Media Centre Project - Part 3: Storage

The 80Gb HDD in the Mini isn't really man enough to manage a proper media centre so I began looking around for external drives. One of my major criteria was noise, or rather the lack of it, as the Mini is very, very quiet and I didn't want to ruin that by slapping some box next to it with a noisy fan. Aesthetics were relevant too as, unless you pop the kit into a cupboard (which gives you other issues like controlling it etc.) it's going to be on show and so the drive can't be too hideous.

In the end I plumped for a Freecom 500Gb USB 2.0 HDD which is available from Amazon for around £80. I went for the one with the aluminium external finish which, whilst it does have a black face, doesn't look out of place next to the Mini. The drive does have a blue (white would have been preferable) light on the front to show it's on and it flickers showing drive activity but other than that you'd hardly notice it was there.

Since I bought my drive I've noticed that prices are still dropping and there are some nice 500Gb drives for a little less - of course my criteria wouldn't change and so a fan is a deal breaker for me.

Obviously it's a shame that Apple didn't put Firewire 800 on the Mini (in which case I'd have been looking for a HDD that supported that) but USB 2.0 seems to perform fine. The only question now is do I need more? Having recorded a few TV shows and transferred a couple of DVDs onto the system I think the answer is going to be yes but how to do it without adding noise?