A few quick questions

[sutom]

Questions (+ Samsung vs WD)

Hi,
I'm just about to order a 500GB drive and have a few questions. Right now I have three Samsung Spinpoint SATA drives and want a fourth for media storage.
My mobo is a DFI Lanparty, about two years old: link
Sorry if these are really obvious or asked all the time, I haven't upgraded for a while!

1) My mobo has 4 SATA ports, so if I'm running four drives am I likely to get overheating/noise problems or similar? My Antec case is normal size, and only has room for four anyway.
2) I've seen it mentioned that SATA-II drives are backwards compatitble with SATA-I connections (right?), do I need anything special to hook this drive up alongside my existing ones other than extra SATA cable?
3) For the drive, I don't need to run any RAID setup, it's just for straight storage. I read that the WD RE2 5000YS is for RAID setups so I would see no benefit going for that over a cheaper drive, right?

My Samsungs have always been quiet and reliable but I've recently seen the WD5000AAKS get good reviews. I'm currently looking at:
Samsung HD501LJ
Western Digital SE16 5000AAKS

Those two are around the price I'm aiming to pay, so would anyone be able to recommend one of those over the other (seeing as their prices are the same)?
Quietness is probably my priority, followed by speed.

Thanks for any help

 

[semi-pro waster]

1) If you don't have a fan blowing over the hard drives then there is a fair chance that heat will be a bit of an issue although drives are remarkably resilient in my experience.

2) There technically is no such thing as SATAII, there are additional features that weren't present in the SATA specification(such as 300mb/s or NCQ) but none are mandatory, there is more on this in a sticky in this forum. Long answer to a short question is SATA cables are the same.

3) If you aren't going to be running Raid then there is very very limited point in buying a drive that is 'better' for it. Additionally unless you are matching the drives it won't really help.

 

[sutom]

Thanks, that's definitely cleared those things up for me. For heat, I think I'll try adding in the new drive and see how it goes. There's only one fan in my case (at the back) but I've had my current three drives sat on top of each other for a while and not had any problems. If they do get too hot I might remove an older drive to leave a gap, and use it externally or something.

So would you/anyone else recommend the Samsung SpinPoint T HD501LJ or the Western Digital Caviar SE16 5000AAKS over the other?
I know experiences vary so it's hard to compare unless someone's owned both, but the WD is meant to be fast/quiet. If there's not much difference I'll probably stick with Samsung for consistency.

Thanks again.