Anyone own a WD6400AAKS 640GB drive?

M

MagicMan84

Limp Gawd
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Apr 9, 2008
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I've got two and...

Both are not exactly quiet compared to my old 80GB Maxtor. The noise is like "boop... boop... boop", when reading data. It's not loud, but it's kind of annoying a bit compared to the Maxtor which is more of a continuous muted "crunching" sound.

Anyone else notice this when they first installed their WD6400AAKS?
 
I never noticed any noise from mine - even if I put my ear down by the case I can't hear it at all, and I have a reasonably quiet case.
 
Both of mine are quiet, but then again, my computing enviroment isn't very quiet.
 
Turns out the noise I'm hearing is normal for the drive. If you guys can't hear the noise it makes, perhaps your PC fan is too loud, or the TV is always on in the background.

In a ultra-silent room, both WD6400's I tried are clearly audible when the HDD is writing or reading data. Another user here said all three of his WD6400's make the same type of noise. Perhaps my ears are too sensitive to background noise, the Raptor I heard is way to loud for me to ever consider using it. The Maxtor I had before is only 80GB and slow, perhaps that's why it's so quiet compared to these fast WD drives.
 
I was doing some searching and found this thread.

I thought I was the only one who heard these drives...my case's fans are just super silent but i am really hearing this drive, it not super loud but loud enough for me to hear it, while i heard eveyrone else saying these are drives are so quiet, so i thought something was wrong with my drive

at least i know i am not crazy
 
drives come in lots, im not surprised that you hear them.
I have a 150ADFD raptor, and i rarely hear it.
this is a drive that is supposed to be loud.
then again, a lot depends on how you mount it. p180B here, so mine is on rubber pads
case acoustics and steel or aluminum play a major role in harmonics.
dont kid yourself thinking its only the drive.

unscrew the drive, put on a foam pad, put a cardboard box over it (to simulate a case) and see if you can hear it. you will hear something. how close is the case to you? anything obstructing the acoustic path? (like a desk?)

you could have a bad batch, or you could have a bad case which distorts harmonics.
 
yes i have two of them and they are extremely quiet.... although my computer is loud 3x 150mm fans, 4x sas 15k drives not exactly quiet.
 
i built a budy a quiet system and we can't hear the drive. imo i love hearing the sound of the raptors reading and writing. i hate i can't hear them with my headphones on. guess thats my mentality about hard drives since i have heard them since 1988
 
My WD 640GB isn't exactly silent, but it's slightly quieter than my 500GB Samsung drive. It sounds like any other harddrive, producing the normal "crunching" sound, but more muted than the 500GB drive.
 
How much faster is a velociraptor than a WD6400AAKS? I'm having a hard time choosing.
 
raptors have a lot lower access time so if you got the $$$ and don't need 640gb of storage buy a raptor
 
axan said:
raptors have a lot lower access time so if you got the $$$ and don't need 640gb of storage buy a raptor
Click to expand...

Oh, ok. I read some reviews yesterday of people saying the 6400AAKS was almost as fast as a velociraptor. If that was true then there's no point in buying one for three times the price and half the storage.
 
read/write speeds are very close between 6400aaks and raptor but raptor has average access time of little over 4ms vs 13-14ms for 6400aaks
 
I just got one of these and put it in my first build. When installing vista it stalls and the drive continues to click and also makes sounds like short bursts of static. Is it dead?
 
F3rrum said:
I just got one of these and put it in my first build. When installing vista it stalls and the drive continues to click and also makes sounds like short bursts of static. Is it dead?
Click to expand...

I'd be RMAing mine
 
How much faster is a velociraptor than a WD6400AAKS? I'm having a hard time choosing.
Click to expand...

You mean you've read those other 945 Million, Bizillon, Zillion, threads that asked the exact same thing and still can't make a decision? :D

Good Luck!
 
F3rrum said:
I just got one of these and put it in my first build. When installing vista it stalls and the drive continues to click and also makes sounds like short bursts of static. Is it dead?
Click to expand...
Might be doa (prob egg's famous shipping) try it another sata controller or computer
 
what i will tell you is sometimes i hear it and other times it is quiet as anything

it is really strange

i ran all the errors checking utilites and everything is good so i am not worried and the access times is fast
 
I like mine too. It's fast and about as quiet as a hard drive can be. I hear it, but only because I have fairly quiet fans. Vista and my games are on an 80GB partition and my Documents are on a 516GB partition.
 
Are any of you running S.M.A.R.T. monitoring stuff? I have my AAKS in an external passively cooled enclosure, and it's peaking around 49* C. Seems kinda warm. Any other results?
 
rice rocket said:
Are any of you running S.M.A.R.T. monitoring stuff? I have my AAKS in an external passively cooled enclosure, and it's peaking around 49* C. Seems kinda warm. Any other results?
Click to expand...

yeah I was gonna say see what smart has to say.
 
Im quite impressed with my WD 640 tbh.

My only gripe about it was the fact it had a 15.8 seek time, Due to AAM turned all the way down ... but one quick boot into DOS with Hitachis feature tool was able to set to normal seek time vs very quite. Now at 12.4.

Even at that ... Its still quieter than my Seagate 320 7200.10.

Then again... The 120mm Sythe fans drown out most everything :p

Awesome Drives!
 
I also like my WD SE16 so far.. Very good performance. I used to have an older 74GB raptor and I have to say, the SE16 "feels" faster than this older drive.. It's also *much* quieter and runs much cooler.

The new Velociraptor is probably faster, but it's also much more expensive. When doing things like encoding video, compressing files or even loading levels in a game, the CPU is actually involved quite a bit, so a faster harddrive doesn't always help..also those operations tend to cause mostly sequential reads/writes.

If you get the WD16 instead, you not only get twice the storage space.. For the price difference, you can get more RAM, or put the money towards a CPU or GPU upgrade instead. That would give you a more noticeable performance improvement IMO.
 
Zayla74 said:
Im quite impressed with my WD 640 tbh.

My only gripe about it was the fact it had a 15.8 seek time, Due to AAM turned all the way down ... but one quick boot into DOS with Hitachis feature tool was able to set to normal seek time vs very quite. Now at 12.4.

Even at that ... Its still quieter than my Seagate 320 7200.10.

Then again... The 120mm Sythe fans drown out most everything :p

Awesome Drives!
Click to expand...

Notice much difference over your 7200.10?
 
Bump.

My three-week-old got reallocated sectors. I´ll RMA it right away. A Poor quality drive!

Batch: 00A7B0
 
jstenuf said:
+ 1 Mine is very quiet.
Click to expand...

+2

Mine is VERY quiet, almost as quiet as my GP drive.

Also, I still have two different 80GB Maxtor drives, and those things are really noisy compared to any modern drive, so...unless your Maxtor is a 5400RPM that was ahead of it's time with the drive motor, I'm not sure how it is possible that it is quieter than one of your drives, even two...
 
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