# 1TB Drive for TiVo HD



## Chiparoo (Aug 5, 2007)

I've been looking for an internal 1TB drive for my TiVo HD. Rich Adams do you have any advice? It seems like you have some experience in this area. I certainly want the quietest drive possible as it is in our bedroom. I'm thinking that a good one might be a WD Green Drive. I looked on the WD website and it mentions WD10EVCS as the right choice but I can't find it for sale online anywhere. BTW: I'm also in Portland


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## tivoupgrade (Sep 27, 2000)

Chiparoo said:


> I've been looking for an internal 1TB drive for my TiVo HD. Rich Adams do you have any advice? It seems like you have some experience in this area. I certainly want the quietest drive possible as it is in our bedroom. I'm thinking that a good one might be a WD Green Drive. I looked on the WD website and it mentions WD10EVCS as the right choice but I can't find it for sale online anywhere. BTW: I'm also in Portland


We have had good success with the Hitachi Deskstar and Hitachi CinemaStar products.

I've got not experience with the Western Digital product you mentioned, however we are going to be looking at them shortly, we just haven't had a chance to get any in for testing; they should be fine.

PS. Regards to Portland (assuming you mean Oregon); I lived there some time ago and loved it.


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## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

Chiparoo said:


> I've been looking for an internal 1TB drive for my TiVo HD. Rich Adams do you have any advice? It seems like you have some experience in this area. I certainly want the quietest drive possible as it is in our bedroom. I'm thinking that a good one might be a WD Green Drive. I looked on the WD website and it mentions WD10EVCS as the right choice but I can't find it for sale online anywhere. BTW: I'm also in Portland


FAQ #27 in the stickied eSATA FAQ has a list of recommended drives for internal and external use.

I use the 1TB Western Digital WD10EACS-32ZJB0 and it works well. Rich posted a picture of the box here.


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## rturrentine (Jan 24, 2003)

Frys.com has a 1TB Seagate onsale for $270.

Seagate 1TB Serial ATA/300 32MB Buffer ST1000340AS-RK - Retail Boxed Hard Drive 

Seagate:
FRYS.com #: 5478279
7200RPM 
32MB BUFFER 
RETAIL BOXED HARD DRIVE (INSTALLATION KIT INCLUDED) 
5 YEAR WARRANTY 

I searched the forums and didn't see any references to this drive.


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## gatzke (Dec 28, 2007)

With TB drive prices so cheap, why can't they release a "blessed" Tivo HD drive that works without a hack? I hate to buy the DVR Expander when a drive with nearly double the capacity is not much more expensive...


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## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

rturrentine said:


> Frys.com has a 1TB Seagate onsale for $270.
> 
> Seagate 1TB Serial ATA/300 32MB Buffer ST1000340AS-RK - Retail Boxed Hard Drive
> 
> ...


That's the drive to get if you want your TiVo to sound like a 747. It's not the drive to buy if you want a quiet TiVo.


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## rturrentine (Jan 24, 2003)

Thanks for tip! I'll stay away from it.


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## DaveDFW (Jan 25, 2005)

bkdtv said:


> That's the drive to get if you want your TiVo to sound like a 747. It's not the drive to buy if you want a quiet TiVo.


No, the older 7200.10 drives have loud seeks.

The new 7200.11 drives are quieter than the old DB35's were. All the Seagate 1tb drives are the 7200.11's.

I pulled this data from an old post:

30/31 db DB35 SATA (http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_db35_7200_3.pdf)
28/37 db Barracuda 7200.10 SATA (http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_barracuda_7200_10.pdf)
27/29 db Barracuda 7200.11 SATA (http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_barracuda_7200_11.pdf)

TTYL
David


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## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

DaveDFW said:


> No, the older 7200.10 drives have loud seeks.
> 
> The new 7200.11 drives are quieter than the old DB35's were. All the Seagate 1tb drives are the 7200.11's.
> 
> ...


I'm well aware of what Seagate claims. However, in my experience with the ST3500620AS (500Gb), and the reviews I've read, those claims don't hold up.

Below is Storagereview's comparison with the Enterprise version (PDF) of the Barracuda 7200.11, which has the same specs.









