Samsung 500 GB SATA II Hard Drive HD502HJ

These F3 spinpoint drives are the best 7200 rpm drive you can possibly get for the money, the 1tb drive is also very nice. A single platter 500gb drive that has better average read/write times then my 80gb Velociraptor 10k drive. The Velociraptor only beats it in burst speeds.
Raid 2 of these and see 300mb speeds. Buy it before they are out of stock and they were for a long time in lots of places.

Good product, runs solid, no issues.
The packing from Amazon is great. Protects hard drives well.

Pros:
One year has passed since the F3 first came out and as far as I can tell it's still the fastest 7200 rpm 500 gig drive on the market, faster than Seagate 7200.12 (clearly) and WD Caviar Black (just barely). Probably the quietest as well. I bought and reviewed this drive almost a year ago--it was my first Samsung--and my experience thus far has been all good. Have bought three more since. No regrets. The F3 has become my drive of choice.

Cons: My older F3s, while performing good as new, are now producing more vibration than my new ones. This concerns me. I will update this review if there is further deterioration.

Other Thoughts:
From my first NewEgg review 8/29/09: "I was looking for the fastest single-platter drive, for the usual technical reasons, having been very pleased with the single-platter low-profile drives in the 7200.10 series. Wasn't sure if the new F3 would live up to the F1's excellent reputation. Found some tests of F3s...Read more