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5400rpm HD with a HD Homerun Prime?

post #1 of 28
1/29/13 at 12:45pm
Thread Starter 
Finished my HTPC build this weekend. It's a little loud and running hot. I plan to switch to a smaller pico external fanless psu. Plus my old 500GB Hitachi 7200rpm Sata drive is hot and loud. I would like to purchase a 500GB to 750GB 2.5" 5400rpm drive to cut down on physical size, heat, and noise. Will 5400rpm be enough for recording three HD signals at once and general performance of Windows Media Center? Have no issues with the 7200rpm drive...just loud and hot. Thanks.
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post #2 of 28
1/29/13 at 1:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ViperJPB View Post

Finished my HTPC build this weekend. It's a little loud and running hot. I plan to switch to a smaller pico external fanless psu. Plus my old 500GB Hitachi 7200rpm Sata drive is hot and loud. I would like to purchase a 500GB to 750GB 2.5" 5400rpm drive to cut down on physical size, heat, and noise. Will 5400rpm be enough for recording three HD signals at once and general performance of Windows Media Center? Have no issues with the 7200rpm drive...just loud and hot. Thanks.

Yes. Can easily do this and then some.
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post #3 of 28
1/29/13 at 1:28pm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by assassin View Post

Yes. Can easily do this and then some.

Thanks for the info. Will it be able to handle playback of ripped Blu-Rays or large MKV files? I also hope to use it to stream the content to mobile devices. Thanks.
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post #4 of 28
1/29/13 at 1:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ViperJPB View Post

Thanks for the info. Will it be able to handle playback of ripped Blu-Rays or large MKV files? I also hope to use it to stream the content to mobile devices. Thanks.

Absolutely.
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post #5 of 28
1/29/13 at 1:51pm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lockdown571 View Post

Absolutely.

Sweet! Thx! I'm super anal about noise and between the PSU and the HD.... replacing them will make a huge difference!
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post #6 of 28
1/29/13 at 2:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ViperJPB View Post

Sweet! Thx! I'm super anal about noise and between the PSU and the HD.... replacing them will make a huge difference!

What case are you using?
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post #7 of 28
1/29/13 at 3:46pm
Thread Starter 
I'm using a cheapo case at the moment. Cheap and it fits in the very tight space on my media stand. The HEC Black 0.7mm Thickness SECC (Japanese Steel Metal) ITX ITX200B Mini ITX Media Center / HTPC Case. It looks pretty nice for a cheap case. But not a lot of space. Running it with no case fans. Just the Ivy Core i3 heatsink and PSU.
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post #8 of 28
1/30/13 at 11:24am
Thread Starter 
So I have noticed subtle micro stutters in live TV playback with the HD Homerun Prime and Windows Media Center. My wife does not notice them....they are very subtle. I'm concerned that this could worsen going to a quieter, slower, 2.5" 5400rpm drive? I'm not even sure it's the drives fault...could be a network packet issue or something that has always been in the Comcast cable signal that I'm only noticing now under scrutiny. I have 8GB of ram and am running an Ivy bridge Core i3 3225 with Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics. The hard drive is a very old 3.5" 7200rpm Hitachi Sata I running through the Sata 6gb port. Very little running in the background, trying to keep a small memory and process footprint. Even went as far as to uninstall the Asus mobo suite software (GPU Boost, iNetwork, Monitoring, etc.). Should I worry that this will worsen with a 5400rpm drive?
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post #9 of 28
1/30/13 at 11:39am
Quote:
Originally Posted by ViperJPB View Post

I'm using a cheapo case at the moment. Cheap and it fits in the very tight space on my media stand. The HEC Black 0.7mm Thickness SECC (Japanese Steel Metal) ITX ITX200B Mini ITX Media Center / HTPC Case. It looks pretty nice for a cheap case. But not a lot of space. Running it with no case fans. Just the Ivy Core i3 heatsink and PSU.

If you're case HDD rack is all metal to the metal case frame you're probably experiencing resonance, and it will possibly get better with a low rpm drive

You could also try remounting the HDD with some anti-vibration washers/screws. The screw has to have a space for the washer between the threads and the head. These usually come with a lot of cases, lian li in particular since their case designs are horrible for HDD resonance

Also, they get a bad rap for server and htpc usage, but 7200 rpm drives aren't space heating your house. I use a lot of the cheap 3tb seagate drives. Look at the last chart on this link (temperatures) Toms HDD comparison link

Notice my seagate runs at the same surface temperature as wd 5400 rpm caviar greens? The RED drives are the clear winner in power and heat right now, but the temperatures of these should be taken with a grain of salt. Everyone reasons these things differently, but 5-10 degrees on a HDD surface is not going to hit your thermostat at 5-10 degrees. You have to consider the energy density of that heat, and it's very low just like the rest of the computer. They DO put off heat, and that heat does make your A/C run a little more but not to the effect some would have you believe. If it's within a 1000 sq ft space, I'd estimate it to take 30-40 running HDDs to affect the overall air temperature by 1 degree. Calculations for this are long and require a ridiculous number of other assumptions
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post #10 of 28
1/30/13 at 11:45am
Quote:
Originally Posted by ViperJPB View Post

