Conclusion:

The Seagate Momentus 5400.6 500GB hard drive appears to be a good, solid performer. It runs cool, is quiet, and quite fast considering its slower spindle speed and meager cache size. With a 3.5" desktop variant we’d expect to see 16MB or 32MB of cache, but this model comes with just 8MB. This doesn’t appear to be a deal breaker.

Doing a quick Google search of e-tailers finds that this drive will run you between $90-120 (US), with Newegg.com's price of $99.99 made more appealing thanks to free shipping. The shelf of my local Best Buy had this drive for $129.

With all things considered, the Seagate Momentus 5400.6 500GB SATA hard drive is a great buy and a great alternative for laptop and MicroPC storage. For this it earns the Bigbruin.com "Recommended" award.



Pros:

» Largest 2.5” drive available
» Decent value @ ~ $0.10/GB
» Energy efficient
» Quiet and shock-proof

Cons:

» Slow spindle speed
» Only 8MB of cache memory
» 3 year warranty is on par with comparable drives (but we’d like to see 5 years)