Good 2.5inch Hard Drive for UltraBay?

Hi. I have a Thinkpad and was looking to use a large hard drive in the DVD slot for backups and just sheer excess crap. I know I need the UltraBay 2 adapter for the SATA compatibility. What I was wondering is can anyone recommend me a decently large, cool, and silent hard drive for use in it? The WD Blue or Seagate or Hitachi or something else? I'm guessing for the $ the 500 GB size are the best deals...

 

I cant comment on noise, but for power efficiency, you are better off with a 5400rpm drive. In particular the Hitachi 5K500.B is the most power efficient of the 500gb 5400rpm harddrives.
The exact model number is:
HTS545050B9A300

K-TRON

 

Thanks. I tend to believe in Hitachi based on prior experience, but I'm really looking for what is a good value. The prices of the WD Seagate, and Hitachi are all around the same time so I want to make the most informed decsion I can. We'll see what happens.

It's also good to have the direct part number. For a while I was a afraid I'd accidently look at the older 3 platter 500GB drives that were'nt in standard size

Anybody else have thoughts?

 

have a check on the Samsung Disks.
i use them for many years now, had seagate, hitachi, toshiba, fujitsu and WD in my last laptops, kicked them all out for Samsung disks.

 

Does Seagate have a 500gb drive that is not 3 platters? Or is it demonstrably cheaper than say a Hitachi or WD?

 

Don't get a samsung. The hitachi, WD and seagate are currently the fastest drives.

 

On one hand this is just bulk data storage. on the other hand, speed is kind of important since it will be used at native SATA speeds (thanks, Ultra Bay awesomeness). Not a boot drive. Just got to handle large file copies to and from it quickly (as in faster than USB 2...). I'm looking for the most balanced drive that is not going to die on me randomly, really.

Samsung I'd consider if it was a really good deal and quiet/cool. Thing is if the price was not really different I think I'd go for one from the big three. so if i understand this right performance generally goes WD>Hitachi>Seagate for the 500GB 5400rpm drives. Hitachi seems to be right in the middle of all of the threads I've looked at here, it seems like.

 

You won't be limited by the sata interface in the ultrabay with a mechanical drive. I think the fastest 7200rpm notebook drives don't top 100mb/s.

 

Yeah notebook mechanical drives are far from 100MB/s still.

 

Yeah I know that. I was speaking way too generally. It's not like I was dropping in an Intel X25 into the ultrabay I'm just saying as long as it pulls what the hard drive would pull being the boot drive I'm happy.

 

Would the Hitachi 500GB 5400.B be the best choice for me?

 

Yes it is,
In real life benchmarks, it is near identical in performance to the Seagate 7200.4
It is the most power efficient 500gb 5400rpm drive, and it is the fastest 500gb 5400rpm drive. You cant really loose going with it.

K-TRON

 

mine hits just above 100MB/s at the beginning

I also have the Hitachi 500GB one but I use it in USB enclousure (has esata too but I dont have esata port on my laptop, nor esata express card).

both are best in their categories so far

 

It was cheap on Newegg so I got the Hitachi. $80 after a rebate or $90 right now is good enough. I did trolling around and figured out they were pretty good deal with that. Thanks for all your help