My HTPC is working nicely, but now that I have 5 drives in it (1 500G Samsung, 4 1TB GPs) the hard drives are getting pretty hot. I am running with the Etasis Fanless PSU and the original 2 case fans at 5V (they are just too noisy at 12V but barely move any air at 5V). So now I am wondering what I c...

I call BS on the Linux claim. This is from a 18 month old WD10EACS running in a RAID5 on Ubuntu (note it is not quite running 24/7, more like 24/3 or so because I'm abroad a lot): === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Device Model: WDC WD10EACS-00ZJB0 Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1282787 Firmware Version: ...

For some curious reason, it idles at higher power draw than the 20EADS. And as for noise, unless the signature is significantly different (which I doubt), it has the same dbA ratings as the 20EADS in AAM mode so not much to see here, I'd say. Unless of course they would slash the price, current per ...

I'm looking to upgrade my HTPC which already has 3 WD10EA*S in RAID5 with another one or two drives. Since it is softraid, I don't necessarily need to use the very same drive so I'm trying to decide between: WD10EACS/EADS (to me, they are identical, I couldnt care less about the cache so I just take...

mozartrules: Except for the facts that I already have the Nvidia board and do not really feel like tearing my HTPC apart just to replace the mother board. Adding a PCI card would be ok, rebuilding the whole thing decidedly is not (mostly I'm too lazy for that). And once I go rebuilding, the price di...

Is the AMP available as some sort of PCI card or so? I would love to use something like this to replace my old Technics Analog 5.1 Receiver but I dont want to replace my Asus Nforce8200 board... AMD 780G is horrible under Linux, if you want accelerated video decoding, there is no way around nvidia o...

As a matter of fact, I have 3 and 4 platter GPs, but I cannot easily review them because taking apart the RAID array is a major hassle... It could be done but it is risky. So far, the 2TB GP are way too expensive. What I believe I will do is mix 1TB and 2TB in RAID5 once they get to similar price le...

In Switzerland the EcoGreen finally ships, at the same price as the venerable GreenPower. I have 3 GreenPower in a RAID5 in my HTPC and I am looking to add another drive. Now I'm wondering which one is better, the GreenPower or the EcoGreen? It's software RAID, so the drives do not need to match, no...

I'd be FAR more worried about mechanical or PCB failure than platters not keeping your data.

So is that the 3 platter 1TB GreenPower?

GreenPower just had a 10% Price Drop in Switzerland making it cheaper than the F1 for the first time, so maybe they finally are shipping it?

That's great news. I was debating getting another GreenPower but cheaper and perhaps even more silent makes me wait (ok, in fairness, the 3 platter 1TB GP should come RSN, maybe that one will be lower priced, too). The F1 is widely available in Europe (bit cheaper than the GP, too) but it vibrates w...

Make a few markings on a drive and use a stroboscope on it. If the markets move in the way described they are right, otherwise it's probably marketing.

If rigidly securing the drive to the case fixes the issue, then so would adding some (a lot maybe) deadweight to the suspended drive

Yes, the GP spin slower which makes less noise and uses less power. That price seems somewhat out of tune, I can get them for 210 CHF in Switzerland...

If quiet and cool is your mission, use neither. Go for Western Digital Greenpower.

I have used both a F1 1TB an a 1TB GreenPower side by side and the GreenPower is noticeably quieter and uses less power.

Since speed is what you're after, have you considered the Velociraptor drives? They supposedly are quite silent and as nearly 2.5" drives they should vibrate a lot less...

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14583/15

From what I gathered (no personal experience though) the WD 640GB disk is pretty low noise and quite fast, better than even the Samsung, IIRC.

See http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14380

I have one in a SATA-USB enclosure thingy. It's not getting overly hot and is making pretty low noise for 7200RPM but both noise and vibration wise it does not match a GreenPower by quite a bit. Let's just say I will probably order the GreenPower the next time I need a disk, never mind it costs 10% ...

I have had bad experiences with the 3Ware controllers. Unless you are lucky and get RAID edition drives, they more often than not kick out perfectly good drives from an array because it took longer than expected to return from a recalibration run

And on another note, how does the GP series compare to the newer 320GB platter drives? There's a lot of talk about the newer drives, but it much of focus is on performance, which I don't care so much about. I'm much more concerned about noise, so does anyone have experience with the two and can com...

Well you can definitely hear seeks on both. Idle is pretty good though.

In doubt, go for the GreenPower, it uses less power and creates less heat, too. I assume you'd probably amortize the cost difference via power savings after a while.

>Btw, how do the standard F1s fare versus the 321KJ, noise-wise? I have a couple of 321s, and they're the most silent drives I've EVER (not) heard... This is slightly besides the point, but maybe it will help you still: I have a F1 and a GreenPower both in USB enclosures (not the same type though). ...

Very good news, F1 have been consistently 15% cheaper than the Greenpowers for a while now in Switzerland

Formatted capacity is a totally useless measure because every filesystem will have different formatted capacity. I have no problem with them using 10^12 bytes for a TB as long as its openly declared. It's not like you don't know what you're buying, really. Now bring on the 1TB 3 platter Greenpower, ...

Does anyone know if WD plans to ship a 3 platter HD with these platters?

I like the 1TB green power but maybe this would work better, even.

One way or another, without Bluray it's possible to go far below their quoted numbers.

I don't currently consider BD to be of much use considering what the discs retail for, anyway.

I forgot to say, I also have a Benq DVD Writer in there. So that can't be it alone.

Just for completeness, with two instances of burnk7, the machine draws 93W AC BTW. (All values are on 230V)

These idle values seem ridiculous.

I have a Asus M3M78-EMH (GF8200) with a BE-2400, 1GB Kingston, Etasis EFN-300 and a 500GB Samsung SATA disk. The system idles at about 35W. And the EFN300 is a rather old design.

Rather sounds like they forgot to enable Cool'n'quiet to me.

I have an Asus M3N78 with an Athlon BE 2400 and one Samsung HD which idles at 34W so you may want to look into AMD. If the D201GLY2 really needs 30W with a Greenpower it is sorta pointless IMHO.

Some guy in a German forum had it running HD DVD on a X2 4400+ (Windows) without problems. Not sure what audio codec he was using, though. There's NO way you can do full bitrate 1080p in software on Linux right now. Not even on a 3.0 GHz Wolfdale, for all I'm told. I can barely do low bitrate 1080p ...

Sorry, no idea about HD acceleration (not supported under Linux) and LPCM I can't test because of lack of support for it in my receiver