Quiet / silent external hard drive recommendation

[McQuiet]

Hi,

I was searching the net for help with this and Google threw up a post on here - but it is about 1 year old and the products mentioned in the links don't appear, presumably because the manufacturers referred to have new models now.

Any way, I am pretty desperate to get an external hard drive which is as quiet as it is possible to get (without paying the extra for solid state).

Can anyone help with any recommendations?

Thanks for reading this, and thanks in advance if you can post a suggestion.

 

[hamlinspahn]

My Book

This is what I use and it doesn't seem to make noise, or any noticeable noise. Mine are older than this model but essentially the same.
http://www.wdc.com/en/PRODUCTS/Products.asp?DriveID=725

 

[jazz1]

I used a WD Mybook Studio II with my 2 year old MacPro. It was very quiet and worked great with Time Machine. Unfortunately when I tried to use it with my iMac i7 I had all sorts of wake from sleep problems. There are several threads about this problem on these forums. Both Apple and WD have no clue about this. Tier one support out of India was very clueless, Tier 2 support out of California at least admitted they knew there was an issue with no fix so far.

I think I'd check out Macsales.com/OWC. They have a lot of external hard drive options. I have had one of theirs for several years with no problems. Though I don't find them as quiet as the WD or Lacie. I find my OWC external RAID0 bullet proof.

Speaking of Lacie I've had one of theirs for two weeks and I'm getting squealing noises. So it is going to have to go back.

 

[Jodles]

If size matters, I can recommend the Seaget FreeAgent Go. I have the 500gb version, and I find it to be really quiet (the fan on the AluBook's louder (when idle)).

It's also USB-powered, which I find to be an advantage; but not as fast as a FW drive of course.

 

[Jhanson09]

If size matters, I can recommend the Seaget FreeAgent Go. I have the 500gb version, and I find it to be really quiet (the fan on the AluBook's louder (when idle)).

It's also USB-powered, which I find to be an advantage; but not as fast as a FW drive of course.

also have this one, very nice drive. practically silent.

 

[Rhalliwell1]

If it is silence you are wanting and have a high budget i would just buy an SSD drive and put it in an external enclosure.

 

[Kingcodez]

Any drive you buy that's new and 2.5" I'd assume would be pretty damn quiet. Out of all the current gen WD Scorpio Blue HDDs I own none of them ever make noises. Nor do the stock Apple hard drives.
Just drop $100 on a WD 500+GB HDD, and buy a cheapo external case.

If you have the money get a FireWire enclosure, speed is much better.

 

[Paulywauly]

If your after a quiet drive i'd recommend the latest WD Mybook essentials, i've got a 2TB its very quiet, unlike my other older mybooks which are quite loud (from 2007/8)
The MyBook mirror drive is also dead quiet and also has space for 2 hard discs which can be set up in RAID 1 or 0, its practically silent (uses WD Greens) but the giant status light on the front can light up a whole room when its dark......