Major Brand (Western Digital) 500GB 7200rpm for $44 Frys (BM and online)

FYI for the techno-geeks (this won't matter for most people): I picked up one from the B&M and it is a 2-platter drive, not the newest 1-platter design. Still plenty good though... (These drives have gone through 4 generations - 4-platter, 3-platter, 2-platter, and the newest is the 1-platter. Difference being the platter density.)

travis5818 said: Ignorant1 said: FYI for the techno-geeks (this won't matter for most people): I picked up one from the B&M and it is a 2-platter drive, not the newest 1-platter design. Still plenty good though... (These drives have gone through 4 generations - 4-platter, 3-platter, 2-platter, and the newest is the 1-platter. Difference being the platter density.)

what does platter density mean in terms of drives? faster spinning or am I off?Usually the spinning remains the same. More platters usually translates into slightly higher performance (more simultaneous reads/writes), but also higher failure rates (more moving parts), louder, and more energy used. Fewer platters translate into higher reliability, lower energy, quieter drives.

Is the performance worth worrying about? Usually not. Most people don't notice much difference.

Uh, no. More platter = less performance. Compare the seagate 500gb Sata 418as to any other 500gb hdd and it still wins.

Density per platter can increase the performance more dramatically than rpm speed. If they double the density of data that fits on a platter, which is really just a "disk" for storing data, just like a LP record or compact disk, the drive will in essence be twice as fast. This is because with one revolution of the platter, the heads can read twice as much data as the less dense platter. So in reality, a brand new high density hard drive, one that packs twice as much data per platter, can run at 3,600 rpm and be exactly as fast as the older less density per platter drive that runs at 7,200 rpm. There are also the benefits of less heat and less moving parts, in the form of "heads" which read the data. A single platter drive will only have two sets of heads, one for each side of the disk. Whereas a double platter drive will have four sets of heads, two for each side of two platters.