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Originally published at Internet.com
It's been a while since we last took a serious look at the best bang-for-the-buck in mainstream-priced desktop hard drives. Hard drive manufacturers haven't remained idle either, as all of the major players have been busily increasing performance while decreasing costs. Since our earlier hard drive shootout, the business side of the industry hasn't stood still either, with Seagate's acquisition of Maxtor (still operating as a separate brand) now complete. 
The rules for our competition were simple: Four manufacturers each supplied their best-performing sub-$120 500GB drive. Giving them a little more flexibility, we used Web prices rather than suggested retail, and focused on bare (OEM-style) drives rather than retail-boxed units. A single capacity for all drives takes size out of the assessment, leaving us to determine which one offers the best pure value based on raw performance, price, and warranty.
First, a look at our four competitors.
Hitachi Deskstar T7K500: 500GB, 7200 RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB cache
The actual model number for Hitachi's T7K500 series depends somewhat on manufacturing date, so readers might not be able to track down a vendor advertising theirs as an HDT725050VLA360... but instead may find the drive listed as a KLA360, or something similar, depending on how frequently the particular vendor updates its information.
The more important part of the model number is the "6" near the end, meaning 16 megabytes of cache. Those drives that substitute an "8" have eight megabytes of cache. 
The T7K500 is one of the last Serial ATA drives to offer both the SATA and 4-pin ATA power interfaces and the only one in this comparison to offer this feature. The dual-power connections should never be used at the same time, of course: The 4-pin plug is a substitute connector for those buyers who are still using non-SATA power supplies, and it serves the same function as SATA-to-ATA power adapters often found in motherboard cable kits.
Hitachi sets its drives to SATA 3.0Gb/s mode and relies on a software interface to allow users to choose the older SATA 150 standard. SATA 3.0Gb/s is supposed to be compatible with SATA 150 controllers, and though the majority of SATA 150 controllers will work with either setting, a few will require manual reconfiguration.
Samsung Spinpoint T166 HD501LJ: 500GB, 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB cache
Samsung's HD501LJ model number is short, but a bit too cryptic to remember easily. On the other hand, cryptic naming is the least of our worries, and the company still has plenty of opportunity to impress us in the benchmarks. 
Samsung makes switching from the native SATA 3.0Gb/s mode to the older SATA 150 mode easy through the addition of a jumper, but doesn't include the jumper. Buyers who still use finicky old systems will probably find it easier to pull the jumper off an old ATA drive than they would to use another hard drive brand's software interface, but the omission of the jumper is still worth noting.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3500630AS: 500GB, 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB cache
Seagate only offers two models of 7200.10 500GB drives, one SATA 3.0Gb/s and one ATA100, and both have 16MB cache. This means that the long and cryptic ST3500630AS model name needs not be memorized by shoppers looking for this particular drive, as shopping for a 7200.10 500GB in the desired connection will do. 
The 7200.10 uses the SATA 3.0Gb/s interface, which is cross-compatible with the vast majority of SATA 150 controllers. Like most other manufacturers, Seagate provides a jumper block for forcing SATA 150 mode on incompatible systems. No jumper is included, and finding documentation for the setting requires digging deeply into the long version of the 7200.10 manual. We'll cut to the chase and tell everyone who owns such difficult older hardware that the pins used to set SATA 150 mode are the two located furthest to the right on the photo above. If you do have the need to force SATA 150 mode, you'll also need to find your own jumper.
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS: 500GB, 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB cache
Western Digital makes naming easier by designating its 16MB cache version in the model name SE16, as opposed to the Caviar SE, which has only 8MB cache. The price difference between 8MB and 16MB cache versions is insignificant, unless you're buying these in extremely large quantities, so why not get the good one? 
Like Samsung and Seagate, Western Digital has done away with the old 4-pin ATA power connector and uses SATA power plus an SATA 300 interface natively, which is compatible with properly designed SATA 150 controllers as well. Users of (again, fairly rare) incompatible SATA 150 controllers will be required to set a jumper to force SATA 150 mode, and as with Seagate, Western Digital requires users to hunt down this information. Once again, we'll make it easy: The SATA 150 mode lock uses pins 5 and 6, and a pin number diagram is listed on the top of the drive. It's still up to the users of those difficult older controllers to actually find a jumper, unfortunately.
Performance
One wouldn't expect to see a huge difference in performance between four drives that have the same capacity, rotational speed, interface, and cache size, yet that's what we're looking for. We used the on-chipset controller of Intel's latest ICH8 Southbridge to provide a throughput limit beyond that which the drives would likely provide. Testing System Configuration Motherboards Foxconn P35A Video cards MSI NX8600GTS 256MB RAM Crucial Ballistix PC2-6400 CAS4 Processors Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz OS Hard Drive Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 SATA 3.0Gb Test Drives Hitachi Desktstar T7K500 500GB
Samsung Spinpoint T166 500GB
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB
Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB
Optical NEC ND-3500A PSU Ultra X3 1000W OS Windows XP Service Pack 2 Drivers OEM Motherboard driver pack
nVidia ForceWare 158.22 Graphics
SiSoft Sandra 2005 starts us off with some rough numbers: The later benchmarks are a little more consistent between runs. 
