Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9500420AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Notebook Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Amazing drive. Very fast.. My previous drive was WD3200BEVT (320GB, 5400RPM, 8MB Buffer) and the HDTune benchmark results are: WD3200BEVT: Average Read - 51.5 MB/sec This one: Average Read - 77.3MB/sec There is a 50% boost in performance and this is clearly noticeable while using. Vista boots faster, programs open faster, rar files extract faster etc. etc.

Cons: Seems like slightly more noisy than my old drive (WD3200BEVT) especially during searching files... It is not definitely disturbing...

Overall Review: Newegg is the best, as always...

Pros: Fast, big, quiet, and efficient. Great hard drive.

Cons: None so far

Overall Review: HD tune benchmark on the 7200.4 was max=97.9 MB/sec and avg=78.9 MB/sec . Previous hard drive which was a WD scorpio 250 MB 5400 rpm benchmark was max=61.1 MB/sec and avg=46.5 MB/sec. Approximately a 60% increase in the average transfer speed comparing drives.I have not noticed any more heat, decrease in battery life or noise from the new drive compared to the old drive.

Pros: VERY Fast, Large Capacity

Cons: VERY slightly audible

Overall Review: This is simply the fastest & largest non solid state hard drive available at this time. Installation was simple, just like any other hard drive. It is about double the speed of my previous Hitachi 250GB 5400RPM hard drive. My previous drive had a very faint high pitched whine. This drive doesn't have much of a high pitched whine, instead you can hear it ever so slightly when it is accessing data, and that is in a completely quiet room. If there is anything else going on around you, you won't notice the noise. And even when it is completely silent it is barely noticeable. And the noise was one of my biggest concerns before I received this drive. I am happy to say it does just fine in that area, and better then I could have expected in every other area.

Pros: 500gig in a fast laptop drive, at a good price. Can't go wrong with that!

Cons: none

Overall Review: I see a lot of mac users installing drives themselves, improperly. When you buy a hard drive, it does not come with mounts, as the manufacturer does not know what machine you are installing it into. For laptops, it is assumed that you will reuse the mounts from the drive you are replacing. There is the catch, you MUST reuse the mounts. Those rubber bumpers attached with screws to your old drive, THOSE are your mounts. DO NOT install this drive without your mounts, or else it will flop around in your computer, become unplugged, and cause nothing but heartache, and headache. That is not the drive's fault. Just because it is easy to install doesn't mean you don't need to know what you are doing to get it right.

Pros: Fast, Quiet, Smooth, COMPATIBLE (unlike SOME SSD's with bootcamp.) Unlike the previous poster this drive is just about as loud as my previous 320gb 7200rpm hitachi that came with my 15.4 LED MBP (machine was BTO) So while it may be louder than 5400 rpm drives, it's about as loud as other 7200 rpms. Now I can set aside 100gb for bootcamp and still have plenty of room for iphoto/aperture/final cut pro

Cons: Reliability is still too new to tell.

Overall Review: Buy one, wait for SSD's to come down further

Pros: none

Cons: This is an update: the third drive is now failing the Long DST in Seatools. So this is the third drive out of three that fails. I'm revising my former rating from down to 1 star, and returning it for some other brand. I can't recommend this drive.

Pros: 500Gb! Cool. Quiet, occasional head noise. 16Mb cache. Bumped my performance rating on a Vista number from 5.2 to 5.9, for whatever that is worth.

Cons: none

Overall Review: If you could get a decent sized SSD with good write speed and very low energy use I would have gone with it for the laptop battery savings. But in lieu of that, I ordered my laptop with an 80Gb drive. Migrated the image over to this massive beast. For $140. Less than half of what the laptop manufacturer would sell their largest (320Gb/8Mb cache) drive for.

Pros: quiet, faster, large capacity

Cons: none

Overall Review: when I had my original hd I could hear the sudden motion sensor park the hd if the laptop was jolted. Now I don't hear that anymore... either it parks quieter or its not working at all. not sure. Sounds quiet, can't hear any difference in noise. Battery usage pretty much the same as the stock 250gb 5400rpm hd.