Big quiet storage ?

smallangryboy

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Looking for HDD - Seagate Barracuda seems to be the main contender but I can only seem to find 200Gb ones. Are there any other larger drives out there that are as quiet ?
 
Unfortunately it's no longer possible to get REALLY quiet 3 1/2" HDs, the last ones made were the barracuda IVs, these didn't go much past 60GB (from memory). Since then newer seagates and samsung spinpoints seem to be the quiestest, but TBH they are not in the same league as the old barracuda IVs -they have quite an annoying whine when idling which means that in an otherwise silent system they are going to stand out. I have a silenX PSU and a Zalman 7000 cooler and next to these the samsung spinpoints I got were just not acceptable.

So I suppose this leaves a couple of options: Go with a couple of the 200GB seagate (the only decent sized quiet drives around, samsung do upto 160GB atm), go with a much louder but better sized drive like a 250GB maxtor or, what I did, go with a small, silent drive in the HCPC and stick larger noisier ones somewhere less sensitive. It all depends on what your priorities are for the PC.

HTH
Owain
 
if it helps any the only noise i can hear from my 3 seagate's is on disk access..this could easily be eliminated by using silent mounts if i could be bothered.. ;)

IBM (Hitachi) do a 250gig deskstar, and these are quiet too, but the seagates are slightly better.. ( no worries on reliability with the deskstar these days, use lots of them at work )
 
I use the Seagates as I find them very quiet, I do believe the older ones span at a slower speed (5600RPM?) and were VERY quiet.

If you are considering more than 1 HDD and you have more than 1 PC in the house, I'd recommend putting the additional HDDs in an alternative PC on the network outside the HT viewing area.

200gb WD's are only £76.00 Incl VAT on ebuyer, 2 of those in an old PIII machine elsewhere on the network will provide sufficient space to keep you going for a while I'd imagine.

It's perfectly possible to stream on a wired network. I stream movies from my TiVo to my PJ, and it works just as well with "jukeboxed" DVD and HiDef seems to work OK too.

Mark.
 
I'll be trying some Hidef wireless streaming soon too.
Nice to know you've got it working Mark.
 
Mr.D said:
I'll be trying some Hidef wireless streaming soon too.

Don't think he's streaming wirelessly as he mentioned "wired" :confused:

WMVHD should stream OK wirelessly but I don't think "proper" HD (.ts etc.) would work too well given the bandwidth required & the current limitations of wireless technology.

:smoke:
 
Ah you're right. Well it was just an idea.
I can always copy the films over beforehand and play them back from local space.
Just save me buying a firewire enclosure.
 
I have several Seagates and all have proved to be quiet. Although, as other remark, I am not sure whether their current drives are as quiet as the older models. My most recent HDD is a MAXTOR 300GB drive which is 5400 rather than 7200. The drive is quieter than my seagates and will quite happily stream video. I would be happy to recommend the MAXOR 300GB. It is available from SACN.co.uk for about £175.

TonyM
 
Thats exactly what I have. Good to know its quiet ( its with a friend at the moment) I'll probably put it in a firewire or USB2 enclosure and hook it to my HTPC that way. ( no more room inside the case itself )
 

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