Seagate Barracuda ES.2 = enterprise version of Barracuda 7200.11

Based on the numbers above, the Seagate looks better than the Hitachi Deskstar. However, Hitachi allows you to adjust the Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) setting to reduce seek noise. Seagate does not.

Anandtech compared the Hitachi with AAM enabled. Below is a graph showing noise in actual use (not idle).


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## Chiparoo (Aug 5, 2007)

The WD website talks about the WD10EVCS. Is that a replacement for WD10EACS? The 10EVCS is the one I would like to buy and can't find it anywhere. Does anyone know where I can buy it?


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## flatcurve (Sep 27, 2007)

bkdtv said:


> I'm well aware of what Seagate claims. However, in my experience with the ST3500620AS (500Gb), and the reviews I've read, those claims don't hold up.
> 
> Based on those numbers, the Seagate looks better than the Hitachi. However, Hitachi allows you to adjust the Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) setting to reduce seek noise. Seagate does not.


In my experience, a tuned Desktar is just as quiet as a WD Caviar, if not quieter.


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## Chiparoo (Aug 5, 2007)

The comparison chart looks interesting but the noise I would be concerned about is during Seeking not Idle as it shows here.


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## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

Chiparoo said:


> The comparison chart looks interesting but the noise I would be concerned about is during Seeking not Idle as it shows here.


I added the Anandtech graph, which shows seeks.


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## ilh (Dec 21, 2007)

I'm a fan of drive noise analysis done by Silent PC Review. The WD Green drive they tested was the quietest they've ever analyzed. The Hitachi 7K1000 comes in 4-5dB louder. I don't recall if they have any 7200.11 reviews.

They also do acoustic spectrum analysis to determine the drives' speeds. The Green drives they've tested are running at a fixed 5400RPM. The Hitachi goes down to 4500RPM in low-speed idle.

Anyone try a 500GB Green drive in a TiVo HD (or S3)? At $105 at Newegg, I might pull the trigger.

--Lee


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## tivoupgrade (Sep 27, 2000)

I can tell you that the older 7200 RPM Seagate Barracuda drives (from about a year ago) are particularly noisy and they cannot be tuned with any publicly available tools. 

I can also tell you that the Deskstar drives, when tuned with what is publicly available from the Hitachi site are definitely as quiet as the CinemaStar drives.

We have also run side-by-side tests on Hitachi Deskstar drives (tuned, 1TB) comparied to Seagate DB35 drives (750GB) and it is difficult to hear either of them.


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## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

DaveDFW said:


> 27/29 db Barracuda 7200.11 SATA (http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_barracuda_7200_11.pdf)


Those are specs for the quiet mode, but there is no user utility to change the drive to that mode.

EDIT: Wrong info. See below.


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## Joybob (Oct 2, 2007)

c3 said:


> Those are specs for the quiet mode, but there is no user utility to change the drive to that mode.


Untrue. I'm running the Barracuda 7200.11 successfully. Seagate doesn't have a tool for changing the AAM, but there are third party programs that can do the same thing. At 128 the drive becomes a lot less loud.

It boils down to power consumption and extra heat. The 'green' drives are probably the smart choice.


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## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

Joybob said:


> Untrue. I'm running the Barracuda 7200.11 successfully. Seagate doesn't have a tool for changing the AAM, but there are third party programs that can do the same thing. At 128 the drive becomes a lot less loud.


What? Are you saying that Seagate is now supporting AAM?


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## Joybob (Oct 2, 2007)

c3 said:


> What? Are you saying that Seagate is now supporting AAM?


I'm saying I got my Seagate drive to change to 128 AAM...


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## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

Wow! That's a major news. Seagate has refused to implement that feature for many years, due to patent licensing. People who want Seagate drives don't need to wait for and pay the extra cost for the DB35 version.


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## Joybob (Oct 2, 2007)

c3 said:


> Wow! That's a major news. Seagate has refused to implement that feature for many years, due to patent licensing. People who want Seagate drives don't need to wait for and pay the extra cost for the DB35 version.


Is that sarcasm?


