Hard Drives

U

UpstateSledder

n00b
Joined
Jun 5, 2009
Messages
17
Been thinking about my HTPC build and this is what's up. I have on order (1) WD 1TB Caviar Black Drive (that I was going to use for my OS, programs, pics, and music) and (1) WD 1TB Caviar Green Drive (that I was planning on using for all my video files.

I got thinking and did some more reading on performance of these two drives. I am debating on weather to get another WD Black 500GB to use for my OS and programs, and use the Black 1TB for video and the Green 1TB for music, and pics.

Performance/noise wise does this sound right???
 
The Green drives can stream video just fine. You don't need a Black drive for media. Unless you think you''ll actually use 1TB for the OS and apps, I'd save a little money and get one of the 640GB versions. The Green drives should be quieter as well (and use less power).
 
I have tons of the 1Tb green drives, all of which i stream blurays iso's from. So performance wise, they will do just about anything for you. Don't know if i would boot off of them though, just because of the slower RPM's. In all reality, you probably wont notice the different though, aside from booting up. A 1Tb boot drive is a bit excessive for the OS though, as i don't like having any media (aside from temporary) on my boot drive. The 640gb drive is very popular, but my htpc just runs on a spare 120 i had. Even my gaming rig only uses a 320 which is more than enough for all of the applications i run. Hopefully that will be swapped with a SSD soon though. =]
 
Raptors are aptly named for several reasons. ;)

You don't need a raptor in an HTPC. You're a little too paranoid about performance. Streaming media is no-sweat. Many people have HTPCs running hardware from ten years ago. P3s and P4s, even.
 
If this is just for HTPC, 74gig will be right around enough, just not a ton of room left over which could hinder performance. With the amount you are looking to spend, i would just pick up a 2.5 laptop drive and throw it in there. Just mount it using rubber bands and you will have an extremely quiet HTPC, assuming your fans, etc, are quiet.

But yeah, raptor is overkill. Kinda like the guy who wanted to put an i7 in their HTPC...
 
Raptors are noisy no matter how you mount them.. and totally unnecessary in a HTPC. A laptop drive as mentioned, or some other 80GB/120GB drive is perfect for the OS drive. It will save you money as well. Then you can focus on putting some larger 1TB+ drives in for storage either in a file server or in the HTPC itself. Really though, I'd focus on keeping as much OUT of the home theater PC as possible. Less moving parts, less heat, less fans.. less noise.
 
I was gonna go the way of an HTPC, but I'm going to build a WHS box instead and go with SageTV.
 
The WHS is on my list of things to buy, but i still wouldn't switch to the SageTV, or other streaming boxes. This is just because I have all of my blurays in iso form, and none of them (to my knowledge) can stream the iso, only mkvs and the like. I would much prefer not having to deal with the HTPC though, although the flexibility is nice. Just seems like something is always going wrong with it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top