External hard drive: Experiences on spin-up please

[MSIC]

Am looking to replace one of my 2 current external hard drives with a larger capacity one, which both will hook up to my Western Dig HD TV (for media streaming).
Currently one of my drives boots up quickly, and if only that is plugged in then the WD comes up with it's menu etc really quickly. The other drive however (cant remember what it is) is super slow, and adds towards 20 seconds to the time that the WD becomes functional.
This becomes really important if my young son wants 'Peppa Pig' to come on the TV

What brand or type of hard drive should I be considering? Ideally I still want a 5400 speed, since transfer speeds are not important to me, and lower power and noise are preferable.

Thanks

[Funkstar]

Are they retail external drives, or regular internal ones you put in external cases?

Are the cases the same? I wonder if it is the case that is delaying the initialisation of the drive.

[MSIC]

Are they retail external drives, or regular internal ones you put in external cases?

Are the cases the same? I wonder if it is the case that is delaying the initialisation of the drive.

Of the two i have currently, one was bought as an external drive (all sealed etc), the other was an external case plus a hard drive I bought to put in.
I'm not however looking to diagnose the current spin-up issues, I want to buy a new drive that is responsive, from people's experiences.
Cheers though.

[Funkstar]

My point was that it might not be the drives fault, so in that same case, any drive could be slow to spin up regardless of that is recomended.

[liquidmetal]

If its connected by usb would that not be bottlenecking the two drives?

[Funkstar]

If its connected by usb would that not be bottlenecking the two drives?

For transfer rates yes, but that wouldn't be an issue for streaming TV. Won't effect spin up though.

[MSIC]

My point was that it might not be the drives fault, so in that same case, any drive could be slow to spin up regardless of that is recomended.

I see what you mean.
I'm not looking to keep the external hard drive case though (i probably wasnt clear on this point in my original post).

[Funkstar]

Ah ok.

The only recent experience I have with external drives is with one of these:


All the drives I've stuck in it when using either USB or eSATA have appeared pretty much instantly on my W7 desktop. These have been Samsung F2s, WD WD15EARS, a Samsung 2.5" drive and a another 2.5" that came out of my netbook. I think I've also has some older 500GB Seagates and some 1TB Hitachi drives through it as well, none of which had a memorable delay in being recognised.

[killie99]

funkstar, where did you get that external drive bay?

[Funkstar]

click the photo, it's linked to Scan.

[Shooty*]

Your problem is Peppa. If you replace that with Numberjacks, you'll find an instant speed boost.

Seriously: I have a 500gb passport elite. It's about my 6th external 2.5 inch drive. It is getting qutie full of photos (35 gig), music (35 gig), Comics (80 gig) and tv shows, software, etc. Lots of small files. when I plug it in now, it does take quite a while for windows to do what it needs to do (look at everything?) before it appears in My Computer. I believe it used to be quicker when it was less full.
Or maybe it's just getting old.

[killie99]

doh!

[MSIC]

I did toy with the idea of a Sharkoon, as posted above, and indeed I have one for my desktop which works very nicely.
I'm going to mull it over...I guess that it would allow quick and easy transfer of files from my media streamer to my desktop. In fact I could break records - transferring 2 TB in about 10 seconds
Scan sell the single port version for £18, which when coupled up with their current offer of an external 2TB for £110 (Today only, normally £114) may be the right way to go.
Ho hum... going to consider this for 24 hours or so.
Thanks to all

[arthurleung]

I did toy with the idea of a Sharkoon, as posted above, and indeed I have one for my desktop which works very nicely.
I'm going to mull it over...I guess that it would allow quick and easy transfer of files from my media streamer to my desktop. In fact I could break records - transferring 2 TB in about 10 seconds
Scan sell the single port version for £18, which when coupled up with their current offer of an external 2TB for £110 (Today only, normally £114) may be the right way to go.
Ho hum... going to consider this for 24 hours or so.
Thanks to all

The Hitachi takes a couple seconds longer to spin up than the other drives I have. I just bought 2 of the Simpledrive 2TB. They DO spindown when not in use.

Have to say they are so cheap, but surprisingly small, cool and quiet.

[Pob255]

I would say that the first thing to do is open up both the enclosures to see what's inside them currently, that will be a good starting point.
Everyone I've opened up so far just contains a standard laptop hard drive inside.

As long as both are sata, you should be able to swap the disks over and see it that has any effect on the spinup/access time.
I'd do this because it might be the drive or the sata to usb adaptor in the enclosure that's the issue and this will rule it out.

Warning, you may cause cosmetic damage to the enclosure opening it up.

[MSIC]

Thanks Pob, however i'm not interested in diagnosing the problem!!