So I have noticed subtle micro stutters in live TV playback with the HD Homerun Prime and Windows Media Center. My wife does not notice them....they are very subtle. I'm concerned that this could worsen going to a quieter, slower, 2.5" 5400rpm drive? I'm not even sure it's the drives fault...could be a network packet issue or something that has always been in the Comcast cable signal that I'm only noticing now under scrutiny. I have 8GB of ram and am running an Ivy bridge Core i3 3225 with Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics. The hard drive is a very old 3.5" 7200rpm Hitachi Sata I running through the Sata 6gb port. Very little running in the background, trying to keep a small memory and process footprint. Even went as far as to uninstall the Asus mobo suite software (GPU Boost, iNetwork, Monitoring, etc.). Should I worry that this will worsen with a 5400rpm drive?

No.
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post #11 of 28
1/30/13 at 11:55am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark_Slayer View Post

If you're case HDD rack is all metal to the metal case frame you're probably experiencing resonance, and it will possibly get better with a low rpm drive

You could also try remounting the HDD with some anti-vibration washers/screws. The screw has to have a space for the washer between the threads and the head. These usually come with a lot of cases, lian li in particular since their case designs are horrible for HDD resonance

Also, they get a bad rap for server and htpc usage, but 7200 rpm drives aren't space heating your house. I use a lot of the cheap 3tb seagate drives. Look at the last chart on this link (temperatures) Toms HDD comparison link

Notice my seagate runs at the same surface temperature as wd 5400 rpm caviar greens? The RED drives are the clear winner in power and heat right now, but the temperatures of these should be taken with a grain of salt. Everyone reasons these things differently, but 5-10 degrees on a HDD surface is not going to hit your thermostat at 5-10 degrees. You have to consider the energy density of that heat, and it's very low just like the rest of the computer. They DO put off heat, and that heat does make your A/C run a little more but not to the effect some would have you believe. If it's within a 1000 sq ft space, I'd estimate it to take 30-40 running HDDs to affect the overall air temperature by 1 degree. Calculations for this are long and require a ridiculous number of other assumptions

Thanks for the response. Yeah I have not had much luck with the rubber anti vibration washers in the past but I could try them. HD Tune Pro (Fancy Hard Drive diagnostic) says this particular Hitachi Hard drives thermal limit is 60C....I hit 61C last night. Granted no case fans and it is sitting on the floor of the case with rubber feet attached to it since the hard drive mount of this case transferred every vibration through the case. I'm not too concerned with the heat level in the house....just in the case. More internal heat means the CPU Heatsink fan runs faster.

I'm really more concerned about the noise level of this drive...it has a constant noise, not counting the normal hard drive clicks. That's why I am considering a 5400rpm....for less noise. Plus by going from a 3.5" to a 2.5" will save some space and run cooler. Just don't want to take a performance hit going 5400rpm.
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post #12 of 28
1/30/13 at 11:56am
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sammy2 View Post

No.

Thanks
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post #13 of 28
1/30/13 at 12:47pm
Thread Starter 
Is there going to be a performance hit between a 5400rpm Sata 2 vs Sata 3?
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post #14 of 28
1/30/13 at 12:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ViperJPB View Post

Is there going to be a performance hit between a 5400rpm Sata 2 vs Sata 3?
Do you know about 'bitrate'? An HDTV stream is around 18 M(ega)b(its) per second. Hard Drive transfer is measured in tens to hundreds of M(ega)B(ytes) per second, so no. Also either interface is going to be a lot quicker than the HD can physically serve up data.
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post #15 of 28
1/30/13 at 1:09pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by olyteddy View Post

Do you know about 'bitrate'? An HDTV stream is around 18 M(ega)b(its) per second. Hard Drive transfer is measured in tens to hundreds of M(ega)B(ytes) per second, so no. Also either interface is going to be a lot quicker than the HD can physically serve up data.

Thanks for your response. True and True.Your last statement....do you mean the Sata interface can handle more throughput than the 5400rpm drive or just with any drive from 5400rpm to 7200rpm. I'm just soo used to 7200rpm and up as the standard for broadcast video work and raids I just have always avoided the 5400rpm drives. I just want this machine quieter and the cooler inside...the PSU and the HD are the primary culprits.
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post #16 of 28
1/30/13 at 1:24pm
Pretty much quicker than any HD. Some SSDs can saturate SATA2 but no mechanical drives can.
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post #17 of 28
1/30/13 at 3:50pm
Viper

I personally run a 640MB 2.5" 5400 rpm Scorpio Blue for my recording drive. No problem recording 6 streams while playing back one previously recorded.

As far as general performance of Windows Media Center. I wouldn't suggest it. Its really time to invest in a SSD for your operating system.
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post #18 of 28
1/30/13 at 4:06pm
Look at the screenshot half way down.

