Good 2.5" drive?

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Fenix793

Gawd
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Jan 13, 2003
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Hey guys I've been using a 36GB Raptor as an OS drive with a 250 GB 7200RPM for storage. I'm wanting silence now so I'm thinking about getting a 2.5" drive to use as my OS drive. Can anyone recommend a 2.5" drive that will not be too much slower than my old Raptor?

Also how do the 5400rpm drives compare to 7200rpm desktop drives? I've been eyeing the 320GB Scorpio drive but I'm afraid it might be too slow coming from a Raptor. I'm thinking a 7200rpm 2.5" drive should be a good compromise between speed and silence so if anyone has any recommendations they would certainly be appreciated.
 
Let me get this straight...

... you want a 2.5 inch notebook drive to replace your 3.5 inch Raptor drive as an OS drive?

If you want a drive that's at least as fast as the Raptor, consider the single-platter WD3200AAKS, the 640GB hard drives from Western Digital and/or Seagate, or the 750GB Samsung (SpinPoint) F1 hard drive. Unless you get a VelociRaptor (which is technically a 2.5 inch hard drive, though it uses an elaborate heatsink mechanism), a smaller notbook drive would run slower in most cases than a comparative 3.5 inch hard drive.
 
I have two problems with the SSD: price and (comparatively) low storage capability. The cheapest 2.5 inch SSD I could find at NewEgg is $112 for a 32GB IDE SSD. You could get up to 1TB of "conventinal" hard drive space for less than that (though you'll have to wait on a sale for anything larger than 640GB).

So Fenix793, how much do you want to spend on your new OS drive?

And how silent do you want everything to be?
 
tiraides said:
Let me get this straight...

... you want a 2.5 inch notebook drive to replace your 3.5 inch Raptor drive as an OS drive?
Click to expand...

This is correct lol. The Raptor vibrates pretty badly. Never noticed because of other stuff in my PC but I've been silencing things over time and the vibration the Raptor makes is now the loudest sound.

tiraides said:
So Fenix793, how much do you want to spend on your new OS drive?

And how silent do you want everything to be?
Click to expand...

I would spend up to $100 on a new drive. I would also suspend it instead of using screws. I could probably get away with using a single platter WD or one of the Spinpoints but I was wondering if I could take it a step further and get a notebook drive. I don't mind giving up some performance but I also don't want it to be slow.
 
Long story short is that the 2.5 inch notebook HDDs are good for low noise and power consumption (while idle), but the 3.5 inch drives that I mentioned are as fast as the Raptor (but are nowhere near as hot or as loud). Today's 2.5 inch drives perform about as well as 3.5 inch drives from a couple of years ago.

I'm still recommending the 3.5 inch HDDs due to cost. All other factors being the same, for around $100 you could either purchase a 250GB 2.5 inch drive or a 750GB 3.5 inch drive.

One caveat: The single-platter WD3200AAKS (look specifically for model WD3200AAKS-00B3A0) is still being sold along with the older two-platter model at most retailers. Getting one may be a crap shoot. Seagate also sells a single-platter 320GB HDD, but I don't know how well it performs (compared to the WD3200AAKS-00B3A0).
 
Just an update I caved and bought a 640AAKS. I'm glad I did it's very quiet. I can still hear it during seeks but it's a very muffled sound and the fans in my system are a touch louder so it's not a big deal.
 
The Samsung Spinpoint F1 750GB HD753LJ is a very quiet drive, I have eight of them in a RAID5 array in my FS and I don't really hear them unless they're under heavy load, random seeks and writes are nigh inaudible and is nowhere near annoying. :)
 
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