Ian Jackson discusses the three S's:
storage, speakers and screens
Storage
Some form of storage will be necessary for
your HTPC, even if you're serving your media over a network. If you plan on
storing your media locally instead, then you'll need something a lot more
spacious, because high-definition movies, lossless digitally stored audio and
high-resolution photos use up more and more space. Most HTPC cases allow you to
install one or more 3.5" desktop hard drives. These are generally more
affordable for the same capacity compared to 2.5" equivalents and come
with a much higher ceiling when it comes to overall capacity.
The
HTPC would be attached to that unit for all of its major storage needs
When it comes to storing the operating
system, we strongly recommend you consider a solid-state drive for an HTPC. As
well as greatly improving performance, an SSD is also completely noiseless,
meaning the conspicuous grinding and ticking of a hard drive will be absent
from a network attached HTPC altogether. If you're using an HTPC with locally
stored multimedia, you can have the secondary hard drive set to power up only
when in use, thereby reducing system noise and power consumption.
Solid-state drives have plummeted in price
in recent months, with 60GB drives available for as little as $96. These aren't
even 'cut down' variants either; we've seen Corsair's Force 3 and OCZ's Agility
drives at this price, both of which use SandForce's fantastic 500MB/s+
controller in them. If you need a little more space for applications, a 120GB
drive will offer even better cost per gigabyte, with 120GB variants costing
only a little over $160.
A solid-state drive offers far more than
just better transfer rates however. The access time is two orders of magnitude
faster, making small file random accessing (i.e. most of what Windows does all
the time) vastly quicker than a mechanical drive. A solid-state drive will also
enable you to accomplish multiple tasks without slow down - if an automated
backup or virus scanning task starts in the middle of playing a film when you
have an SSD installed, you won't even notice. If the same happens on a
mechanical drive, it'll quickly be reduced to a stuttering mess.
The mechanical drive market has slowly been
whittled down to just a few manufacturers. With Seagate's acquisition of
Samsung's Spinpoint line, it's now only a three-horse race between Hitachi,
Western Digital and Seagate. When it comes to raw capacity, Hitachi currently
offers the largest drives on the market, with its 4TB variants peerless in
capacity. These come in two flavours: an energy-efficient 'Coolspin' model and
a performance-centric 7200rpm model. Although we normally recommend the latter
for desktop PCs, the former is actually better for HTPCs. Its 130MB/s transfer
rate is more than fast enough for any multimedia requirements, and its audio
output of 25dB is quieter than most. This is a step forward for Hitachi, which
has a fairly poor reputation for noise levels across its range. These
ultra-high capacity drives don't come cheap, however. At over $325 for either
variant, the cost per gigabyte doesn't really add up unless you need this much
space and simply can't accommodate more than one physical disk.
Samsung
Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB SATA II 3.5'' Hard Drive 32MB Cache
Had this article been written 12 months
ago, our drive of choice would have been easy. Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB
(HD103SJ) drives are well renowned for both their excellent performance and
stunning low-noise characteristics. With the boundary between Samsung and
Seagate blurring considerably, however, these are increasingly hard to find. If
you know where to look, however, these drives can still be found. Now under the
Barracuda product family, they're now commonly referred to as the Seagate
ST1000DM005. These retain excellent performance and low noise, and remain a
good choice if you can find them.
The F3 is no longer the fastest drive on
the market, however. That crown goes to another Seagate drive, this time one of
its in-house creations. The 7200.14 family is the first drive family to feature
a platter density of 1TB, allowing transfer rates at never before seen speeds.
The 1TB and 2TB variants (ST1000DM003 and ST2000DM001 respectively) both have a
massive 64MB cache and are capable of shifting data at 200MB/s - that's faster
even than Western Digital's Velociraptor 10,000rpm drive. These drives are
surprisingly quiet as well, although they do emit the occasional slightly
disconcerting high-pitched squeak. Initially we thought this might be
indicative of a fault, but having seen more than ten of these cross the labs
now, it's a trait consistent with this model.
