[Cockroach]

I am upgrading to Win 7 x64 from Vista x86 in the next few weeks. I've decided to go with new hard drives in my 2 desktops (one's a HTPC) instead of reformatting the current drives (will keep them for backups).

What is quiet but reasonably fast?

I was thinking of a Seagate Barracuda but the 500GB I bought (as a storage drive) 2 years ago is so noisy I don't think I could live with it as a primary drive in either computer.

The HTPC currently has a 160GB WD 1600AAJS as the primary and a 2TB WD 20EARS (pretty sure it's a Caviar Green). Both are quiet.

The other desktop has a 320GB Seagate ST3320820AS and a 1 TB Hitachi HDT as the storage drive.

Drives of course are SATA. I think about 320GB is the right size though I could go bigger. The HTPC drive has enough room for everything at 160GB though it is at 90% capacity.

 

[ScaryBob]

The HTPC currently has a 160GB WD 1600AAJS as the primary and a 2TB WD 20EARS (pretty sure it's a Caviar Green).

That's pretty much ideal. An SSD would provide some improvement over the WD1600AAJS but certainly isn't required. It would be much cheaper to go with something like a 640GB WD Caviar Black for the main drive. I just use a WD20EARS with two partitions.

The other desktop has a 320GB Seagate ST3320820AS and a 1 TB Hitachi HDT as the storage drive.

I would definitely replace the Seagate with a faster drive like a 640GB WD Caviar Black. With a clean install of Win7, a 60GB or 120GB SSD is large enough. Large programs may need to be installed to a second drive. Moving Documents and other account data to a second drive is also a good idea. I use a 60GB SSD and a WD20EARS on my main system. The The SSD is about 2/3 full with Win7. The Documents folder is on the D drive.