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## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

No. Why is that sarcasm?


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## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

That post from c3 is quite true. You couldn't enable AAM on the previous two (three?) generations of Seagate desktop drives. You had to buy the DB35 series.


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## Joybob (Oct 2, 2007)

c3 said:


> No. Why is that sarcasm?


Sorry I was confused.

p.s. I'd recomend getting some rubber or sillicon grommets. Might cut down on the noise.

http://www.silenx.com/accessories.asp?sku=ixa-gm4

I think radio shack also sells some.


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## brettatk (Oct 11, 2002)

I upgraded mine with the WD Green 1 TB drive and have had no problems. I cannot even hear the hard drive spinning and I made no adjustments to the AAM.


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## Narf54321 (Mar 30, 2005)

c3 said:


> What? Are you saying that Seagate is now supporting AAM?


IIRC, I believe the Accoustic Management patent was from Maxtor/Quantum. And of course, Seagate bought out Maxtor so shouldn't be surprising to see AAM start showing up in the Seagate products.

All that said, I myself dropped a Western Digital 1TB in my own S3 (without tuning) and it has been pleasantly cool N' quiet.


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

brettatk said:


> I upgraded mine with the WD Green 1 TB drive and have had no problems. I cannot even hear the hard drive spinning and I made no adjustments to the AAM.


 +1, and Just when I could use the extra heat the TiVo HD is running cooler.


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## Chiparoo (Aug 5, 2007)

Well I took the plunge yesterday and upgraded my TiVo HD with a 1TB Western Digital WD10EACS-32ZJB0 (retail box) pictured early in this thread. I set AAM to 128 with the Hitachi tools. The drive seeks are imperceptible from 1 foot away.

The drive I had before in this box was a Seagate Barracuda ST3500630AS (retail box). Of course I could not adjust AAM and the seeking would wake us up from 10 feet away.

The 1TB Western Digital WD10EACS-32ZJB0 is an incredibly quiet drive. I'm very happy!


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## dan325it (Jan 5, 2004)

The wd10evcs is starting to show up at several online vendors, at least for pre-order. I'm planning to stick one into a linux server I'm building.

Dan


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## ilh (Dec 21, 2007)

Why the WD10E*V*CS over the WD10E*A*CS? My understanding is unless you're using the special streaming commands, they don't perform differently, and the WD10EACS is more available and less expensive. Just curious.

--Lee


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## jlib (Nov 22, 2002)

ilh said:


> Why the WD10E*V*CS over the WD10E*A*CS? My understanding is unless you're using the special streaming commands, they don't perform differently, and the WD10EACS is more available and less expensive. Just curious.


ilh is spot on. The WD10EVCS is just WD's new implementation of a DVR or AV drive along the lines of the DB35, CinemaStar, and QuickView drives. The Tivo cannot use any of its extra "SilkStream™" functionality and will just see it as an expensive WD10EACS drive. The WD10EACS has the the best all around specs for a TiVo and is the best choice (with the one bizarre caveat regarding internal use on a classic S3 due to soft-reboot failure). The Deskstar is also a perfectly acceptable drive and the most reliable so far (due to its longer history).


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## jlib (Nov 22, 2002)

Joybob said:


> I'm saying I got my Seagate drive to change to 128 AAM...


Joybob, your report that Seagate series 11 is supporting AAM is huge news (in the hard drive world). Did you stumble upon this capability yourself or did you read about it somewhere. This is such big news I would expect that there would be easily available corroborating evidence but I see none. Was it the Hitachi utility that you used? Was it set to 256 out of the box? You are pretty clear in saying that you changed it and not that it simply reported 128 right off the bat, right?


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## jlib (Nov 22, 2002)

Narf54321 said:


> IIRC, I believe the Accoustic Management patent was from Maxtor/Quantum. And of course, Seagate bought out Maxtor so shouldn't be surprising to see AAM start showing up in the Seagate products.


