[ottothecow]

I've got an A6-3500 system in a silverstone case and I am in need of new bulk storage. Up until now, I have been surviving on a 250gb or so laptop hd that I pulled out of my Acer Revo that the A6 replaced.

Now I want to mirror my music collection and maybe start storing some more content (I usually delete things after I watch them). Also might want to use it as an additional point of backup for photos/documents from my desktop (since I will already be mirroring the music).
I'm asking because while I am comfortable with performance drives, I know literally nothing about low RPM drives (e.g. which ones are low end models vs which ones are intentionally slow to stay quiet and cool). Is WD Green still a thing?

Some points:
-OS is loaded on a SSD so the bulk storage drive does not have to be fast.
-Don't need a ton of space but its not worth upgrading for less than 1TB.
-unraid server is not an option; I live in a small apartment so there is nowhere to stash a noisy always-on server.
-are laptop drives a good option? the current one seems quiet and is so small that it gets plenty of airflow in the silverstone case.

Thanks

[HellDiverUK]

"noisy always-on server"? My server is a miniITX machine in a Lian-Li PC-Q25 case. It has 3x2TB drives in RAID5 running on Server 2008R2. It has 8GB RAM. It has a dual core Sandy Bridge Celeron CPU. It has ONE fan, the front 140mm fan supplied in the case. The noisiest thing is the buzz from my UPS.

But anyway, to your question - I use the older Seagate Barracuda LP drives (which were renamed to Barracuda Green and then discontinued). My second choice after those are Hitachi's drives - they're as quiet as the Seagates, but a little more expensive.

I did use a Samsung 1TB M8 laptop drive in a previous server (Shuttle Atom SlimPC with the 1TB Samsung mounted in the optional second bay, it worked fine).

I've had terrible results from WD Green drives, with noise, vibration and failures.

[ottothecow]

I know I could build a pretty quiet always-on system (my xbmc box already is)--I was just trying to point out that the oft-suggested large, many-bay tower filled with drives for unraid is not an option for me. Partly a storage issue too...no convenient basement/closet space to hide a storage server. I've already got one always on system (the xbmc box) and I am the only permanent resident of the apartment so it makes sense for me to do a dual-purpose system.

Looked at prices on laptop drives and it seems like they have stalled out at pretty low capacities unless you want to pay a ton of money. I'll take a look at the Hitatchi drives and see if they do what I want.