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philips

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 14, 2004
148
0
Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Seems topic wasn't touched in about a year, so I decided to ask the question again.

What quiet external hard drive can you recommend?

I'm trying to decide what should I pick as my external backup, but noise level is deciding factor for me.

I have two options on the table at the moment:
1. External harddrive to be plugged into AirPort Extreme
2. External harddrive to be plugged directly into MBP.

If I'd go with AirPort option, then the drive needs really to be silent - and no vibrations - as it would be most of the time on. Or can AirPort spin down hard drive when it's unused? How TimeMachine does it's backups: constantly or once in a while?

If I'd go with direct connect to MBP option, then I can probably live with noise for a limited time the drive is connected to MBP. I'm no stranger to *nix style scripted backups too. But that's not really option I want to live with.

What is your experience setting up noise-less backup?

P.S. Googling made me sad. Most people only look (or better say listen) to hard drive produced noises: seeks or motor noises. But disregard the major noise maker: vibrations. In my PC rig most of the noise during idle times produced mostly by vibrations of the Seagate hard drive. That was not the last reasons why I went ssd in my UMBP.
 
if u want noiseless... then go with SSD. for the cost of silence and ultra fast seek times comes at a huge price though...

you could plug in your SSD to almost any SATA/SATA2 HD enclosure, or even just replace ur MBP's current HD with that... you won't be disappointed if you do intend of investing in SSD. They're starting to slowly come down in price.
 
If you want noiseless and cannot afford SSD get a 2.5 inch HD. I can still hear my PB's 2.5 inch HD but it is much quieter than my external desktop drive.
 
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