Thanks for the very helpful response, k. I'm going to mull this one over. Right now I'm listening to my LaCie external hard drive sitting there semi-idle for a few minutes and I swear it's at least 5 times louder than my iMac. Then it kicks in it sounds like a KitKat commercial for a few seconds. Then it goes to sleep. It's like trying to get some sleep while sharing your bed with an occasional snorer. The salesperson talked me out of a second internal HD when I bought the iMac because of the price (He was trying to be helpful). I suppose I could just hide the LaCie behind my rig somewhere and it'll be OK ..but two of them? Does any one have recommendations for a reasonably priced reasonably quiet 1 or 2T drive? SSD will probably be prohibitively expensive. -thanks.
-
Exactly that was the reason, why I went for an SSD. Some noises can drive you nuts, even if they arenĀ“t physically as loud as you think. It also heavily depends on where you place the discs. In my office there are several old computers, some of which are very loud, but I donĀ“t care, cause it is a bigger room with carpet on the floor.
At home, in a smaller room with a wooden floor I swear I can hear if the HD is on or off even when IĀ“m in another room downstaires....
SSD is a really a big step forward. in that point.
If you place your system on it, it also isnĀ“t that much expensive today. Of course, if you want more than 200 GB e.g. for sample libraries, that will hurt much more.
I just wonder, why the Lacie is so loud, cause usually they provide good quality. If you hate it, just invest ~70 Euros for a second internal disc or ~180 for a SSD and you are fine. Then you can use the Lacie for backups only once in a while and the noise doesnĀ“t bother you anymore. Unless you used eSATA, this will also speed up things as a nice side-effect.