[acpowell]

Currently I have Openelec 2 on a computer and all my videos on my gaming machine which I have shared out to XBMC. I am looking to buy a HTPC case and a larger hard drive so I can store all the movies on the same machine as XMBC so I can make it "portable".

Will getting a 7200 rpm drive vs. a 5400 rpm drive make a noticeable improvement as my video storage drive? I figure I can get more storage for less money if I look at 5400 rpm drives but I don't want to sacrifice noticeable increased performance because of it.

[cwide]

I currently use two 2.5 5400 rpm drives (because that's all I had) as my storage drives. I am able to get 100MB/s+ transfers over gigabit.

Maybe seek time is improved with a 7200 RPM drive, but as far as playback is concerned you will be fine.

[wsume99]

For video storage 5400 rpm is definitely the way to go. Sure a 7200 rpm drive will benchmark faster but if you're going to be using it for serving video in a XMBC box then you'll see absolutely zero benefit from a 7200 rpm drive. What you will notice is more noise, heat, and power use.

[ConfusedTA]

If you can put a small (64gb?) SSD in there to boot from, then a slower storage drive won't make much difference to usability and speed of the media.

But - the SSD will make it boot quickly, and if the fanart is stored on it, it will be nice and snappy to use.

[latex_labia]

5400rpm is fine for streaming media. If using OpenELEC couldn't you boot from USB as well?

[acpowell]

I have never tried the whole boot from USB method. Right now I have a laptop 80GB drive in there. Ultimately I would like to get just a small 32-64GB SSD for booting from I just haven’t had the time or money and a storage drive and case are more important to me at the moment since I Have more movies than what fits on the 720GB drive I currently use and my case is huge and loud.

So it sounds like I will be getting a 5400. Thanks all!

[gibxxi]

You might also want to consider a 2-bay NAS enclosure from the likes of Netgear, QNap or Synology to store your media on and just have your HTPC as a client connecting to that data over gigabit. It would then be available to all computers at your location, and you could install a smaller SSD in the HTPC to speed up the XBMC experience.

This is what I have in terms of setup, as do many others on here. Just one more option to consider (funds permitting, of course).

[latex_labia]

You might also want to consider a 2-bay NAS enclosure from the likes of Netgear, QNap or Synology to store your media on and just have your HTPC as a client connecting to that data over gigabit. It would then be available to all computers at your location, and you could install a smaller SSD in the HTPC to speed up the XBMC experience.

This is what I have in terms of setup, as do many others on here. Just one more option to consider (funds permitting, of course).

Standard 10/100 is fine. No need for Gb for media streaming, unless of course you are streaming 4 or more full 1080p files at a time.

[Vertigo]

I have never tried the whole boot from USB method.

USB sticks work just fine with openelec. The performance loss is barely noticeable, if there is one at all, especially compared to a slow laptop drive. I havent benched it, but boot time might be like 1-2 seconds slower than with a (desktop) hdd,, but you do gain in access time, so in the end it might even be faster and you will get rid of a noisy drive without having to pay for an SSD. Have your cake and eat it too

Oh btw, you can install openelec on the USB hdd too. That way your entire mediacenter setup becomes porable, an it only takes a few 100Mb.

[RaggSokk3n]

tested openelec on a 10 year old 256mb SanDisk and work flawlessly so ssd is absolutely not necessary on openelec
For nice and quiet storage in htpc iI would recommend Wd green 3TB - but remember that the greens should not be reused in synology, qnap, Netgear and dlink nas boxes.