2.5″ HDDs

I’m always running out of HDD space these days (who isn’t?) and am considering reworking my storage strategy.  The first step will be adding a dedicated OS drive to my HTPC.  I’m using an Antec Fusion case and plan putting the new drive in the space above the optical drive, which leads me to consider a 2.5″ notebook drive for a couple of different reasons.  First, notebook drives are traditionally cooler running than their 3.5″ cousins and where I plan to mount the drive is not a high airflow area.  Second, notebook drives are generally quieter and produce less vibration than desktop drives and while I may look into soft mounting options, the planned mounting area does not incorporate any noise dampening features.

With that in mind, I am soliciting opinions on a few different drives that have cought my eye.  Here is a [url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150380&StoreType=7&CompareItemList=N82E16822149066%2cN82E16822148260%2cN82E16822136099%2cN82E16822136072%2cN82E16822146039&bop=And]Newegg comparison chart[/url] of the drives, and a [url=http://www.silentpcreview.com/article29-page2.html]SPCR list of recommended drives[/url] that lists a few of my preliminary choices.

Generally I am looking for a nice quiet drive, but I am also concerned about performance and a few of the drives offer some interesting trade-offs.  I am not so concerned about capacity, anything over 60Gb should be good.  I am currently running MCE05, but may someday switch, possibly to Vista MCE.  Is 60-80Gb still big enough for a Vista OS drive? Surely it is…Right?  I am limiting my search to SATA drives only, better desktop compatibility and, of course, no big ugly IDE cables and 2.5″ adapters.

Here is the breakdown:

[b]WD Scorpio WD800BEVS 80GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150[/b] – Recommended by SPCR, 5400 RPM, SATA 150, good price.

[b]Seagate Momentus 5400.3 ST980811AS 80GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150[/b] – Also recommended by SPCR, 5400 RPM, SATA 150, same price as above.  SPCR calls it a “tossup” between the WD scorpio and this drive.

[b]WD Scorpio WD1200BEVS [u]120GB[/u] 5400 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150 Notebook[/b] – Another WD Scorpio, same specs but 40GB more for an extra $10.

[b]HITACHI Travelstar 7K100 60GB [u]7200 RPM[/u] 8MB Cache Serial ATA150[/b] – 7200 RPM, SATA 150, SPCR liked the ‘E’ version of this drive which costs about $40 more, the only difference is that the ‘E’ version has the laptop friendly power management features disabled.  Certainly, the higher RPM will produce more noise, but I may be willing to make this trade off if I’ll see a performance difference in HTPC applications.

[b]TOSHIBA HDD2D63 60GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache [u]SATA 3.0Gb/s[/u][/b] – 5400 RPM, SATA 3.0GB/s not reviewed by SPCR.  This drive has the same slower (5400) RPMs, but faster throughput at 3Gb/s.  Again, I’m not too sure of the real-world HTPC minded advantage of this feature.

So basically, I have 2 highly recommended status quo drives, one slightly bigger drive, one higher RPM drive, and one higher throughput drive.

And I thought I knew what I wanted…