I’ve just spent my lunch hour looking for the above, all i seem to keep getting is the 5200rpm?

My Googling powers are truly crap, so thought i’d delve into the STW massive to help me out (again).

Cheers! 🙂

Why do you need 7200 specifically?

Many of the disks have sufficient IO even with 5200

http://www.hgst.com/hard-drives/mobile-drives/9.5mm-mobile-hard-drives/travelstar-7k1000

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/travelstar-7k1000-hdd-review,review-32746-2.html

Ebuyer is your friends but it’s a big price jump from 5200

Why do you need 7200 specifically?

This. The increased density of higher capacity drives can give you better speeds as much as spinning the thing faster. Unless it’s seek times you want to get down, in which case crack on….

However, I’d then say: stop spinning platters like an animal and get an SSD.

Regarding the RPM, I thought if i’ve got the thing open upgrading the HD i might as well go for the fastest / largest available?

Thank you for the information above also!

I am in a similar position to you and am thinking about getting a Seagate SDHD hybrid drive. It has a 5,400 rpm 1TB hard disk and a 64GB SSD but looks like one drive. All your frequently accessed stuff sits on the SSD bit.

Sounds great in theory!

Don’t assume the faster spinning drive will perform “faster” in the real world.

Go for an SSD (and be strict about what data you store locally!). Like shoving a rocket up your laptops backside.

Got Western Digital Black 750Gb 7200rpm 2.5 SATA3 right in front of me now for a Mini ITX build. Looking at the WD site that’s the max they do at that RPM http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=790

this any good ?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00B4QESVQ/ref=pe_385721_37038051_TE_3p_dp_1

Got one for a ps3, works well!

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1tb-hitachi-travelstar-7k1000-25-sata-6gb-s-7200rpm-32mb-cache-13ms

I was looking at the hybrid drives ref Cletus, but wasn’t sure how they worked.

Sorry, another question…. I’ll be installing into a unibody Mac mini which is SATA, would a SATA 3 drive be compatible?

Sata backward compatible no worries usually, but I’d be going for a full on SSD rather than a hybrid option unless you specifically a large capacity drive. If you want extra space an external HDD/NAS would be more than quick enough for music/films/hd pictures/etc.

I would be picking a drive which best suits my needs not just the largest.