Maxtor was a licensee of the patent so that may explain things but Seagate would still have to pay and you wonder why they resisted so long.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Chiparoo said:


> Well I took the plunge yesterday and upgraded my TiVo HD with a 1TB Western Digital WD10EACS-32ZJB0 (retail box) pictured early in this thread. I set AAM to 128 with the Hitachi tools. The drive seeks are imperceptible from 1 foot away.
> 
> The drive I had before in this box was a Seagate Barracuda ST3500630AS (retail box). Of course I could not adjust AAM and the seeking would wake us up from 10 feet away.
> 
> The 1TB Western Digital WD10EACS-32ZJB0 is an incredibly quiet drive. I'm very happy!


Hi Chip. Apologies...I didn't see your original post until now. Glad to hear that everything is working fine. That's the same drive I dropped into our Series3 and it's working like a charm. I adjusted the AAM setting to 128 when I first got it as well but to be honest it was very quiet to start with so the change wasn't that noticeable...it's just a very quiet drive. Enjoy! :up:

BTW, I took the Seagate DB35 SATA drive that was hooked up to our Series3 and slipped it into my main PC. It's whisper quiet as well...the cooling fans cover up any noise it might be making. It's a bit disconcerting because I used to hear the old Seagate when I'd click on something...it let me know the computer was working. Now I don't hear anything.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Joybob said:


> I'm saying I got my Seagate drive to change to 128 AAM...





jlib said:


> Joybob, your report that Seagate series 11 is supporting AAM is huge news (in the hard drive world). Did you stumble upon this capability yourself or did you read about it somewhere. This is such big news I would expect that there would be easily available corroborating evidence but I see none. Was it the Hitachi utility that you used? Was it set to 256 out of the box? You are pretty clear in saying that you changed it and not that it simply reported 128 right off the bat, right?


I find this claim to be on the questionable side myself as it would be very big news if it were fact. I too did some due diligence on the subject and came up with nothing. It would be nice...but it's not likely that they changed their compliance with patent laws without anyone noticing. You might want to get some confirmation directly from Seagate.


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## jlib (Nov 22, 2002)

Chiparoo said:


> ...I looked on the WD website and it mentions WD10EVCS as the right choice but I can't find it for sale online anywhere.


If you want to pay more for a WD 1TB GreenPower drive than the basic Caviar GP WD10EACS (which is perfectly adequate for the TiVo) then the one to get is the RE2-GP WD1000FYPS which has desirable Time-Limited Error Recovery (TLER) as a default with out needing to resort to the ATA-7 streaming command set the TiVo is not capable of (as required with the non-retail OEM-specific AV-GP WD10EVCS). Though originally designed for the RAID environment, non-heroic error recovery is often an advantage in a TiVO environment.

I have used dozens of older WD RE2 drives in server environments and they are superb in every way. I have never replaced one. Even my current S3 uses 2 500GB RE2 drives and I have not experienced the slightest hiccup in over a year of constant use.

Generally, an enterprise type drive is overkill (unneeded anti-vibration technology) for a TiVo but for those for whom price is no object don't waste the premiun on a DVR specific drive (the DVR has to be designed around them, by the way, and the TiVO wasn't). Instead, get the RE2-GP which combines the TiVO friendly features of low power, TLER, IntelliSeek, and AAM (25 dBA) and which also has a MTBF of 1.2 million hours and a 5 year warranty.


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## lew (Mar 12, 2002)

I'm not sure why this would be very big news. I suspect many upgraders don't bother setting acoustics with drives that allow for it.

You can do a search, a poster found a utility that works on the Seagate drives. One of the dvr upgrade people confirmed such a utility exists but isn't suppose to be publicly available.



richsadams said:


> I find this claim to be on the questionable side myself as it would be very big news if it were fact. I too did some due diligence on the subject and came up with nothing. It would be nice...but it's not likely that they changed their compliance with patent laws without anyone noticing. You might want to get some confirmation directly from Seagate.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

lew said:


> I'm not sure why this would be very big news. I suspect many upgraders don't bother setting acoustics with drives that allow for it.
> 
> You can do a search, a poster found a utility that works on the Seagate drives. One of the dvr upgrade people confirmed such a utility exists but isn't suppose to be publicly available.


Sources please?


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

FYI, Western Digital has released a new line of DVR hard drives. More here.