This was with a green drive.

http://dvr.about.com/od/mediacenterpcs/fr/A-Solid-Start-To-A-Great-Htpc-Experience.htm
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post #19 of 28
1/30/13 at 4:22pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andy_Steb View Post

Viper

I personally run a 640MB 2.5" 5400 rpm Scorpio Blue for my recording drive. No problem recording 6 streams while playing back one previously recorded.

As far as general performance of Windows Media Center. I wouldn't suggest it. Its really time to invest in a SSD for your operating system.

Thx for the info. What sort of Performance degradation in Windows Media Center would I see? I'm currently both running and recording to a 7200rpm. I would be running and recording to the new 5400rpm.

I have SSDs on all of my other systems for boot drives but have been trying to keep this HTPC on the cheap. Thus this old 7200rpm 3.5" I had in a desk drawer wink.gif.
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post #20 of 28
1/30/13 at 4:25pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by assassin View Post

Look at the screenshot half way down.

This was with a green drive.

http://dvr.about.com/od/mediacenterpcs/fr/A-Solid-Start-To-A-Great-Htpc-Experience.htm

Nice....so it looks like it's only a 10MBs hit with one HD stream. That setup has a SSD however and I don't plan on doing that anytime soon. I just want a quieter smaller hard drive that runs both WMC and Recording and to not have to worry about a big performance hit in menus or recording. Looks like recording will be fine for sure. It's possible I could snag a 7200rpm 2.5" that would suffice, but I'm super sensitive to noise and am concerned about wasting the money.
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post #21 of 28
1/30/13 at 8:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ViperJPB View Post

Nice....so it looks like it's only a 10MBs hit with one HD stream.
No, it's about a 10MBps (megbytes) hit when recording 4 HD streams and playing a 5th that was already recorded. A single broadcast/cable HD streams average 12-15Mbps (megabits) with a max of 19.2 Mbps. Even if you purchase a slow drive by todays standards, you will get a throughput of 70-80 MBps (megabytes).
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post #22 of 28
1/31/13 at 10:04am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by vladd View Post

No, it's about a 10MBps (megbytes) hit when recording 4 HD streams and playing a 5th that was already recorded. A single broadcast/cable HD streams average 12-15Mbps (megabits) with a max of 19.2 Mbps. Even if you purchase a slow drive by todays standards, you will get a throughput of 70-80 MBps (megabytes).

Haha yes thx. I only just caught that in the caption under the image. Good to know a 5400rpm drive can handle it. I work in Post Production and am so used to worrying about thorughput in 100s of MBs....I'm not used to thinking in Mbps per second. In my line of work I'm just used to never even considering a 5400rpm drive. For instance the commercial project I'm currently working on was shot on a RED Epic camera (same used for Prometheus and The Hobbit) at 5K. After exposing and grading the footage I am processing that out to uncompressed 4K 16bit Tiff sequences. Each frame is 54MB....that times 24 a second adds up. Mbps is a whole different way of thinking. Thanks.
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post #23 of 28
1/31/13 at 12:26pm
Ah yes, definitely different than what you are used to working with. You no doubt work on the raw, unencoded frames and need multiple drive arrays just to work on a single video. Broadcast/cable is already encoded to MPEG2 so the data rate is much, much lower.
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post #24 of 28
1/31/13 at 1:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ViperJPB View Post

Haha yes thx. I only just caught that in the caption under the image. Good to know a 5400rpm drive can handle it. I work in Post Production and am so used to worrying about thorughput in 100s of MBs....I'm not used to thinking in Mbps per second. In my line of work I'm just used to never even considering a 5400rpm drive. For instance the commercial project I'm currently working on was shot on a RED Epic camera (same used for Prometheus and The Hobbit) at 5K. After exposing and grading the footage I am processing that out to uncompressed 4K 16bit Tiff sequences. Each frame is 54MB....that times 24 a second adds up. Mbps is a whole different way of thinking. Thanks.

So I guess I would need about 10TB to watch a 2 hour movie completely uncompressed. Let's hope hard drive prices drop a little more smile.gif
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post #25 of 28
1/31/13 at 1:23pm
My copy of The Wizard of Oz has a featurette about the remaster done for bluray. It was done at 8K and if I remember correctly the size of the transfer was something like 22 terabytes
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post #26 of 28
1/31/13 at 5:11pm
If anyone is interested, there are some figures for uncompressed RGB that I posted at http://www.avsforum.com/t/883483/hdtv-tuner-card-w-yprpb-input-as-well (reference from BlackMagic). CityK and Stranger89 have some good information in that thread as well.
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post #27 of 28
2/1/13 at 9:00am
Quote:
Originally Posted by vladd View Post

If anyone is interested, there are some figures for uncompressed RGB that I posted at http://www.avsforum.com/t/883483/hdtv-tuner-card-w-yprpb-input-as-well (reference from BlackMagic). CityK and Stranger89 have some good information in that thread as well.

That was almost forever ago!
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post #28 of 28
2/1/13 at 10:46am
I'm old tongue.gif
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