Adding additional Harddrives to XL301 ... advice please.

[Lar77]

I want to add two 500 gig drives to my existing 250gb one and was hoping for some advice from someone more knowledgeable than me on the subject (thats most people).

I've got a VGX-XL301 with a fast filling up 250gb SATA drive. It's got 2 free bays so I'm going to fill them up, so my questions are:

- Will SATA 2 drives work in my machine (I've done a bit of looking around and I think they'll be OK but just to be sure and all that)?

- Are some drives less noisy than others? What would you recommend? I've been considering

2 x Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 500GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM
2 x Samsung SpinPoint T166 500GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM
2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM
or
2 x Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM

mainly because I can get a deal on them here http://www.komplett.ie/k/kl.aspx?bn=10096 , what is the better and more reliable make?

- When I add these 2 new drives can I get all 3 to act as one? My main concern with this is for media centre use i.e. I want to keep putting movies in the folder I'm currently using.

Thanks.

[ChalkyWhite71]

Hello, not too sure about SATA2 in the XL series, but my first idea would be to look at the drive make and model already in the machine, and try to buy similar for your larger drives to ensure similar noise levels.

I don't have the machine in front of me right now, but certainly for music you can specify in the setup where Media Centre looks for music across folders. Surely the same is true for video, so although you can place vid's in different folders on different drives, they'll all appear in the same place on MC.

Are you going to backup the content somehow? would perhaps a NAS solution be better with built-in RAID? Just a suggestion.

[Lar77]

Thanks for the info.

I've been doing some research and it seems that SATA2 is totally backwards compatable

I've also found a review comparing the drives I can afford and it seems that the samsung is the way to go .... very quiet by all accounts http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3031&p=2

"would perhaps a NAS solution be better with built-in RAID? Just a suggestion." .... sorry, no idea what that means (don't know a whole lot about computers ) Can you explain why I might want to do that? Thanks

[ITTroll]

I went for a Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM (ST3500641AS) in mine.

I chose this because the existing factory drive was from the same family and I could get it for a great price.

The Barracuda 7200.10 features perpendicular storage technology which does give you faster transfer speeds. However, you may find you pay extra for this and it is overkill for Media Centre requirements.

[Lar77]

what cables do I need when adding these 2 extra harddrives to the XL301? Just SATA data cables or do I need some sort of power cables for them too??

[ITTroll]

Just SATA. Sony recommend special right angle ones but I couldn't find these and so just used regular straight ones. Just get short as you can as the SATA port is very close by.

[Lar77]

Just SATA. Sony recommend special right angle ones but I couldn't find these and so just used regular straight ones. Just get short as you can as the SATA port is very close by.

Thanks a million for that. I saw some of the right angled ones in a store the other day ... I'll get them.

[Lar77]

Installed the two new harddrives at the weekend ....... thanks for the advice, turned out to be very easy