Quiet external hard drive for airport extreme

[rrandyy]

I'm looking to setup an external hard drive with my airport extreme.

Plan to use it for:
Time machine backups
Air drive

I'm looking for about 500GB to 1TB. Ideally, the drive will be setup near my TV, so it is important that it is quiet. Any suggestions for an external drive?

Order of importance:
1. Quiet
2. Size (500GB+)
3. Price
4. Looks

I did search, but surprisingly did not find many relevant posts. If you are aware of any, please link to them. Thanks!

 

[blevins321]

I'd recommend THIS enclosure by Macally. It doesn't have a fan inside so that reduces the noise by a great deal. And put THIS drive in it (or one of the other sizes). WD's Green line. You don't have to worry about getting a super-high-speed external drive because the bottleneck will be the USB2.0 speed, not the hard drives themselves.

As far as volume, I have 4 of those drives in a Synology NAS sitting on the table next to my desk. I can barely hear the hum of all four drives and the Synology cooling fan.

If you get one of the 2TB Green drives and the Macally Enclosure, you're looking at $110 total

 

[rrandyy]

Thanks! You think the hard drive itself is quiet too?

Edit: Just realized I upgraded my Tivo S3 with a 1TB western digital green and it is very quiet. I'll probably end up getting either a 1TB or 2TB drive for the recommended enclosure. Thanks!

 

[blevins321]

Thanks! You think the hard drive itself is quiet too?

Edit: Just realized I upgraded my Tivo S3 with a 1TB western digital green and it is very quiet. I'll probably end up getting either a 1TB or 2TB drive for the recommended enclosure. Thanks!

No problem . Yeah the drive is very quiet. The only time that I even notice it is when it first powers up. If the room is silent you hear the sound of a small motor spinning up. For a TV room though - it'd be perfect.

 

[EmpyreanUK]

I don't have anything to add but my thanks —*I'm planning to buy an Airport Extreme soon to replace the total heap of **** that is the Netgear router provided to me by Virgin Media. I wanted to add a USB drive for Time Machine backups and network storage that had a low power consumption and was quiet, and it seems I didn't even need to start a thread to ask for advice —*everything's already been answered in this topic!