quiet hard drive for movie playback

[henry1234]

I haven't been tinkering for nearly a year now as everything has been running perfectly:grin:

The other day I went to check for a TT update and found the new update allows you to play ripped DVD's directly from the HD.

This seems like an excellent idea. I have decided to get a second 120GB hard drive to store ripped DVD's.

Which is the best Hard Drive for this use? I will only use it to store films. It needs to be quiet when playing, but noise isn't too much of a problem as my CRT has some big fans anyway.

(incidentally, I asssume I just need some software to rip a DVD to HD and this will copy the whole film, chapters and DD/DTS??)

[Messiah]

As to the HDD, I would recommend a fluid bearing type like the Maxtor Plus drives.

As to software require, get yourself DVD Decrypter (www.dvddecrypter.com) which rips a DVD complete to the HDD as an ISO. Then use Daemon Tools to create a virtual DVD drive and load the required ISO. TT will then see this drive as a DVD drive and play the ISO just like the original disk :)

[Mr THX]

Do you know if the ISO will play thorough the front end software MyHTPC ?? Have been using DVD Shrink to rip to HD with no compresion, but MyHTPC wont play the VOB files ???

[KraGorn]

IMHO the best hard disks from a silence viewpoint are Segate Barracuda 7.2s, running at 5400 rpm. In all reviews I've seen they come out the quietest, often by a good margin .. of course they're not speed-demons but that's not useful in an HTPC anyway. :)

ISOs themselves aren't playable, as Messiah says they need 'mounting' by a virtual DVD device manager like Daemon Tools, they then look like 'normal' DVDs to the DVD playing software, indeed the player software is totally unaware it isn't seeing a 'real' DVD. Thus any software capable of playing a real DVD can play a virtual one.

[Baggy]

I've used DVDDecrypter with MyHTPC launching into TT and it works well.
Kevin

[ants]

The new Samsung drives are very quiet and amongst the fastest out there and they work out to about 50p a GB . I'm using DVD Shrink to store my ripped DVDs although you don't get that many uncompressed on 120Gb !

[Stereo Steve]

I'll second the vote for Samsung. I bought a 120gb from PC World as I was in a hurry and it was miles quieter than the Seagate S-ATA I had before. Also ran smoothly with no case vibration that you get with some high speed drives. Super value too.

[Pootle]

Storage review (http://www.storagereview.com/) include noise figures in their reviews, best generally seems to be seagate barracuda drives - I've got a couple and they are quieter than anything else I've had, plus the 8Mb cache versions I think are still offering a 3 year warranty