Best HD option ?

Seirrah · 27 Feb 2006 at 16:34

I currently have two 80GB SATA hard-drives, a samsung and Western Digital (I think). I use one drive as my main operating drive, containing my programs etc, and the other drive as more of a filestore (music, videos, game demos etc etc)
80GB isn't much by todays requirements, and I am going to need more room pretty soon. I'm also 'concerned' about the (normal)noise that these hard-drives are creating, which I would like to reduce if possible ...I guess one way would be to have just a single drive. I could get a very large single drive and partition it, but I'll lose everything if it fails (I relaise I also would now with my current setup).

So I'm wondering what a good option would be, considering that I need more room, am happy to get a new drive, but I'm also interested in reducing noise.

I know it's quite an open question, and appreciate all comments

Explicit · 27 Feb 2006 at 16:44

How about replacing the 80GB storage one with 250GB for roughly £75, and keep your other 80GB as the OS drive.

Seirrah · 27 Feb 2006 at 16:52

Yeah I could do.

Ah the other thing I was thinking about was maybe a NAS drive as my secondary drive, and try to get it as far away from me as possible. But for some reason I am under the impression that they can be a bit loud, anyone ?

Seirrah · 2 Mar 2006 at 14:56

If I'm going for a quiet pc is a Samsung Spinpoint the way to go ?

fini · 2 Mar 2006 at 15:06

OT, but it's really starting to bug me, everyone calling HDD's HD's - I blame the xbox 360

Etaqua · 2 Mar 2006 at 18:41

Explicit said:
How about replacing the 80GB storage one with 250GB for roughly £75, and keep your other 80GB as the OS drive.

A very good suggestion.

Alternatively, you could save some money and do the below.

Your OS and applications won't take up 80GB unless you are downloading and installing everything you can find, so 80GB is more than enough; you could go for a small raptor and use your current Windows and applications drive for documents as well.

That method will allow you to get a bit of extra performance, especially if you set up a stripe RAID.

InQ · 2 Mar 2006 at 19:05

Seirrah said:
If I'm going for a quiet pc is a Samsung Spinpoint the way to go ?

I thought these were supposed to be the quietest drives on the market but while mine has no whine and quiet seeks it does create more case vibration than i'd like. This is in an Antec Sonata II case so its mounted in rubber grommets as well.

TBH my Raptor made a bit more whine and had much noisier seeks but it didnt vibrate as much.