SPCR

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/12/12 ... aptop_hdd/

After 2.5" HDDs such as these start being available, there won't be any reason to buy 3.5" for "silent" computer users.

Well I can think of two reasons why 3.5" might still be attractive for some time to come:

- performance
- price

I think it's overblowing things a bit to say that neither of the above are important to any "silent" computer user.

300GB is pretty amazing though. It seems like only a few months ago 160GB was the maximum. I haven't even used up the 100GB I already have, so 300GB would probably last me for a very long time.

Nutball is totally right even though his name suggests otherwise

I wouldnt buy one for my laptop for sure (not that I own one) mostly because they are physically higher than the standard 9.5mm and wont fit the vast majority of laptops, and because they are damned slow.

I would rather have a 160GB 5400rpm drive that fits a laptop, and have external storage for the rest.

It terms of achievement this is no miracle, the platter density has been increased from 80GB to 100GB but an additional platter has been added for the 300GB model.

The 200GB 2-platter model that is the standard 9.5mm high looks good until you get to the performance which sucks.


Andy

But a slower, low-power drive is just awesome for HTPC uses - the original Tivo used just a 4200 rpm drive.. or maybe a 5400 rpm. Anyway, TV storage doesn't need a fast rpm drive, as it's just pulling large blocks off in sequence (that is, assuming you've designed the filesystem correctly...).

I'd take one (or 2) of these!

-Dan

HTPCs are a niche use. A large niche, but still a niche. For general computing, performance differences between 2.5" and 3.5" drives are far from irrelevant.

Seagate's 7200.10 drives have an average seek of 8.5ms and will do a 78MB/s sustained transfer rate. None of the mobile drive makers even publish sustained data transfer rates in their specifications. Benchmark results land in the range of 20-40MB/s range. As for seek times, the typical 2.5" drive has an average seek of 12ms. These differences--especially the transfer rate--are very noticable in normal use.

"Longwalker" the useability will depend on the use and the user.

I wouldnt touch a 4200rpm drive with a 30ft pole, but a modern 5200rpm drive is perfectly useable for "non-performance needs". If your needs are performance based then performance is higher up the list than noise, and a quietish desktop drive will be fine, however a HTPC doesnt need a lot of performance so its not an issue at all.

I still wouldnt touch these drives myself, I would wait a few months for a "performance 5400rpm drive" to turn up with a 300GB capacity.


Andy

HTPCs can require high performance hard drives. In some cases the HTPC may be recording from multiple HDTV sources while the user is watching an HDTV program and at the same time the HTPC may be flagging commercial on already recorded programs.