Going to get Seagate Momentus 7200.3

What do you guys think about buying this drive over the 7k320 and the Scorpio Black? Based on the specifications on Newegg, this drive is the fastest/cheaper drive.

 

It is the fastest , and lowest power consumption.

 

It seems to be the most cheapest ATM.
You could also check out its 250GB version. That seems to be the fastest out of the 160GB|320GB 7200.3....

 

250GB was going for $87.

 

Is there a noticable performance difference between the 250 and the 320? I'm not really worried about the extra space, but if the price for the 250gb is 87$, I might order it sooner, as I was going to wait till my birthday (November 24th) to get money and order it. Right now I could afford both, but I would like to save as much as posssible.

EDIT: Could you send me the link for the 250 please? Nevermind, found one for 74$ @ http://www.nowdirect.com/exec/partInfo/part_detail.tsb?prcpart=SGNST9250421AS

 

The 250GB was little bit faster than the 320GB.

$74?! OMG amazing. I wonder how long it will take before 7200.4 500GB will be in stock.

 

NowDirect has a questionable business record as per ResellerRatings, I went ahead and ordered my 250GB from PCConnection for $87 and had it at my door in about three days.

 

Could you run the HDD test of PCMark 05 (XP) or Vantage (Vista) on it?

 

I'm not exactly sure what results you'll get with PCMark relating to a HDD test, but I'll run it PCMark05 on it right now.

 

Cool. PCMark 05 HDD testresults look like the attachment.

Tom's Hardware reported a XP startup speed of 7,9Mb/sec for the 7200.3 320GB, which most likely is wrong. Some of our members got up to 9,6-10MB/sec.

Edit: note that these results are just an example. no meaning for Seagate 7200.3

 

Phil, you do know that is the 7200.1 right?

 

Yes indeed. I was just giving an example of what the HDD test results in PCMark 05 look like.

 

Ill wait for the 7200.4 500GB.

 

Alright, I had some issues with my installer and I'm redownloading it now. For some reason the binaries got messed up and I encountered some illegal instructions.

 

Here is a Tom's article about notebook drives that compares the 7200.3 and the Black if you haven't already read it.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/notebook-hard-drive,2006.html

 

But I think they used the 320GB drive in their tests, which isn't quite the same as the 250GB drive.

Anyway, results attached.

 

That result is a bit slower than my 320 7200.3, which is what I expected, however, it's faster than the Hitachi 7k320 and the WD 320BEKT.

 

Well, definitely fast enough for me at $87.

 

Thanks for doing that. 9,4 Mb/sec startup speed shows again that something is wrong with Tom's Hardware results.

The startup speed and file write performance are faster. But the virus scan, application loading and general usage are slower than the 7K320. Not that it matters a lot, both are fine drives.

7K320 http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=21532&d=1217085704
WD3200BEKT http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=21822&d=1217592624

 

Absolutely, especially when you can out speed the other two as price/performance.
@Phil: Considering this is a 250GB, it's excellent compared to those 320Gb ones.