Firewire or USB 2 external drive that is as quiet as an iMac?

[animefx]

I've had 3 or 4 different hard drive enclosures in my life time, each one of them sounded like a jet taking off (well, not nearly that bad but annoyingly loud). I was wondering if there are any hard drive closures out there they either don't have a fan (is this safe for a hard drive enclosure?) or is extremely quiet?

Someone told me you would be fine with a 5400 rpm drive in an enclosure without a fan... is this true?

Another option would be if I could somehow put the drivers in a closet in an obscure location in my appartment and somehow network with them at very high speeds, without having a dedicated computer (meaning no mac, linux, or windows box acting as a server).

 

[livingfortoday]

I use a Rosewill FW400/USB 2.0 case, and it's silent as it has no fan. It stays cool because it puts itself in a sort of sleep mode when it's not being used for a period of time.

This is the one I have:
http://rosewill.com/product/product.aspx?productId=80

They make a FW800 one and a plain USB 2.0 one too.

You can look on newegg.com under cases/external enclosures, and they'll have a lot of good cases without fans for drives.

Oh, and I use regular 7200rpm drives.

 

[janey]

having a fanless enclosure might make it overheat.

i have one enclosure that does sound rather loud, but the rest of mine are almost inaudible (you don't notice it till its gone, and even then not always).

i just get regular 3.5" drives (seagate, wd) and have venus ds3 enclosures for them, do a search on newegg.