quiet 250gb sata drives, powermac G5

[Lt Major Burns]

i am looking to upgrade my HDD to 250gb.
my powermac g5 currently has the standard 80gb SATA drive in it, and upgrades from macwarehouse seem to be between £80 and £100, for 250gb SATA drives.

my question is, with them all being 7200rpm, 8mb buffer 3.5" drives, what is the £20 difference for (the cheapest is seagate, with most the models in between being almost identical western digital caviar drives.), and also, how can i tell if the drive is going to be noisy or quiet?

my ipod, when i was booting panther off that, was amazing - eerily quiet! it just highlighted how damned noisy the 80gb is when it crunches away. the super-quiet temperature controlled G5 is tainted by the offensive crunching from the disk.

i want a quiet 250gb sata.

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

From what I've heard, Seagate 250GB drives are pretty quiet -- but then again, there's really no way to know at all.

For example, I purchased a Western Digital 60GB 7200RPM 2MB cache drive a while back, and it emits an audible "whine" at all times. A buddy of mine purchased a seemingly identical drive a year later, and it's quiet as a mouse... my point is that even though someone may come along and say, "This exact model of drive is quiet," the manufacturer may have changed the manufacturing process between the time he purchased and the time you purchase making the drive noisier/quieter.

With that said, all Western Digital drives I've purchased since the whiny 60GB have been whisper-quiet, and I love the reliability of them. I do have to say that I've been told on more than one occasion that the Seagates are known for their quiet operation, but someone else may have had different experiences.

 

[[-Stash-]]

I personally find the Maxtor Diamond Max Plus9 range very quiet. However, I think the next drive I purchase is going to be the seagate 7200.8 250GB version. It has a 5 year warranty, which I really like the sound of. Check out www.storagereview.com for comparative results regarding the sound of one drive to another.