Solved 2TB HDD: 7200rpm or 5400rpm best for a TV-docked media player?

[teckneeculler]

Just had a Seagate 2TB drive (warranty 2yrs) fail after 2 years and 2 months. Grr.

Anyway, I'm looking for a replacement 2TB drive for the media player that's connected to my TV.

A Seagate 7200 2TB (2 yr wrnty) is around NZ$106, while a WD 2TB Purple Surveilance (3 yr wrnty) is NZ$123.

So the extra $17 is little enough for an additional year's warranty.

BUT...the WD's speed is 5400rpm.

My question: Is the speed drop, which apparently slows data output by 33% in comparison with 7200 drives, likely to be an issue for a drive which will only be playing movies?

PS: The sales blurb for the WD mentions better video performance. They're apparently aimed at the video surveillance market.

 

[Megahertz07]

Any HDD is very sensitive to movements and impacts, so my advice is, while running, don't touch / move it.

The higher the rotating speed, data transfer is higher. But, If the drive is defragmented, you should not see any performance difference as the data is stored on a RAM buffer.
I would buy the Seagate as it has lower price and better performance.

 

[mrjimphelps]

+1 on Seagate. I'm not too happy with what I've been seeing with Western Digital. The key reason is that WD external drives have encryption built into the SATA-to-USB interface, and a friend of mine got locked out of his drive because the decryption process failed. He was a knowledgeable computer tech, so he would have known how to fix it, if fixing it was possible.

 

[teckneeculler]

Thanks guys, good calls.