Home Theatre PC and Ripping Station Guide

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Introduction

So, you have the big 1080p Hi-Def TV, the awesome surround system and a DVD and music collection that puts HMV to shame.

You could throw together some parts in a fancy case and make yourself a home theatre PC, but that’s so 2008. Instead, let’s spruce it up by getting your HTPC to copy your precious polycarbonates to a whopping big disk!

With the introduction of 1TB+ HDDs over the last couple of years, the prices have undergone the usual jostling and competitive dropping and are now in the region of extremely affordable; so there’s no excuse not to own one.

The good folks at Western Digital have very kindly supplied a 1TB Green Edition drive for article and the specs alone are impressive for our storage needs.

The Green Edition boasts up to 40% reduced power consumption, using new routines for moving and parking the read/write heads of the disk.

With power saving features in place the HDD is also less noisy and produces a lot less heat, which is great in a compact system. Western digital even go so far as to boast that you no longer need a fan if you plan to use this drive in an external caddy.

In our world, vibrations = noise; so to eliminate noise and potential catastrophic head/disk interactions, WD has secured the HDD spindle at both ends to increase stability; a very nice feature!

With your disk decided upon, you have an excuse to either use up those left over components collecting dust in your study or a chance to spend some serious dough and splurge on a proper HTPC setup.