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## jlib (Nov 22, 2002)

lew said:


> ...You can do a search, a poster found a utility that works on the Seagate drives. One of the dvr upgrade people confirmed such a utility exists but isn't suppose to be publicly available.


I remember in the fall of '06 right before the Seagate DB35 750GB drive was released Weakness had some procedure about which they were under NDA with Seagate that allowed them to quiet their notoriously loud standard 750GB drive. Though it was never confirmed most speculated that they were given access to a firmware upgrade utility that could put the DB35 firmware on the standard drive. If it were simply a tool to change the AAM setting Seagate would have just added to their patent infringement woes. And such an upgrade utility would only be of value with the appropriate firmware binary. In any case, all who knew the details weren't talking. The only Google search I found that shows a poster reporting a publicly available utility that works on _latter day_ Seagates is Joybob's so we are just looking for corroboration. Trust but verify, as they say...


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## Dirac (Oct 18, 2002)

c3 said:


> Those are specs for the quiet mode, but there is no user utility to change the drive to that mode.
> 
> EDIT: Wrong info. See below.


Did I miss something? How do you enable AAM on a Seagate 7200.11? Hitachi Feature Tool doesn't do it.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Dirac said:


> Did I miss something? How do you enable AAM on a Seagate 7200.11? Hitachi Feature Tool doesn't do it.


There was one post here by someone claiming to have been able to adjust the AAM on a Seagate drive which to date has been uncorroborated and unverified by anyone including the OP. AFAIK you cannot adjust the acoustics on any Seagate drive so I don't think you or anyone else missed anything.


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

A firmware update exists for the 7200.11 drives which supposedly improves performance. Supposedely the factore firmware only uses half the available cache. Read about it here http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/other_downloads/cuda-fw

richsadams: I seem to remember reading this as well. I cant find the post though. Can you/anyone help me track it down?
Frys is currently selling both WD and SG 1TB drives for around the same price and since the WD doesnt work well as internal for the S3 I'm sure we will see more requests for the SG AAM tool.

I posted a thread regarding part numbers and prices for the (probably short lived) Frys sale http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=386402


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## jlib (Nov 22, 2002)

There was no corroborating evidence. The claim was not credible. There _is_ significant evidence to the contrary, though.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

ciper said:


> A firmware update exists for the 7200.11 drives which supposedly improves performance. Supposedely the factore firmware only uses half the available cache. Read about it here http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/other_downloads/cuda-fw
> 
> richsadams: I seem to remember reading this as well. I cant find the post though. Can you/anyone help me track it down?
> Frys is currently selling both WD and SG 1TB drives for around the same price and since the WD doesnt work well as internal for the S3 I'm sure we will see more requests for the SG AAM tool.
> ...


Thanks for the link. :up:

As *jlib *says, there still doesn't seem to be any evidence that the AAM can be adjusted on Seagate drives.


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## tivoupgrade (Sep 27, 2000)

richsadams said:


> Thanks for the link. :up:
> 
> As *jlib *says, there still doesn't seem to be any evidence that the AAM can be adjusted on Seagate drives.


It is possible to do it for specific models of specific Seagate drives (it is probable that it can be done for all drives with the right tools and information) however there is no end-user tool available (to my knowledge). The task is non-trivial and requires the assistance and authorization from Seagate.

I can personally attest to the fact that AAM has been adjusted on a very specific model of a Seagate drive. To my knowledge this did not involve anything to do with the cache utilization, but did involve slowing down of seek times so that the drive performed more quietly as a result.

I have carefully chosen my words here, because there are certain things that I cannot say (either publicly or privately) however if you read between the lines, you should be able to understand what that all means.

As for the folks who are looking for a way to adjust AAM on Seagate drives, unfortunately it is not likely you will be successful; so its a bit of a moot point, but for those who were curious about what is "possible" I thought I'd chime in...


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Thanks for the info. :up:

I know Seagate's DB35 line of drives are very quiet and perform quite well but the others are hit and miss with regard to acoustics. Seagate lists all of their specs including seek acoustics on their web site. A a little due diligence should get you something that will work well.


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