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Quietest SCSI hard drive?

S

Syntho

6502
Alright, I need the most silent SCSI hard drive that I can possibly get. It'll be the main SCSI drive in my 9600. I don't care how big or how small the drive is, just that it's quiet. The only noise coming from my 9600 at the moment is the power supply fan and I don't want to increase it at all if possible. I have a SATA card with an SSD and a 1TB Seagate that are both basically dead silent. I want the equivalent of that in SCSI.

I'm hearing some good things about those Seagate 15K Cheetah drives. You have the 15k.3, 15k.4, 15k.5 and so on but I don't know the differences between them. The quietest one that'll fit into a 9600 is the one I'll take regardless of size.

 
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Personally I'd just keep your SSD and SATAs drives going - why change?  "Going back"to SCSI is a gamble as you'll be looking at second-hand drives (I'm assuming - new are crazy prices), which won't be as reliable and as used vary wildly in their noise output.  A 5 - 10 year old drive has reached it's end of life and the older, the noisier as bearings fail.  15K drives are never quiet, nor will they have had an easy life.

JB

 
I need it for compatibility reasons. Some of my software won't work without a SCSI drive but that's another story. I've got to have one unfortunately, so if I'm going to pop one in there, I want it to be as silent as possible.

I don't know much about the different types of SCSI connectors but it's looking like to get a quiet drive, I'm gonna have to find some sort of adapter. There's an internal 50-pin on the 9600 and most of the drives I'm seeing are either 68 or 80 pin. I hope I can find a solution.

 
You could use a SCSI2SD, those are silent (for obvious reasons :) )

Or i would get one of the small 7K2 RPM SCA hdd's, i have a 9.1GB compaq 7K2 drive in my LCII and it is almost silent

 
The SD card solution looks a little expensive. I can do some research and find just any ol' quiet SCSI hard drive, so what I'm worried about is using some sort of adapter. I don't know if those newer SCSI drives with 68 or 80 pin connectors will work with an adapter in a 9600. They've got some really cheap 80pin to 50pin adapters on Ebay from China.

 
The drive i use in my LCII is a compaq bb009135b4, and it's damn near silent

Also i do sell terminated 80pin to 50pin adapters (the ones from china aren't terminated).

The only thing with 68pin or 80pin drives is they can be a bit of a gamble, some just don't work on a 50pin bus

 
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I was wondering how termination worked. I guess I pull the jumpers off of the drive and use the jumpers on the adapter card?

Those two pictures I posted are both 15k.4 drives but they seem to have different connectors. Which one of them does your adapter work with?

 
the bottom one is 80pin SCA, which is what my adapters work with, the top one I think is fiberchannel (but i'm not 100% sure, but it won't work with your mac)

With my adapters everything needed for termination is soldered to the adapter, no need to go puling termination resistors from anything

 
Not sure what your specific purposes are, but I've had great luck with a 68->50pin SCSI adapter in my 9600. No issues installing or running any system software or otherwise.

 
The gender on those adapters seems wrong, so I'm taking it that I need an actual cable from the drive to the adapter. Right?

 
I think I'm gonna take a chance on one of those Seagate Cheetah 15k.4 drives. Do you think that would work in a powermac 9600 with the adapter? I read something about non-Apple SCSI drives giving problems, and max noted something about some drives just not working correctly. I think Apple was using Seagate SCSI drives in 9600s anyway so maybe this will be a good fit.

 
It's hard to know, i have used a 15k seagate drive in my 8600 and it worked, but compatibility is very much a drive by drive affair, without trying there is no way to know

Also 15k drives aren't quiet, if you want a quiet drive go with a 10k or 7k2 drive (10k's are allot quieter than a 15k's, and 7k2's are the quietest of the lot)

As non apple drives causing problems, if your using os 8 or 9 you should be fine, it's just the older apple utilities won't format a non apple rom'd drive

 
just thought I'd pop in here if you're still looking, I've had a lot of luck with IBM eServer pSeries SCA SCSI drives for low noise. I've just recently ordered a 10k 73GB + SCA to 50pin adapter to go in a PowerTower Pro 250 Mac clone I recently acquired, and I already own two 146GB's of the same kind in an old dual PIII server in my posession. they are among the quietest SCSI drives of their time (2005ish? depends on how lucky you are) and they last pretty much forever given they're kept relatively cool.

I"ll keep you posted if it turns out to be quiet enough.

 
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