Hitachi or Western Digital

I'd value your opinion as I am looking for a new hard drive. My requirements are:

1. Must be quiet. This is my main priority. Will be for a HTPC rig

2. Fast performance.

3. Capacity 500Gb. Don't really need that much but cost isn't an issue and I don't want to be limited in the future. As it's for a HTPC I can see storage space as important.


Research so far has me toying between:

Western Digital 500Gb (WD500YS RE2)
Hitachi DeskStar 7K500

I vowed never to buy a DeathStar ever again after I had 3 IBM 75GXP drives fail on my RAID array. However, reading storagereview.com I'm very impressed by the noise & performance figures.

There's nothing between the two in price terms but I'm not sure about noise & performance. Which is better? Any reviews (other than storagereview.com)??

Thanks

if it were me id buy the WD

i'd say hitachi,
http://tomshardware.co.uk/storage/ch...2=667&chart=31

Id say WD, have you looked at the Samsung's or Seagates?

My seagate's are silent.

EDIT- The spinpoints are all ranked highly on tomshardware.( Going by all tests not just one.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CrazyMonkey

Id say WD, have you looked at the Samsung's or Seagates?

My seagate's are silent.

EDIT- The spinpoints are all ranked highly on tomshardware.( Going by all tests not just one.)

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yep. i advised another guy to get them too, they are really good.

http://forums.hexus.net/showpost.php...2&postcount=18

I would buy a WD as I've got about 4 of them about :mrgreen: and at the minute on Scan there a good price to:cool:

Thanks guys. I've been reading a review of the Western Digital WD4000YR (400Gb) at AnandTech which rates it as one of the quietest hard drive they have tested. Samsung's Spinpoint drives used to be the quietest on the market until recently and have been raved about by many enthusiasts. Whilst I agree they are good and very quiet I wonder if WD have caught up and maybe their current offerings are better.

So my shortlist now includes the WD4000YR - not helping matters but I'll keep my options open for now.

Any other suggestions or comments?

WD every time here :)

Samsung Spinpoints are near silent, can vouch for that myself. Not sure if they still are the quietest out there, but, a couple of months ago when I was looking all the tests I saw showed them beating others by quite a bit in some cases.

The main problem I think would be capacity – they topped out at 250gb before, not sure if there are any bigger ones out yet.

I thought the WD xxxxKS were quieter?

SPCR review of the WD Caviar SE16 500GB

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article617-page1.html

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tickedon

Samsung Spinpoints are near silent, can vouch for that myself. Not sure if they still are the quietest out there, but, a couple of months ago when I was looking all the tests I saw showed them beating others by quite a bit in some cases.

The main problem I think would be capacity – they topped out at 250gb before, not sure if there are any bigger ones out yet.

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is the silence between another brand such a big difference?
if the wd is the quietest its probably only a few decibels difference that you wont even notice. these spinpoints outperform the wd's (except raptors ) in almost every test on tomshardwares chart. i'd go for perfomance over insignificant noise difference.