Best Hard Drive and Enclosure for Music Server

I use 2 LaCie d2 Quadras, 500GB each, and I've had good results. They are fanless and very quiet. They are 8 feet from my listening position and I cannot hear them (I only have one drive on at a time, and that helps). No failures so far after 6 months, but that is of course inevitable. I second Blindjim's suggestion to use isolation under your drives. I use Bright Star isonodes under both my drives - inexpensive and effective.

also check out the computeraudiophile dot com for more on this topic.

I've read a lot over at computeraudiophile but there's nothing about measured noise and little anecdotal info about quiet Firewire drives. there is a website that fastidiously rates computer equipment for noise, but they don't test external enclosures.

this morning i was looking at Caldigit and EZQuest. both market their products to audio/video production. EZQuest has two tempting single drive products. One is the Thunder Pro with no fan and the other is the simply named Pro with a ball bearing fan.

I have a Fantom Drive that works great with no fan but it's front grill exposes the drive and the drive noise echos outward.

Macworld and MacNN both gave nice reviews to the Thunder so I might give it a shot and report back.

Lots of great ideas here already... for more I'd look to computer based mags or websites for just such info. PC & Mac World, PC Magazine, etc. I just began Googling for best rated encloseures, servers, NAS drives, etc... found reviews and went shopping for my picks from those which best suited my budget and needs. I bought a NAS drive instead of a server. For me, it works great enough... and I've found the support for it exceptionally good too. Iomega 1TB NAS w/2 ext. USB slots. $235.00.