Hitachi GST Travelstar 7K200 HTS722012K9SA00 (0A50938) 120GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s 2.5″ Notebook Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: It works. It is silent.

Cons: Runs warmer than original WD it replaced. Not much faster than the WD 5400 8m 120g bev version it replaced.

Overall Review: I bought this drive to try help my laptop’s boot time under Vista Home Premium. The original WD would give a score of 5.1 on Vista’s performance rating. The Hitachi at 7200rpm and 16meg cache returned a performance rating of 5.2. Not much of the improvement I was looking for. I wish now that I had just bought a higher capacity WD Scorpio as I would much rather have more capacity than a marginal increase in performance.

Pros: VERY FAST!!! Beats the old Seagate Momentus 5500 rpm drive I had before which went bad on me and was like a furnace under my hand. This produces virtually no heat even with heavy loads.. that means my laptop will run very cool now which means it will last a long time. Outstanding performance. No noise.. WinXP boots ultra fast. It’s like night and day. Very happy. Also it will take you less than 5 minutes to replace on most hard drives. I use an Acer Aspire 5100.

Cons: It wasn’t a two for one special.

Overall Review: I mailed the old defective Seagate drive back to Acer for a replacement and will purchase a little USB external adapter case and use it to keep backups and mp3’s. With the main hard drive and the back up I’ll have over 200gigs and thats plenty for me. Very handy for traveling and stuff. Also Acer Tech Support was great. I highly recommend Acer America for Laptops!

Pros: Quick Drive, Great Price

Cons: Oem drive did not include mounting screws