which hard drive?

#1 hitpro

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Posted 02 February 2012 - 09:19 PM

i'm looking to build an HTPC and i wanna buy 4 3TB hard drives, as my audio and video library is vast... and growing.

i know that hard drive prices are very high right now but i saw this western digital on sale for $169 on New Egg. the ratings are not that impressive. what do you guys think? is there another drive i should consider?

thanks

This post has been edited by hamluis: 23 February 2012 - 10:12 AM
Reason for edit: Moved from Buying New Computer to System Building/Upgrading.

#2 killerx525

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Posted 03 February 2012 - 12:16 AM

I usually use Western Digital hard drives for all of my builds as i have not had one failed on me.

>Michael
System: CPU- AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Oc'ed to 3.8GHz, CPU Cooler- Noctua NH-D14, RAM- G.Skill Ripjaws X F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL 8G Kit(4Gx2) DDR3 1600, HDD- Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATAIII, GPU- Asus EAH6950 1GB Crossfire Oc'ed 900/1310mhz, MB- Gigabyte 990FXA-D3, Case- Coolermaster HAF 932, PSU- Corsair TX-750 V2, Soundcard- Realtek High Definition Audio Sound, OS- Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-Bit

#3 rotor123

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Posted 03 February 2012 - 05:37 PM

Your link shows this today

Quote

In stock. Limit 1 per customer.

Was: $249.99
Now: $219.99
Save: $30.00

After looking at user reviews on all brands of green drives I'm not impressed. Marginal power reduction for some speed reduction.

Have you thought about a Drobo and a inexpensive HTPC? http://www.drobo.com/

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&N=100006670&isNodeId=1&Description=Drobo&x=0&y=0

I haven't bought one yet however This is why I'm thinking about it.

Quote

Dynamically expand storage any time. Drobo currently holds up to 36TB, depending on the model, using any combination of 3.5" disk drives. The Drobo family offers FireWire, USB, eSATA, Ethernet, and iSCSI connectivity options, so you get the data protection you need along with the speed and interface you want

and

Quote

With Drobo, buy just the storage you need now and expand it as the amount of data you need to store grows. Mix and match drive brands, capacities, and speeds. Replace your smallest drive with a larger one and immediately use the new capacity in a matter of seconds. It's as simple as inserting the new drive into an empty slot or replacing a smaller drive with a larger. Expand up to 24TB on a single volume as larger drive sizes become available. Drobo creates one large storage pool. Dive in and eliminate the need for multiple external storage drives and devices.

Just a thought.
Roger

This post has been edited by rotor123: 03 February 2012 - 05:39 PM

My first Computer had a Whopping 16K of memory @ 0.89MHz
My first hard drive held 20 Megabytes and never got filled up.

#4 the_patriot11

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Posted 03 February 2012 - 07:44 PM

In most typical computers, theres no real difference between the green and black hard drives (ive used several, liked them all) However, since your using it as a HTPC and you will be doing a lot of hard disc searching, the added performance of a black drive would be very handy. What the green drives do in essence, is when their idling they slow down-don't spin as fast. When you go to look for something they spin up, and continue spinning while your actively using it. So for a standard computer user or even light gamers, you might see a slow initial load but after that you won't notice any difference. But in your case since you will be watching movies-you will load one, then watch it, then an hour (after its idled down) youll look for another one-etc, and having that initial load time will get annoying, while a black drive will maintain that 7200 rpm constantly giving you a faster load time. So I agree with rotor on this one-if you go western digital, go with one of their black drives for your system.

Primary system: Motherboard: ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3, Processor: AMD Phenom II x4 945, Memory: 8 gigs of Patriot G2 DDR3 1600, Video: ASUS ATI 4890 and a Saphire 4890 in Crossfire, Storage: 1 WD 500 gig HD, 1 Hitachi 500 gig HD, and Power supply: Coolermaster 750 watt, OS: Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit.
Media Center: Motherboard: Gigabyte mp61p-S3, Processor: AMD Athlon 64 x2 6000+, Memory: 6 gigs Patriot DDR2 800, Video: Saphire 4850, Storage: 500 gig Hitachi, PSU: OCZ Fatal1ty 550 watt modular PSU, OS: Windows 7 Ultimate.
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#5 eByte

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Posted 14 February 2012 - 07:00 PM

WD Green Sata Hard Drives, in my opinion work the best. Buy the drives with the largest amount of cache you can afford.

#6 rotor123

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Posted 16 February 2012 - 05:53 PM

In terms of drive performance from best to worst.

SSD SATA 3
SSD SATA 2
15,000 RPM SCSI
10,0000 RPM SCSI & Western Digital Performance models
7200 RPM
Green Drives
5400 RPM
Old IDE drives

Hope this helps
Roger

My first Computer had a Whopping 16K of memory @ 0.89MHz
My first hard drive held 20 Megabytes and never got filled up.