Western Digital Scorpio Black 2.5" 500GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache SATA Internal Hard Drive WD5000BEKT - $65.99 shipped at Amazon

Western Digital Scorpio Black 2.5" 500GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache SATA Internal Notebook PC Hard Drive WD5000BEKT - $65.99 w/Prime shipping (free if slowest shipping method chosen or free 2-day shipping for Amazon Prime members) at Amazon

Amazon.com: Western Digital Scorpio 2.5-Inch 500 GB SATA Internal Hard Drive WD5000BEKT (Black): Computer & Accessories

The price is admittedly not dramatically low, but it is the lowest price I have seen to date for a new WD5000BEKT, a high-performance well-reviewed notebook PC HD. Amazon's prices can fluctuate often, sometimes daily.

 

I think the previous deal you posted (Seagate Momentus 500GB) was a little better. Still it's nice to see HD prices go down.

The problem is, 500GB Momentus XT shows up now and then for $100 on sale. I think that's a much better choice for people who really need more space but would like a bit better performance. Right now it's $120 on Newegg. While regular HDs got beefed up with cache and what not, their performance is still far behind anything SSDish.

I ended up using regular HDs literally just for storage.

 

A WD5000BEKT for $66 shipped is a very good deal. I bought one last week for $72 from Newegg.

I agree with you that the Momentus XT is worth extra money . . . most of the benefits of an SSD without the price.

Regarding the Momentus 7200.4; the WD Blacks, especially this one, are much better drives overall; I think it's worth spending a few dollars extra for them (or a Hitachi 7K500). The 7200.4 was never a standout drive; it has a lot of vibration and only average performance (just on par with the better 5400RPM drives, like Seagate's own excellent 5400.6 series).

 

Sorry to report Amazon has already raised the price of the WD5000BEKT to $71.33 shipped .

On a related topic, I appreciate the responses and discussion. Although the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 sale by Newegg I posted recently seems to be a better buy on a $/GB basis, I suggest the extra $8 (comparing the lowest prices of the two drives) actually buys a much better HD in several aspects. Although I have little expertise on HD performances, WD HDs in general have an excellent reputation and the WD5000BEKT in particular seems to have garnered enthusiastic reviews, two of which are listed below:

Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB Review (WD5000BEKT) | StorageReview.com

Western Digital Scorpio Black (WD5000BEKT) - reviews - Servers & Storage - Hard Disk Drives (Internal) - PC World

Secondly, the WD5000BEKT has markedly fewer negative buyer reviews (so far) on Amazon and Newegg than the Seagate Momentus and even Hitachi 7K500--the negatives largely pertained to DOA HDs and HD failures after less than a year, which also suggest the WD Black is more reliable and durable. Thirdly, as if to underscore the latter, Western Digital provides 5-year warranties on its HDs, while Seagate and Hitachi warrantee their conventional HDs for 3 years. Readily admitting this conclusion is open to debate and opposing arguments, the WD5000BEKT appears to be the overall best-performing and most reliable 500GB 7200RPM conventional HD currently available. Whether this quality is worth its additional expense is very subjective and only the prospective buyer can decide this, but I posted the $65.99 Amazon special, as fleeting as it was, for those seeking this HD at the lowest price available.

As Unreal25 and Charles Jefferies point out, the performance of the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB hybrid HD (XT) exceeds those of all available conventional HDs, including the WD5000BEKT, and approaches the much costlier pure SSD HDs. Most professional reviews have validated its vaunted performance. Unlike its conventional stablemates, Seagate provides the XT with a 5-year warranty. Comparing lowest price points, the XT is roughly $30-40 more than the WD5000BEKT, which is not a significant difference for some buyers, but others may find the difference enough to find more economical alternatives. However, buyer reviews on Newegg and Amazon have contained a fair number of negative comments, mostly concerning early failures, DOAs, and spin-up/spin-down problems, some as recently as October 2010.

As some know, very recently my Dell M1330's HD failed. Seeking a replacement, I was initially attracted by the Seagate XT hybrid and its superb performance, but the negative buyer reviews raised concerns about its reliability. I did not want to risk having to buy a XT, having it be a DOA or fail early, then have to contact Seagate or the dealer (depending on when it failed) for a RMA, uninstall the XT, return it to Seagate or dealer after RMA approved, wait for replacement XT, install it, and possibly risk having to repeat this sequence again or even 2 or more times. This is only my subjective opinion, of course, and others needing or desiring the XT's performance may well regard the risk of failure and replacing under warranty and the XT's $100-130 price (depending on available sales) worthwhile. I then ordered the Hitachi 0S02858 (reboxed 7K500), but soon after became aware of the enthusiastic reviews (both professional and lay users) of the WD5000BEKT and opted to buy it and return the Hitachi unused. I regard reliability and durability highly and its combination of stellar performance and high reputed reliability made the WD5000BEKT seem a great value for the $69.99 price shipped I paid to Amazon. I agree with Charles Jeffries that paying a modest premium for higher quality and reliability is worth the expense; this often makes the more expensive item a better buy. In fact, I view the WD5000BKT as a good value even at its more common price points of $70-76. In the near future, I suspect the reliability of hybrid HDs, such as the Seagate XT, will improve significantly and prices will decrease greatly such that they will cost little more than conventional HDs.

I apologize if this rather lengthy discourse is TMI (too much information). I found the comments about value and quality interesting and obviously stimulating . Thanks for reading.

 

You know seagate was once the worlds largest hd company and then scandalous reliability issues made them disapear from the scene.

the seagate name once meant garbage. They became a very small niche hd maker for botique desktops with the barracuda in the 90s, making small fast hds for fast boot ups.

Eventually they rose again and bought out their cross town rival maxtor, which was for the most part a much bigger company in the 90s.
Now they resell laptop hds even. the seagate name means something good because i guess there arent a lot of geeks from the 80s still buying hds.

The two name brands in mobile hds are definitely wd and hitachi. Even if seagate buys in to a tech first like this hybrid tech, Id buy name brand first. Back in the day wd was a bit player but always the most reliable. Thats what their selling point was, were smaller and slower but never break down.

They entered the laptop hd market the same way always smaller and slower but now theyre pretty tight with the others in terms of size.

All the rest are 2nd tier. I think toshiba is third tier very terrible.

 

Thanks for the Seagate background information, I wasn't aware of its distant past. I've noticed Hitachi HDs are well-regarded by many, especially the 7K500. Was the 7K500 the first 500GB 7200RPM internal HD for notebook PC's? The 7K500 seems to have a strong core of supporters and was strongly recommended to me by several people early in my search for a replacement laptop HD. I almost settled on the 7K500, but ultimately the WD5000BEKT won out with its moderately superior overall performance and seemingly much better reliability, as evinced by professional and lay user reviews, underscored by its longer 5-year warranty. The WD5000BEKT seems to have strikingly few detractors compared to Seagate and even Hitachi. I share Stamar's sentiments about buying tried-and-true first--reliability is as important, if not more than, as performance.

 

As I recall, the Seagate Momentus came first. The Hitachi 7K500 was relased about, not quite a year ago, I think, and the WD5000BEKT is a fairly recent release, within the past 2-3 months.

 

You are correct, Judicator. The Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB 7.2k came first, it beat everyone else by about a year. The Hitachi 7K500 came next, and WD just in the last few months -- they were very late to the game. To be fair, that time wasn't wasted; the WD5000BEKT is the fastest traditional notebook drive on the market by a few hairs; the 7K500 is very close, you would not notice the difference between them in everyday usage.

Samsung actually has a 640GB 7200RPM drive out now, which is getting good reviews.