[tkmedia2]

I have a 40gig 2.5" 9.5mm Toshiba Hard Drive that I took out from a laptop and replaced with a speedy 80gig 5400RPM. Now that I have an extra HD I was wondering if these drives are good a a boot volume for a desktop HTPC? Do these in general make less noise compared to their 3.5" cousins? Speed is not an issue of course, I just want a less noisy, less heat HD for my HTPC. I currently have what I consider a noisy Maxtor DiamondMax. Just wondering if I should bother getting a IDE adapter to make this desktop worthy!

 

[IVB]

i know of several people that use them for noise purposes in HTPC clients, as they are certainly less noisy. Don't know details about it myself, others might help you there.

 

[keepinitcool]

On this SilentPCReview article, some laptop harddrives are compared for noise and such.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article157-page1.html

 

[tkmedia2]

Thanks for the link, interesting that they listed the exact toshiba drive I have! They say that the drive is considered very quiet. much less than the quietest 3.5 drive they tested.


I just remember that I had an adapter already on one of my old Amiga 4000's. Will swap one out temp and give it a try this weekend!

 

[epshih]

I remember reading an article on Tom's Hardware a few years ago about the exact same thing you are proposing. I think they used a laptop drive in a SSF pc to reduce noise and heat. I think they used that machine for a bed room PC which is why it had to be quite. You might want to search their archives.

 

[mdryja]

There are people who have mini-itx-based pc's in which the cases themselves can only accept 2.5" hard drives and slimline optical drives. See logicalsupply.com