Which 500GB 5400RPM 2.5" SATA HDD is currently the best?

The top 3 I keep hearing are:
WD
Samsung
Seagate

Which one is really the best one? (They're all the same price)

 

What laptop do you have?

Their are a lot of 500gb drives, however some are older and some are thicker than others.
Right now there are two 12.5mm thick 500gb 5400rpm drives. The Hitachi 5k500 and the Fujitsu 500gb 5400rpm drive.
Please stay away from those drives unless you have a laptop which can fit 12.5mm thick drives. (right now I think the ASUS G50 and a few Clevo's are the only ones which can)

The Samsung HM500LI is an older 500gb drive, which has three 166gb platters in it. By jamming three platters into a standard 9.5mm thick drive the hm500li gets pretty hot, has a large power draw and it does not perform very well

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Right now their are three good 500gb 5400rpm 9.5mm thick drives.
The Western Digital WD5000BEVT,
The Hitachi 5K500.B
and
The Seagate Momentus ST9500325AS / ST9500325ASG
The ASG model has a G-Shock sensor which is also known as an accelerometer/free-fall sensor

From what it sounds the WD5000BEVT is the better than the Seagate ST9500325AS, but we havent heard anything about the Hitachi 5K500.B yet.

I personally think the Hitachi 5K500.B is going to be the best, but that may be because I am a Hitachi fanboy.

K-TRON

 

Im running the Samsung 500 in my wifes Sony SZ. It scores a 5.4 with vista

 

i have the sammy and the wd and the wd is far better imo

 

I have a P-6831FX right now, and am hoping to get a G50VT-X1 or X2.

So the Fujitsus work in the G50VT?

 

I had the P-6381 laptop. There should be plenty of room. You could Raid 0 2- 500 gigs The other laptop dunno

 

I know there's plenty of room in terms of width and length for 2 drives, but as mentioned above, the Fujitsus are 12.5mm thick.

If both the G50VT and my current P-6831FX can fit it, that's perfect.

Edit: Nevermind, the Fujitsu drive is 4200RPM

How bout the Seagates? I thought the 5400.6 was really good?

 

Seems like WD is the one to pick eh...

 

i own the wd sammy and seagate and the wd is the best of the three all the way around. i now only carry and sell the wd's to my customers

 

WD5000 is definetly the best one. Highest throughput and lower acces times than the others. Power consumption is also very good.

There have been a couple of complaints about noise though but this seems more a matter of bad luck. Check the Apple forum for more info.

 

Your ASUS G50VT can handle the 12.5mm drives as well as the 9.5mm drives.
But as mentioned stick with the wd5000bevt since it seems to be the best drive right now in the 500gb 5400rpm category

K-TRON

 

My WD5000BEVT's SMART data is now reporting over 1,000 power on hours without giving any cause for concern. It does make a slight ticking noise but that is only audible in a very quiet room and I've never come across a HDD that is complete quiet (except if it is dead ).

I would happily buy another if I needed another big HDD.

John

 

Seagate all the way!!!!!!

 

The Seagate 5400.6 has acces times are similar to that of an 4200rpm drive so I would prefer the WD5000BEVT at the moment.

That may change when the Seagate 7200.4 arrives.

 

I currently have a P-6831FX, would it handle 12.5mm drives?
How are the Hitachi drives?

 

The Gateway P-6831FX can only use 9.5mm thick drives.
The ASUS G50 series was designed around the Hitachi 5K500 drives.

Hitachi is usually a leader in performance but I have not seen any benchmarks of the 5K500.B, which is a 9.5mm thick 500gb drive.

Sorry to hear your harddrive died tinderbox, was it a desktop or external drive?

K-TRON

 

Hey K-TRON, is the G50VT capable of two 12.5mm drives?
I opened mine up and it seems that 1 HDD bay is steeper than the other.

 

My WD 500GB scores 5,6 with Vista and improves the laptop battery (the old hdd is a fujitsu 200GB that scores 4,2 )

 

I am almost 100% positive the G50 can fit the 12.5mm drives.
If you have the G50, you can always measure the drive bay itself, to see what it will fit.

K-TRON

 

ive had 4 bad wd 500gb drives out of 24 now.. and 2 that are for sure making a racket. i can not recc them imo right now..

im ordering some of the seagates to test out now

 

I know it has no trouble fitting a 12.5mm in one of the slots

But when I opened it up, the two bays have different depth:



So I don't know if it can fit 12.5mm HDD in the shallower one.

 

The ASUS product service manual reads that it supports a single harddrive up to 15mm, and a secondary harddrive up to 9.5mm deep.
The M50 and M70 support two 12.5mm thick drives, the G50 series only supports one 12.5mm thick drive.

Why do you want two 5K500's?
You should look at getting two higher performance 500gb drives which are 9.5mm, like the WD5000BEVT, or the hitachi 5k500.b

K-TRON

 

Because I wanted to put them in RAID0, and thought Hitachi only had 5k500 (overlooked your post above, woops).