W are 2.5 times better than comparable 3.5-inch Tier-1 drives
- 70 percent smaller size than 3.5-inch drives reduces overall system cooling costs
- Supports 6-Gb/s transfer rates and SAS 2.0 feature set
- Second-generation 2.5-inch 15K enterprise drive with field-proven reliability
Applications
- High-performance enterprise servers and storage arrays
- Transaction-intensive OLTP and database applications
- Blade, rack and tower servers
- Embedded enterprise applications (i.e., medical, industrial and military)
- Power-constrained data centers
- Space-constrained data centers
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