Quiet cheap 250gb+ hdd? £<70 in uk

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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fox
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Quiet cheap 250gb+ hdd? £<70 in uk

Post by fox » Fri Mar 31, 2006 1:05 pm

ok, im building a linux/mythtv based system, hopefully into a big draw that i don't really need near my tv and pc. shopping list so far(this is a very tight budget build) already have thorouhbread b 2200+ skt A cpu, 512-768mb ram.
either or parts of my compaq case, or built into drawer for case, choice of 2 pretty crap psu's for now, 250-350ws >than enough, a 9600pro, which i need to get hold of a passive or otherwise silent cooler for. and a 406b 5400rpm ide hdd. and my wonderful suse 10 dvd build, also a few cd/dvd drives around, thats not important working @ PCWorld i can get an avereage dvd burner for cheap enough.
about to buy the next few bits,
MSI nforce 2 based mobo (with SATA support) mATX £43
Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150 tv card £59
Scythe katana £25
some sort of gpu cooling for 9600pro <£25 if possible.

and the reason im posting here.
i need a bigish hard drive, at least 200gb, SATA as i do not wish to purchase IDE at this stage in its lifetime, so i will get a bit better performance and be able to use it as a main drive in gaming rig if media centre blows up or something. most importantly, gotta be cheap, cheap like a bitch, no more than £70 UK GBP!!!
best deals i've seen are samsung spinpoint 300gb on OCUK @ 75 a lil over but i can afford it i just dont want to. and a seagate barracuda 7200.9 on dabs.com for £60

what models are quiet? if they're a bit smaller ie 200gb but in the price range and respected as being the quietest drive in class etc. some feedback please
Last edited by fox on Fri Mar 31, 2006 11:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

DonP
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Post by DonP » Fri Mar 31, 2006 4:05 pm

Well.. look at the storage reviews section. Also, a very simple browse in the forums turned up a useful thread in seconds (I'm referring to comments like "Most SATA drives currently on the market are mechanically identical to their PATA "brothers"." from Tibors). I'm sure there are many more. If the drives haven't been explictly reviewed by SPCR then they'll have been discussed to death in the forums.

Regarding supplier - I can't believed you looked very closely - the first page I checked had lots of 250G SATA drives below 70GBP (you're talking inc VAT I assume). Find a drive you like, then use froogle or any of the other price comparison sites.

DonP
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Re: Quiet cheap 250gb+ hdd? £<70 in uk

Post by DonP » Fri Mar 31, 2006 4:13 pm

fox wrote:MSI nforce 2 based mobo (with SATA support) mATX £25-45
fox wrote:best deals i've seen are samsung spinpoint 300gb on OCUK @ 75 a lil over but i can afford it i just dont want to.
Why do you quibble over 5GBP extra for a hard disk and then have a 20GBP margin in your acceptable motherboard price?

If you are trying to keep costs down as much as possible then it's usually a good idea to minimise the number of suppliers to keep shipping costs down. (oh, and if 5GBP is important then make sure you take into account shipping costs for the HDD - they can vary widely between suppliers).

btw.. a 9600pro is overkill - I have a 30GBP fx5200 in my Myth box.. and nVidia support for linux is much better than ATI's. ..but 9600pro is fine if you already have it :)

fox
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Post by fox » Fri Mar 31, 2006 11:05 pm

the 20 quid margin was because i couldn't remember the actual price of the mobo i'd found, found it again now and its 43 GBP.
but this is a cheap as possible build. the reason im spending 10 quid more for a SATA compatible mobo is because i will be using the hard drive on my main system possibly at some time in the future and would rather leave IDE HDDs behind

pingu666
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Post by pingu666 » Sun Apr 02, 2006 4:00 pm

i think 300gig is best gig per pound value ratio if u can afford it

im hoping to order a 300gig hd tomoz, so also looking for advice on that :oops:

i think maxtor and seagate and samsung are the best, but i think tekheads where im gonna order from just has maxtor and seagoat.

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