Buying a 2.5" Hard Drive for an enclosure

Hi, I am in the market for a new 500GB 2.5" hard drive for my enclosure. What manufacturers would you recommend? I heard Samsung is good with temperature monitoring while other people suggests me to get Western Digital or Hitachi. I am new to hard drives so I have no clue which one is good.

Well to give out a brief introduction of what I will be using for. I am using it for my enclosure which is composed of plastic and it doesn't have an internal fan. So I am mostly looking for something with a cooler temperature, low power efficiency and perhaps 4,200-5,400 RPM.

Just recommend me a brand.

 

do you already have the enclosure?

western digital, seagate, and hitachi is all a 2.5" good drive, take your pick.

 

If you are running a USB enclosure, the speed of the harddrive really doesnt matter cause even the slowest 500gb drive can max usb.
If you are using esata, you will want a fast harddrive.
I recommend the Western Digital WD5000BEVT. It is the fastest 500gb 5400rpm drive.
Stay away from the Samsung Hm500LI and the 5K500 they use three platters and generate more heat than the other 500gb drives.

Their are really only three drives which are worth getting. (all are 500gb 5400rpm)
Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT (~$110 on newegg)
Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.B HTS545050B9A300 (~$130 kindof hard to find)
Seagate Momentus ST9500325AS (~$120 on newegg)

Usually people find Hitachi to have the most reliable/durable harddrives

K-TRON

 

People just don't read. He stated twice that he has an enclosure and even described it.

Nonetheless, wobble is right on. Though personally I wouldn't go with Hitachi if you want lower temps and power consumption, I'd go for Seagate.

 

Actually K-Tron's advice is exactly right. The OP did not state if he has eSATA or USB. I assume it is USB though.

Either way, get the WD5000BEVT or Seagate 5400.6.

Stay away from Samsung HM500LI as it gets hot and uses a lot of power.

 

Not K-Tron, K-Tron had an excellent post which was posted while I was writing mine. I was referring to wobble, who asked if he already had an enclosure.

 

My enclosure has only one USB port so I will not be using eSata since it doesn't come with one. Also, many people are suggesting me different brands of hard drive which my mind is starting to get crowded. I heard a lot of bad things about Seagate, although I do own one for my laptop. It's a bit slow and noisy.

I have never tried Hitachi but my uncle has experienced it which he had to send in for RMA once. As well, Western Digital seems okay since I own one for my desktop and it hasn't fail for almost a year or two.

For some reason, I like Samsung hard drives but I have been receiving numerous of rumours about their bad quality service and the failure rates. Although, I do own one of those Firelite portable hard drive and so far, it has been good.

It just hard to pick the right hard drive because my budget is limited and I want a 500GB 2.5" for sure.

 

If your using USB, the Samsung HM500LI will be fine. It is a bit slower than the other 500gb drives, but since your using USB, you will not notice any speed difference between the samsung and the other drives.

I have a few samsung drives, and none of them ever failed me.

K-TRON

 

K-Tron, in your honest opinion, what would you go with?

 

Literally I can never recommend a Western Digital after all of the problems I have had with them. In my experience, Samsung, and Hitachi have very durable drives. I have had more wd and seagate's die than I have fingers and toes, so I cant recommend them.

I need to go against my biases in making this decision, because for one the HM500LI generates a lot more heat and noise than the wd5000bevt. This is because the HM500LI has three platters, and 6 heads crammed into a normal 9.5mm drive. The three drives I mentioned above all have two platters and 4 heads. Having less platters, and less heads means less noise, less power consumption, and slightly better performance. (more data can be put on 1 platter, so their is a higher data bandwidth)
The wd5000bevt is the best 500gb drive on the market, only cause the 5k500.B is not really available anywhere yet.

If you were going to always use the harddrive externally, and did not mind heat I would go with the HM500LI because it is a good solid drive, it just generates a lot of heat. It can max out USB, so their will be no performance difference with the samsung versus another 500gb drive.

If heat matters, I would say go with the WD5000BEVT, its a newer drive which has better PWM motor technology, and only two platters.

K-TRON

 

Thank K-Tron. Maybe I didn't explain it clearly. I am using this as one of those media player jukebox where you connect it to the TV and watch your favourite AVI, MKV and MP3 codecs from your hard drive.

That's the reason I wanted to get a hard drive which temperature is cooler and is able to last for a long time. I don't care about performance because I am not operating it with any operating system so it would be pointless. Precise, I am worried about durability and temperature.

 

The Hitachi 5K500.B is supposed to have the lowest power consumption of every 500gb drive, and it should be as fast or faster than the western digital.
Hitachi has just been taking a long time to actually release it.
We knew of the 5K500.B for like 3 months, and nobody has it yet

I would wait for the 5K500.B cause hitachi has very reliable products
If you cant wait, go for the WD5000BEVT

K-TRON

 

I'm still very happy with my WD5000BEVT. The SMART data now reports 1294 power on hours. Tom's Hardware's power consumption results closely match my own measurements.

John

 

Thank you for the help guys. I'll go with WD or Hitachi (whichever one have on sale or seen in the market)