In the last Hard Drive review I wrote I was by necessity mainly limited in my acoustic testing to a subjective listening test of how much Drive noise I was able to hear while the drive was seeking/writing. This was because my Radio Shack db meter was not able to measure any sound level differences while the Drive was in use inside my case over ambient case noise, even with the side panel open. Although, technically accurate, it was nonetheless frustrating to write that the previous drive I reviewed (Seagate ST3750330AS 750GB SATA HD) was in my usage under ambient sound levels, especially since I am sure most of my readers don't have 10 fans (6 case fans, 1 PS fan, 2 CPU fans, 1 video card fan) in their case, greatly muffling any Hard Drive noise there might be. To this end I have done some digging and provided the manufacturer supplied sound levels below. As you can see the Seagate ST31000524AS is even quieter than the Seagate ST3750330AS Hard Drive which was itself silent inside my personal wind tunnel (well-ventilated case).



Link: MHW