what HD for ultrabay?

I got one of the cheap e-bay SATA ultrabays for my T500 and am now looking for a HD to use in it. My top choices are either a Western Digital 500GB Scorpio Black 7200rpm SATA II Notebook HDD w/ 16MB Cache (WD5000BEKT) or SEAGATE 500GB Momentus 7200.4 SATA 2.5in HDD w/ 16MB Cache (ST9500420AS). Would one of these be preferrable over the other for a T500 ultrabay?

 

Personally, I'd go for space in the ultrabay and speed in the main bay.

 

I'd actually suggest a cheaper and lower-power 5400RPM drive for UltraBay use. Since you aren't going to be running Windows off of it, the speed really doesn't matter all that much, as ZaZ suggested.

 

These two drives are on sale at my store for boxing day for about $56. Slower drives come in 320Gb and 250Gb for the about the same price or only somewhat cheaper for the 160Gb. I don't really want to pay much more or have drive smaller than 500Gb. The use will be mainly as media and data server, for image and video editing, and for large data sets to use with SPSS.

 

I'm also favoring Zaz and MidnightSun's advice. I have a 7200rpm drive in my ultrabay and it does make some noise. I do have an SSD as my main drive so I've set my ultrabay drive to spin down the platter drive in 3 minutes. When it does spindown it makes me appreciate the quiet that comes with no mechanical moving parts

 

So is a Seagate or WD preferrable for ultrabay?

 

They'll both work fine.

 

my main is 500gb 7200rpm seagate in the main.
For the ultra bay i went for the Momentus 7200.4 SATA 2.5in 100gb...only because i use audio samples, the speed helps me in Digital audio software..but i'd assume any speed wld suffice general use.bck ups etc.

 

my 1tb 5400 rpm western digital hdd lasted all of 10 minutes. i put it in, partitioned it into five 200gb partitions, commenced multiple file copy operations from my w700's second drive partitions, and the drive/partitions suddenly vanished.

the drive is spinning just fine when i connect it via a usb cable, but it is not detected. i read somewhere that it may be the logic board.

sending it back to wd may not be an option, being that i live in another continent.

 

I agree with ZaZ. Get the largest capacity drive that you need and don't worry about speed. In fact I would recommend 5400rpm due to the lower noise, vibration, and energy use. Most modern brands are fine (WD, Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung [I have used them all]). I would buy on GB/$ and not worry about the manufacturer.

The one thing to check is to get a drive with the highest disk density. For example, if you only need a 250GB or 320GB drive get a drive that does this on a single platter. This will be faster, lighter, and slightly more efficient than an older drive that achieves the same capacity with two platters.

 

I went through three 1TB WDs before I got one that worked. I sold it on eBay and got a Toshiba Canvio, which hasn't had a problem.

 

Speaking of large disks in the bay; do 12.5mm drives fit into the 12.5mm bay of the W510? The tray is only 9.5mm, so it depends on where the extra 3mm are w.r.t. the connectors. To the top? Or the bottom?

Re brands: large WD disks have advanced format, that's something to be aware of, depending on the intended use/partitioning.

 

I got the Seagate and it seems to work fine, don't notice any noise or vibration at all. I used the defaults for formatting. I notice that there is considerable space between the drive and the ultrabay sides, as well as a small space at the top. I am wondering if I should put some padding/foam into the side spaces and some cardboard on top (to protect the drive from dust). Or would that cause issues with heat dissipation?