While sizes and speeds of hard drives always seem to be going up, it’s a little more rare to see a company doing something about the sound given off by the fast-spinning platters. Samsung’s SpinPoint S166 hard disk drive series, however, does address noise by using its proprietary SilentSeek and NoiseGuard technologies “to accelerate operational speed while reducing noise.”
The 7,200rpm 3.5-inch drives, available this month in 80GB and 160GB sizes, offer up a 15 percent noise-level reduction from standard drives. While this reduction makes them super-great for sticking in a Media Center PC, the storage capacity is embarrassingly small for that application. Here’s hoping Samsung’s able to make an affordable 320GB version sometime soon.
Samsung Launches Silent and Speedy SpinPoint S166 Hard Disk Drive Series
Or you could get one of their 500 gig noisy ones for a $150 and pump up the volume.