I have been happy with my Western Digital 2TB my book studio version. It runs firewire or USB. I had a problem with one of my Lacie drives (I had 5 stacked 250MB drives at one point) and I did a little research and seems like the all arrows pointed to the Western Digital drives.
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Try the aluminum external drives for Other World Computing (http://eshop.macsales.com). You can spec out the internal unit (I recommend a Seagate for low noise) if you give them a call. The techs there are very knowledgeable and may be able to help you pick the best configuration. The cases have no fans, so should be quiet with the right drive mechanism. Other World Computing also sells the NewerTech MiniStack line and these may also work well. |
The WD 2TB drives (green, not black) should be a good choice. They spin at 5400 rpm (vs 7200 rpm for most full size SATA drives) and by default have decent acoustic management. The black ones should be ok too but you don't need the extra speed and power consumption for audio files. There are 1.5 TB Seagate desktop drives that have firmware issues. The problem is that after x number of power cycles they turn in to a "brick". "x" is not really known. If you have a Seagate 1.5 TB drive make sure you check their website for FW upgrade based on your drive's S/N. All SATA drives should have acoustic management settings. If you're savvy enough figure out how to set the acoustic management setting you may be able to reduce some noise. A lot depends on the drive itself. I never checked but I would hope that most external drive packages via USB or Firewire have the acoustic management settings set to quietest since by design they're not meant for performance (because of the USB or Firewire interface). |
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