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Quietest 500GB Firewire drive?

I'm researching external drives for my music room (Firewire drive > PowerBook G4 > [USB DAC when I have more $] > Arcam FMJ). I want it to be as quiet as possible. (I would be very happy if it were as quiet as the PowerBook.) I have an older Lacie Big Disk in my office and, even though it is fanless, it isn't sufficiently quiet for my music room (I can hear the disks spinning and electrical hum).

Here are the drives I'm comparing so far:

- LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Disk
- Western Digital My Book Studio Edition
- Seagate FreeAgent Go for Mac

Can anyone speak about their relative noise levels? Lacie tells me the Quadra is much quieter than my older Big Disk, but I would like to hear from actual users.

Thanks!
syncrasy

Showing 2 responses by macdadtexas

macdadtexas
1,794 posts
 
if your collection is that big you really need a Raid system with multiple drives, or what is actually easier is a Drobo with multiple drives that make it nearly impossible to lose your data, and can give you up to 3TB of storage with backup.
macdadtexas
1,794 posts
 
For Drobo, if you get the Droboshare and make it a network storage resource, as I have done, you have redundant storage and backup, no worries about failing drives, and you don't need it in the same room as your audio gear. No noise, no data loss, an near infinite expandibilty.

BTW, when I bought Drobo, I bought 4 Western Digital 500MB Caviar drives, 2 of which failed right out of the plastic and had to be replaced, at no cost. So...
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