HDDs for a HTPC?

Etherton

Etherton

Will Bang for Poof
Joined
Aug 7, 2006
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I am starting to run low on storage in my HTPC. Currently I am running a pair of WD Black 1.5TB drives. My question is when I go to replace them do I really need 7200rpm drives or will 5200rpm HDDs work fine for my HTPC? Possibly toss in a tiny SSD for a boot drive?

Thanks for any advice!
 
You don't need 7200 RPM drives if they are just for mass storage of movies, music, photos, etc. Most drives slower than 7200 RPM are 5400 RPM. My WD and Seagate Green drives work great.

Yes, small SSDs work well in HTPCs. I have a Vertex 4 60GB in mine and love it. If I did gaming on it I would have got something a little larger, but I don't use many programs, so the 60GB is fine.
 
the speed of HDDs today is much faster due to density and cache sizes... a 5400 today is similar to a 5 year old 7200...

WD makes a media class drive that is designed for 24/7 on operation.... It depends on the value you put on the content... a green drive will do fine for 1-2 constant streams... more than that and you might need faster drives...
 
Some of the larger size Western Digital Greens or Reds will be perfect for you along side an OS dedicated SSD.
 
Traditionally been a WD man. Are they still the way to go? Seagate's any good these days?
 
Can the WD Reds handle recording four or more streams from a cable card tuner? Thinking about building a dedicated tuner box with two cetons, but from the looks of it I'll probably end up getting the WD Blacks.
 
You most certainly do not need WD blacks for any of this. Blacks are only useful for production drives. For OS, go SSD, for media storage, go green/red.
 
So WD greens can record potentially 8 hd streams at once without a hiccup? Because even cetons website recommends a 7200 rpm drive when using two of their tuners in one box.
 
Seagate did an announcement/article concerning their "dropping" green drives because there is no performance reason for them, ie the faster 7200 drives use less energy by performing tasks faster.
This was their 5900 drives vs 7200.
The WD Reds and Greens [and other manufacturers] (especially Greens) have (from my reading) the greatest RMA rates.
This may be an uninformed opinion, but at current pricing and warranties I would (and do) purchase 7200 rpm drives.
These are quiet enough in my experience, and more reliable. YMMV.
 
I picked up a WD 3TB to add more space to my HTPC. I was surprised to find that during testing of it the 3TB Green drive outperformed my WD 1TB Black drive by quite a bit.
 
Recording 4 HD streams without any issues on a segate 5900rpm drive.
 
Seagate recently announced their Video 3.5 HDD series in sizes up to 4TB which claims to support 16 HD streams and is engineered for DVR type applications. No idea when these will show up at retailers though.
 
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