[by96]

Hello!

I recently built an HTPC primarily to use MadVR to play ripped UHD blu-rays. I have a 1TB solid state drive for the OS and software and a 10TB 3.5" 7200 RPM HDD to store the movies. So far, I have had no problems playing movies from the HDD.

My case would allow the addition of a 2.5" drive and I would like to get one that is at least 4 TB, but SSD is very expensive. I really can't seem to find a 2.5" HDD at 7200 RPM; most seem to be 5400 RPM. Is there a good chance that a 5400 drive would be too slow to plays movies? Would it be noticeably different than the 7200 one I am using?

I am not sure it matters, but I am using an Intel i5 processor with 16 GB RAM.

Also, if anyone knows of a 4TB 2.5" HDD that is 7200 RPM, please let me know.

Thanks for any insights or feedback.

 

[brazen1]

Is there a good chance that a 5400 drive would be too slow to plays movies? Would it be noticeably different than the 7200 one I am using?

No, it will work perfectly and the only thing you (might) notice 5400 vs 7200 is transfer speed which wouldn't be significant imo.

 

[by96]

No, it will work perfectly and the only thing you (might) notice 5400 vs 7200 is transfer speed which wouldn't be significant imo.

Thank you! I will start research 5400 HDD options.

 

[Goyle99]

The best part of the slower drive is they are generally quieter

5400 is better suited to media play back if you're close to the tower

It's been a while since i've bought a 7200 but u can really hear that disc spin sometimes on older designs.

edit - and they're generally cheaper

 

[airscapes]

I use a 6T usb portable on my Pi4 Kodi with no issues at all playing content.. computers have been using 5400rpm drives for years. As a video content provider it is not seeking data all over the disk which is what higher rpm helps.. it is just reading the same file non stop and with caching a larger part of the file is read before it is ever needed.

 

[Suntan]

If this is a drive that will be dedicated to large video files, you may find some advantage to formatting it with larger block sizes than standard. Formatting with large block sizes can cause wasted space when you have, say, 10's of thousands of little .dll files on an operating system drive. But you'd never notice the slight space loss if you've only got a couple hundred movie files on your drive.

This was always something we did back when setting up drives to record OTA ATSC streams (one server might have to record 4 streams while serving 2 or 3 streams to networked players) there you could get fragmentation and throughput hiccups even with 7,200 rpm drives. Switching to the largest block size (64Kb I think?) would cure that.