Seagate Momentus or WD Scorpio Blue?

I'm looking for a second hard drive to put in my Gateway 6860FX and have pretty much narrowed it down to these drives:

$99.99 - Western Digital - Scorpio Blue 500GB 5400 rpm
$89.99 - Seagate - Momentus 500GB 5400 rpm
$109.99 - Seagate - Momentus 500GB 7200 rpm

I think they are slightly cheaper on newegg, but it would be nice to buy it at Best Buy since it's local.

Which drive do you guys think is better?

 

What are you looking for?
Battery life or performance???

One is a 7200rpm drive - possibly slightly faster than the 5400rpm drive.

 

i am also going through same issue.which drive to choose.but i have made up my mind about western digital after reading numerous articles.

 

Scorpio is the best drive.

 

the 7200rpm seagate will be the fastest. i really like the WD 500gb drive, i had one and it was near silent. i haven't used the seagate 500gb drive though.

 

I'm looking for performance over battery life. The 6860FX has a terrible battery life anyways. I always have it plugged in.

I know the Scorpio Blue has a lot of great reviews on Newegg, more so then the Seagate Momentus 7200.4, but theoretically the Seagate should be better. I think the Best Buy Momentus might be a different model then what's on Newegg, though. Something I suppose needs looking into...

 

Better how? Better performance sure, the problem is laptop 7200rpm drives have awful reliability compared the 5400rpm units.

 

If your key concern is performance, consider the WD Scorpio Black too, or a SSD.

 

Yes, I meant better performance, as it's 7200 rpm. I had no idea 7200 rpm drives were less reliable then 5400 rpm hard drives. Are you saying there's a higher chance the faster drive will fail, that there will be read/write errors, or what exactly did you mean?

I'm looking for performance on a budget SSD are very high priced, aren't they? As far as I know, there isn't a scorpio black yet, and I'm really looking for a 500GB drive since it's a better value for the money (and I will need the space eventually).

 

Well, the Intel SSDs are expensive - there are other companies out there too - BUT - I have no idea how good fast and reliable they are.

A 500GB Scorpio Black doesn't yet exist - that is true - the question is, can't you go with a smaller high performance drive inside and an external drive for file storage?
You won't be lugging around a few 100GB every day, will you?

Depending on what performance you need, this may be the better idea.

 

I'm very happy with my Scorpio Blue 500GB. It has been a good drive.

I have nothing against Seagate, but they dropped their 5yr warranty, and typically cost more. There's no incentive to pay extra now that the warranty is the same, unless it's a matter of 5400 vs. 7200rpm drives.

 

The fastest hard drive at the moment is the Hitachi Travelstar 7K500.

After that it's the WD Scorpio Blue 640GB and 500GB.

For a comparison between WD5000BEVT and Seagate 7200.4 see here:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17010/4

 

also its the most expensive among them... scorpio blue is your best choice as its the most reliable , cheap and not to mention, its just as fast as the 7200rpm drives and there little difference in performance. Unless you want to waste money on extra performance stick with the scorpio blue... seagate momentus has a lot of problems and seagate drives have quality issues so western digital is a better bet.

 

Sounds like I should go with the Scorpio Blue, then! Thanks for your advice guys!

 

Well if you could get Hitachi Travelstar 7K500 that will be the fastest.

But as far as I know it's not selling anywhere yet.

 

I couldnt even find it on ebay Where they hiding these drives at under a rock

 

I have a question, in general which brand is more reliable? WD or seagate?

 

Flip a coin and see what comes up...

I believe there have been some Seagate issues on here, but else its really the luck of the draw.

 

Well, it's a small sample, but I've just had my second 'momentus' die on me in two months. It's now been replaced by a Scorpio Blue

 

I'm not suprised.. after hearing all about how seagate drives were failing i went ahead and bought a western digital external hard drive although a seagate one was cheaper.. hopefully now hollis you want have any more problems..

 

what about Hitachi compared to WD?

 

They all have the same reliability on average.

 

from what i heard Hitachi seems to be more reliable but also more expensive.. for normal ppl Western Digital is good enough so go and get the western digital hard drive...

 

I wouldn't really worry.
Current drives from major brands are very reliable their warranty pretty much guarantees it.
I will be comparing for performance and pricing.

 

Thanks everyone for your advice. I ended up buying the Scorpio Blue 500GB drive, it should be arriving today or Monday.

To install the new hard drive, do I just slip it into the additional hard drive bay and turn on the computer?

I want to install Windows 7 on the new drive, and copy all of my files over to it. I don't know if there is a better way of doing this; but my current plan is to swap out my hard drive with the new one, install W7 on it, and then put my old drive back in and copy the files over to the new drive. Then I would wipe the old drive and use it for storage.

Thanks guys!

 

Not that it matters, but my toshiba came with a Blue Scorpio WD, I am impressed by it's performance , and barely audible sounds...then again, the "sound" wouldnt bother me anyway, it's just doing what it's supposed to do....it's a 5400rpm....So it appears I've had good luck with fujitsu, hitachi, toshiba, and WD HD's....

 

I've always been partial to WD, but have a Seagate in my notebook PC. So far so good. I don't think it matters much, both are quality vendors. There is a noticeable load time improvement with 7200RPM, but it does create more noticable vibration.