Some questions on what to look for in a hard drive

While I'm awaiting the arrival of my M17x, if all is well with it I will be adding a 2nd hard drive. I don't want RAID, just another drive. SSD is too expensive right now so I'll probably just go with another 7200 rpm normal drive. I've done a little research but not too much. That new Seagate Momentus hybrid seems to get mixed reviews, and it doesn't seem like once an application or game loads it makes much of a difference (I'm talking about the 4GB SSD like cache that it uses for commonly loaded stuff). I'm not replacing my OS drive at this time either, just adding a 2nd one. Still, I think my 2 front runners are either that or a Western Digital Scorpio Black. Generally speaking, other than GB size and rpm speed, what other critical specs should I look for? What's a good read/write speed and latency value to look for in a "standard" drive?

 

If you go with Western or Seagate 7200rpm and the highest cache you find, they are all good. And will serve you well. I like Seagate but thats just me, seem to have the best sales. Good luck and enjoy!

 

I use the 750GB Western Digital for my secondary drive. It's a 5,400 RPM, but it's not my OS partition, so it doesn't matter. You want the raw speed to be where your OS and game installs are. A faster hard drive or SSD doesn't make games run any faster. Loading screens, etc. are faster though.

 

If you just need storage then you want size over speed. Your OS drive should be fast(7200rpm or ssd) however.

 

It will probably be primarily for FSX, I've read several reputable setup guides for it recommend putting it on it's own drive. Once the addons start piling up it can take a good chunk of room too. I'm sure I'll put some other stuff there (don't see myself taking up a 320 GB drive just w/that) but that will probably be the focus.

 

what do you all think about the Seagate momentus hybrid drive?