So, ive been debating on trying to find a faster hard drive for my laptop, im currently using a Western Digital Scorpio Black 750GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache and SATA 3.0 GB/s. My friend has a Seagate Momentus XT 500gb, the solid state hybrid (Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS) that he has never used and i offered to buy it. But im not sure if it would be faster and better than my current hard drive or not, i mean my WD is a littler bigger but i can sacrifice some space for speed and performance. any opinions?
I have that same hybrid Seagate and I noticed a little bit of a difference but honestly if I could do it again I would just get an ssd if I wanted speed. Now don't get me wrong hybrid is much cheaper and you get I'd say about a 4th of the speed from the ssd. It helps more with applications than boot times. Another trick you could do is partition it up into two drives which would also speed it up. Otherwise, stick with the larger drive unless you want the raw performance.
I have had much better luck in terms of consistant performance and longer lifespan with Western Digital (WD). Overall you wouldn't visibly notice much difference but I hate when parts die, I've lost a lot of data to Seagate drives. This isn't to say that they're bad, I've just had bad luck with them. Especially since the drive in question is already used, I would just get the WD.