Purchasing WD 120GB vs. Seagate 320 GB: I'm leaning towards WD because of its smaller size and USB powered feature, but Seagate's 320GB has more rpm (7200 vs. 5400 for WD) and nearly 3 times the storage capacity for only $10 more (and shipping ofcourse).
1391388
The Seagate is not as portable. This WD is meant to travel with you on a daily basis. It doesn't need an external power supply and is very small and light. The Seagate is meant to sit on your desk, but its faster and cheaper per gig. Assess your needs and purchase accordingly.
1303287
I would select the one at the lower price , be it the Crucial or Samsung. Both are good drives and I'll bet you couldn't tell the difference between the two unless you ran benchmark software that told you one was faster. I have several different brand/size/speed drives and on a day-to-day basis there is no observable change in performance. Once you get a SSD you will be happy.
275754
That is no rule of thumb I have ever heard in my 15 years in IT. Seagate/Maxtor makes up the 'lower tier' of drive brands. Hitachi/Samsung are slightly more reliable. WD is still reliability king. Even if you get a good Seagate/Maxtor drive they are prone to fail after a few years, right after the warranty expires. The large capacity drive firmware issues they've been having this last year or so has just sullied their reputation even further and the kind of bugs they've had recently in fully released firmware is inexcusable. Seagate has recently earned their rep as the bottom rung hard drive supplier firmly and deservedly and that by a country mile.
100783
I bought these: Seagate Momentus 7200 750 GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 16 MB Cache 2.5 Inch Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive ST9750420ASThey're fast and work great so far after daily abuse with external Final Cut Pro, Aperture, Photoshop, and iTunes libraries. Connected via Thunderbolt it seems just as fast as an internal drive. At the time, earlier in 2013, these were the biggest, fastest drives available. There are bigger drives now with larger caches.
474696
Great question. Simple answer, performance will be about the same, so go with the lower cost with higher reliability drive. For me, the choice was easy as it was quite a bit cheaper than the 7,200 models. A year later, I still love this little drive so I don't think you will have any issues if you follow in my tracks.
476514
WD only makes two versions of the 320gb in 2.5"7200 rpm with a 16mb buffer and a5400 rpm with a 8mb bufferamazon has this as a 5400 rpm drive with a 16mb buffer, so who made the mistake?
1933590
There are advantages to both. The 320s in the ENVY 17 are both 7200 RPM drives. 640GB drives are 5400 RPM which makes them a little slower. Although at 5400 RPM they are faster then most other 5400 RPM drives because the data is packed more densly on the platters.
1939446
A 7200 rpm hard drive will run at said speed as a 5400 rpm hdd will run at 5400 rpm. The higher the rpm, the faster the drive.
100781
I recommend WD Black 750GB Performance Mobile Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6 Gb/s 16MB Cache 9.5 MM 2.5 Inch - WD7500BPKX which has a 5 year warranty.
141733
The drive works well. USB 3.0 is faster only if the computer being used is too. The drive is slightly smaller than WD, Toshiba, etc. But it is not significantly smaller or faster than a like WD. I think WD comes in 2TB for about the same price.
1128740
I have 3 westerns in my pc i havent had a seagate in awhile. I have a seagate external drive and its ran fan for like 7 years. So i would look up some reviews of both and see which one is best.
2267226
Given that there are conflicting answers to this question on Amazon, and I really wanted to know before purchasing a drive, I contacted Seagate. Here's their response: " Unfortunately, part of the information is not provided at all. The RPM of our Expansion drives are not a provided specification, meaning the unit can run from 5400 RPMs to 7200 RPMs. We have no way to know which is it. It is not a guaranteed specification." So, it's a crap shoot. And it matters.
1485479
This is not a trivial drive swap. There are two different versions of this pc. One ships with a seagate hd and the other with a WD. No telling which one you will get. The seagate has a standard sata interface the wd uses a different connector and getting the sata one is only available in Europe and will cost north of $50. If you buy one with the intention of upgrading the drive make sure it has the seagate. If not return it immediately. Not worth the aggravation and cost. You can clone the drive with Easeus todo backup software. USB boot is disabled I can't find anyone that has identified work around. This is not a trivial drive swap. There are two different versions of this pc. One ships with a seagate hd and the other with a WD. No telling which one you will get. The seagate has a standard sata interface the wd uses a different connector and getting the sata one is only available in Europe and will cost north of $50. If you buy one with the intention of upgrading the drive make sure it has the seagate. If not return it immediately. Not worth the aggravation and cost. You can clone the drive with Easeus todo backup software. USB boot is disabled I can't find anyone that has identified... » Read More This is not a trivial drive swap. There are two different versions of this pc. One ships with a seagate hd and the other with a WD. No telling which one you will get. The seagate has a standard sata interface the wd uses a different connector and getting the sata one is only available in Europe and will cost north of $50. If you buy one with the intention of upgrading the drive make sure it has the seagate. If not return it immediately. Not worth the aggravation and cost. You can clone the drive with Easeus todo backup software. USB boot is disabled I can't find anyone that has identified work around. « Show Less
1969631
I would buy a large external drive. The is much faster than standard hard drives
1054812
the samsung is a little faster ,but is it that much faster? no, and is $20.00 more.i would go for pny,you will not be disappointed with this drive.
1555558
I wrote a non-techie review of my 64g and 128g. I compared writing 37.3 gig of data - the San Disk disk took 5:55 minutes for the 64g and 5:50 for the 128g. The other 2 (not cheapies) took between 25 and 36 minites. All were done with the same source data on the same computer using the same USB3 port. They were all USB 3 drives. Not sure what the specs are, SanDisk has them on their website, but I can tell you it is faster than any of the others out there except maybe the Lexar and the price on those is much higher.
1872483
More storage is always preferred so I'd go with both drives (SSD with the OS so everything is faster and hybrid as a secondary for downloads). An SSD will usually cost more per GB than a hybrid drive but SSD is faster, quiter, more reliable, and less susceptible to damage since there's no moving parts. You can check reviews for the different drives on sites like www.cnet.com to get in-depth information including pros/cons. I have Windows 7 running on the 1GB hybrid drive and it's great!