Silent 300+GB drive for HTPC

Schlotkins · Post by **Schlotkins** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 9:44 pm

Good evening:

I'm putting the finishing touches on my HTPC building and I'm looking for a drive to put into my Antec Fusion case. Specifically, I'm going to RAID two drives together for reliability. I don't need huge capacity - anything over 300GB is fine. I just want QUIET w/ low vibrations. I was thinking about the Samsung F3 500GB drive as that's one platter, but I'm open to suggestions. Speed isn't necessarily a big deal - as long as it can record 2 shows at the same time.

Thank you,
Chris

Eunos · Post by **Eunos** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 2:20 am

Given your requirements I'd consider the 320 GB WD Scorpio Blue. At a guess it could be single-platter these days, assuming the 640 GB is 2 platter and the physically larger 1 TB model is 3 platter. Either way it is hard to top for acoustics. I bought a 640 GB model recently and when it arrives I'll be able to give a further run-down.

JamieG · Post by **JamieG** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 4:33 pm

FWIW, the 500Gb 2.5inch drive in my Seagate FreeAgent USB2 external HDD is pretty quiet. I assume it is a 2 platter Seagate Momentus 5400.x HDD in there.

The F3 you mentioned is another option (assuming you get the 5,400rpm EcoGreen version), but I don't have any experience with that drive.

FartingBob · Post by **FartingBob** » Tue Apr 20, 2010 5:37 am

I have the Samsung F3 500GB inmy main PC. I recently took out the 2 WD 640GB blue's (2 platters and very good options as well for HTPC usage) that i have had in there since they launched. Sincve all my multimedia is offloaded to my fileserver i didnt need 1.2TB and 4 platters in my main PC anymore.
I must say, this drive (although 7200rpm) is freakin quiet, and since its a single 500GB platter at 7200rpm its as fast as your going to get without going for 10k or SSD. I highly recommend it as a system drive, after years of nothing but WD in my systems samsung has won an equal footing in my book, and unlike WD the model numbers mean you know how many platters and what generation your getting, no confusion that plagues 500 and 1TB WD drives at the moment.

Only thing i am not sure about is vibrations since my drive is suspended, but 1 platter (esp if you get the 5400rpm version) suggests excellent results there as well.

The F3 ecogreen drive uses the same platter running at 5400rpm, which would probably be even better suited to an HTPC.

Schlotkins · Post by **Schlotkins** » Tue Apr 20, 2010 8:20 am

Thank you all for the suggestions. It looks like the Samsung is the way to go. I was going to go with an SSD drive but that's a LOT more expensive at this point. I'm going to offload stuff to a remote system as well so I just need enough to handle the system drive and a few days of recordings.

Should I have any issues with the Samsungs in RAID1? I know the WD drives have some issues.

Thanks,
Chris