2.5in Laptop SATA Drives (1 Viewer)

[drealit]

Is anyone using normal laptop drives in their HTPC. I currently have a Western Digital 500GB GP drive in my HTPC but I use practically none of it due to my media server. I'm considering replacing the drive (and putting it to better use for that matter) and have been wondering about laptop drives. I know they are a bit slower than desktop drives but am wondering if they are slow enough to affect my MediaPortal experience. I use the StreamedMP skin along with MyTVSeries and Moving Pictures with high resolution images etc.

Would I notice any slow down in menu performance/browsing etc. by switching to a laptop drive? Are some ok for use while others would be too slow for queuing up all the images/database info etc?

 

[Owlsroost]

I use a 2.5" SATA 250GB Seagate Momentus 5400rpm drive as my system + tv recording drive - it's been fine (and it's virtually silent/cool running). I use a RAM disk for the TV-server timeshift buffers but I'm sure the drive would cope with this as well if necessary.

If you have plenty of RAM, Vista will cache/preload frequently used data into RAM via Superfetch in any case.

Tony

 

[drealit]

Thank you very much for your insight. It makes a lot of sense and seems reasonable. Now it's a matter of me finding a small 2.5 in. for a reasonable price(make that CHEAP) that will get the job done.

 

[sixgun]

I used to use 2.5" SATA HDDs in my 2 client PCs, but I got fed up of the constant clicking noise coming from one of them. I think it was a Western Digital drive. I found out it was the over aggressive power saving feature on the drive trying to park the heads every 20 seconds or so.

Since I use a server for everything and the only thing I actually needed on the local hard drive was the operating system and media portal, I went down the SSD route. And I have to say, it's fantastic. Zero noise and heat. I've even changed the PSU in my hiper media case for a picoPSU-150, so I have a completely silent system now. All I need now is to find a nice little case just big enough for the motherboard and the SSD.

If you're interested I can find out the model number of the annoying clicky drive.


Regards.