ST-157A
Maxtor 7120AT
WD Caviar 2420

Depends what kind of noise you like, rattling a dried pea in a tin cup, Conner sub 120MB , suffocating an electric typewriter with a pillow, Seagate ST-3xx ....

Nice topic. I'd like to hear that suffocating typewriter sound! 😮

Seagate ST32140

Ones that work...

Microscience 3.5" full height units, such as the 7100. They have a really cool sounding start-up seek noise. I have an ESDI version, the 5100, but unfortunately it has bad bearings.

Also 2nd the Maxtor 7120AT. Love that whistle. Am also a huge fan of the Conners... the start-up buzz and *loud* ratchety seeks are unmistakable.
Also quite like the Quantum Fireball TM drives, especially the ones with the simpler "stamped metal slab" top. Those make a nice, rumbly, grumbly ratchet sound when you run Windows 95's Defragmenter on them.

Some of the silver Western Digital AC2540 and 2850 drives have a superlatively hollow sounding seek rattle - the ones that have empty pads for a PLCC chip on the bottom of the PCB and a 'WDC (C)1995' silkscreened on the board sound much hollower than the other drives without the empty PLCC chip pads for some reason.

Not an IDE hard drive, but the Maxtor Atlas 10K V has an awesome start-up seek pattern. Some Seagate Cheetahs and IBMs have similarly cool sounding seek pattern, albeit with less "beatbox".
https://youtu.be/SeRcXziutbg

My Maxtor diamondmax 8 40gb gaming disk has almost no noise at all but its still the fastest spinup of every damn disk I own from early 2000's including some seagates, WD's, with apple, IBM and Sun microsystems variations.
Its probably the best disk I've experience by Maxtor so far, and instead of a drive plate it looks to have a thim film seal over its chassis to help dissipate heat I always run the 7200rpm drive with a fan sucking air off the spindle bearing hub underneath (prevents heat buildup in drive) with a second unit I have run in RAID 0 and have never had a broken stripe. note i got mine from shop so 1 owner stuff not online 2nd hand.
*edit* attached an example picture with serial removed you can see the silver finish of the film however this one isn't as flash looking as mine but its still the correct one

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-11-05, 18:24:

Conner sub 120MB

Also vote for the Conner, although I have the 420MB I suspect its the same sound
https://youtu.be/_3SLadufyx0

I only accept the sound of stepper drives 😜
So, if speaking about IDE stuff, it would be the early ones, like ST-157A or WD95044-A

Ever had a 20MB hard disk in an IBM model 25 or model 30? That sounds beats all. Sweet, loud, slow, buzzing bizzzz buzzz bip bizzzz bup.

Quantum bigfoots are my favorite. To the point I cant wait to use two as a boot drive in my P4 system for the lols

Dunno about cracking under load, but I have an IBM Deskstar 120GXP 80GB, which emits a constant jet engine taking off noise, as long as it receives power.

At certain times it used to make ticking noises that you would expect on drives about to fail, and... it never did.

The drive is ~19 years old, not a single bad sector. *knock-on-wood*

dr_st wrote on 2021-11-09, 11:33:

At certain times it used to make ticking noises that you would expect on drives about to fail, and... it never did.

I recall IBM drives from that era - both IDE Deskstars and SCSI Ultrastars - occasionally making a disturbing sound...
nevertheless, they passed all the diagnostics procedures, and lasted for years.
So I got to blame it on normal termal recalibration...

Maxtor 7120AT whistle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up-4D3s7-CY
Conner CFS420A buzz-and-ratchet: https://youtu.be/EWoqtu_2ic0
I have the CFS420A and its slightly smaller but faster cousin, the CFA340A. They both sound very similar, though the spin-up noise is slightly higher pitched (4000 rpm vs. 3600 rpm).

Not IDE, but the Kyocera KC-30B makes some lovely sounds. It's IMO one of the nicer sounding steppers. You can even hear a very low humm/buzz just as it starts spinning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c78UYiHneRw

Does there exist any script/program to generate sounds by having the heads move?

I googled, but did not find what I want:
A script or utility that can play "HDD music" by moving the heads and delay inbetween, ideally using a text file where one can "compose" his own HDD "music".

Such would make these "instruments" actually "comparable", allowing for polls that can show how many people favor which "instrument(s)".
Ideally for Linux, so one can "play" these "instruments", no matter whether IDE, SATA, SCSI, SAS...

Probably nothing quite like the sound of the quantum 120mb from my old mac

Noise is caused by friction ( Not good )
Rubbing off metal parts or taping on plastic parts causes NOISE in hard drives.

So it is Actually NOT good to hear noise coming from a hard drive.
You will notice as engineering technology advances in hard drives they become quieter, faster, and larger capacity.

But I like the Ticking sound from the old Conner hard drives.
Sizes 80mb thru 540

You can’t beat the Ticking sound from these drives.
They sound so cool. Really retro. Like a type writer.

Sounds link:
https://youtu.be/_3SLadufyx0

retardware wrote on 2021-11-10, 05:16:

Does there exist any script/program to generate sounds by having the heads move?

I think there would be a problem with the average seek time. A very fast average seek speed is (according to the great Wiki) 4ms. As far as I know the seek speed isn't under the control of the OS (perhaps crudely with some drives having 'quiet' modes) so the drive just moves it as fast as it can, producing the tick noise. So to get a note you'd have to generate ticks fast enough for us to perceive it as a note (like the PC speaker does). But 4ms per seek only gets up to 250Hz maximum, which is around middle C on a piano.

People have played music through the drive heads by directly connecting to the head positioning voice coils, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M5ao1D4jWo at about 22seconds in, with the musical line over the top of the glockenspiel. But I don't think that's really what you're looking for.

It also appear in this one at about 2:47 (top-middle) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UesaCcfI_8 although I like that one more for the smooth sounding flyback transformer sparks. Most others I've heard are a lot rougher.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2021-11-10, 11:02:

Noise is caused by friction ( Not good )
Rubbing off metal parts or taping on plastic parts causes NOISE in hard drives.

Depends on the noise we're talking about. Conner spindle motors make a soft buzz just as they start up, which is a trademark sound of their drives. The Maxtor 7120A's whistle is generated entirely by the voice coil.
However, something that sounds metallic or scraping is probably not a healthy sound.

I get the Conner love 100% here, I got plenty of the dern things. And I'm always looking for more. 😁
I also have a CFA540A, which has a totally different start-up seek pattern. Just two soft clicks, no ratcheting. (At least, not until it begins to seek like crazy during bootup!) Mine has smoother sounding bearings than this one though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f11s8ccf0BQ