2.5" vs 3.5" for Home Server

[ungraphic]

I have a router at home which currently has a 2TB external connected to it, a Western Digital Elements (3.5" drive). The drive stores all my movies which are shared with everyone on the home network including a Boxee Box.

I often find myself needing to take the drive somewhere or copy a mass amount of files to it but over wifi its slow (2-5mbps). The annoyance is that it requires an AC plug.

I'm thinking of switching it with a 2TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178438

How would such a small drive fair against a larger drive in terms of reliability? Since it's basically a home server setup, would the Seagate external be constantly on or does it spin down into a hibernation type mode? I know the WD does. Essentially, my biggest concern is reliability more than speed or anything like that.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

 

[drescherjm]

Laptop drives seem to be more reliable than desktop drives however I do not have thousands of each so statistically my observations are not significant enough to say anything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance

Also remember that any drive you buy will always have a chance of failure (regardless of usage) from the day you get it to its 5 or so year expected lifetime and beyond. If you care about your data make backups. And no RAID is not a backup.

 

[ungraphic]

Laptop drives seem to be more reliable than desktop drives however I do not have thousands of each so statistically my observations are not significant enough to say anything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance

Also remember that any drive you buy will always have a chance of failure (regardless of usage) from the day you get it to its 5 or so year expected lifetime and beyond. If you care about your data make backups. And no RAID is not a backup.

I've actually got an Apple Time Capsule, which is just apple's gimmicky word for a router with a 3.5" hard drive in it. I suppose I could stick the current 2TB drive in the router as a backup and have the 2.5" external hold the most current files and make periodic backups? It's just movies that are going on the drive, so I don't necessarily need backups of that as they don't have a whole lot of value to me.