The Samsung Spinpoint T166 HD501LJ has the greatest number of wins in Sandra transfer rate, but can it continue that trend into the tougher benchmarks? Before we go there, let's take a look as Sandra's estimated access times. 
The same drive that won Sandra's transfer rate tests lost its estimated access time test.
H2benchw reads and writes across the entire drive wwithout any file system restrictions imposed and is highly consistent between repetitive tests of the same drive, giving us a better idea of raw performance. 
H2benchw shows the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 leading in cache assisted mode, and the Samsung Spinpoint T166 with the highest transfer rate from disk platters. In actual use, that would make the Barracuda better in the repetitive reads of many programs, and the Spinpoint better at loading them the first time.
But what about access times? 
Seagate has shown sluggish write access times in past H2benchw tests, and the trend continues with the new model in spite of the drive's winning read seeks. Western Digital excels in write seeks, but comes in third in a tight race for average read seeks.
HD Tach RW makes the tests even tougher, the full bench testing several patterns and taking several hours to complete with write testing enabled. 
Burst speed comes in large part from cache, and Seagate's Barracuda 7200.10 appears to have the fastest interface. Western Digital's Caviar SE16 appears to read from and write to the platters best, which is more important with working with large or uncached files. 
Unlike H2benchw, HD Tach RW doesn't test write access times. Like H2benchw, it puts Seagate's 7200.10 in the lead for read access.
Let's take a look at the transfer graphs HD Tach RW creates. Of the four drives we tested, we found two pairs nearly matched in transfer performance and were forced to show two charts for comparing them. Click on each chart for the full-sized version 
Click to enlarge 
Click to enlarge
Samsung's Spinpoint T166 HD501LJ is almost perfectly matched against Western Digital's Caviar SE16. The two losers here are Hitachi's Deskstar T7K500 and Seagate's Barracuda 7200.10, which were again almost identical to each other. Reaching a final verdict could be difficult!
Assessing Value
We compared the Hitachi Desktar T7K500, Samsung Spinpoint T166 HD501LJ, Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB, and Western Digital Caviar SE16 in performance, warranty, and price, to determine class leadership and overall value.
A scale of 10 is used for each category, beginning with Performance. Because 3Gb/s is still an unrealistic goal for transfers from medium, we choose 150MB/s from the older SATA 150 standard as a basis of comparison. Since 150 divided by 15 equals 10, transfer scores from all benchmarks are averaged and divided by 15 to put them on a scale of 10. This method gives Hitachi's T7K500 7.72 out of 10, Samsung's HD501LJ 8.06 out of 10, Seagate's 7200.10 8.15 out of 10, and Western Digital's Caviar SE16 7.56 out of 10.
For scoring seek times, we chose 20ns as an arbitrary "worst expected seek time" and 10ns as an arbitrary "target seek time." We then averaged the seek times for each drive from all benchmarks. Subtracting actual seek times from 20 provides the highest score for the quickest drive, as it gives 10 points for 10ns and 0 points for 20ns. The resulting scores are 9.42 out of 10 for Hitachi's T7K500, 8.92 out of 10 for Samsung's HD501LJ, 7.32 out of 10 for Seagate's 7200.10, and 10.00 out of 10 for Western Digital's Caviar SE16.
Averaging the transfer and seek scores for each drive provides the combined performance rating.
Warranty points are easiest to score because multiplying the top warranty period of five years by two gives it 10 out of 10 points. Multiplying a three-year warranty by two gives it 6 out of 10 points.
Price scores reflect the inverse relationship between cost and value. We used search engines to find the average price at the five most inexpensive online retailers for bare drives. At the time of this article, we found approximate average prices of $107 for the Deskstar T7K500, $119 for the Spinpoint HD501LJ, $112 for the Barracuda 7200.10 and $107 for the Caviar SE16.
All drives fell under the target price, so rather than penalize anyone for going "over" we decided to award extra points for staying under. Starting with 5 points for an "average value price" of $120, we added 1/10 of a point for ever $5 saved. This method would of course give ten points for a $70 price, as that's the current mark for comparing the value of entry-level drives to these higher-capacity parts. Point Scale Comparison Drive Model Hitachi T7K500 Samsung HD501LJ Seagate 7200.10 WD SE16 Capacity 10 10 10 10 Performance 8.57 8.49 7.74 8.78 Warranty 6 6 10 6 Price 5.3 5.0 5.2 5.3 Value 7.5/10 7.4/10 8.2/10 7.5/10
Seagate is the only manufacturer providing a full five-year warranty on its consumer drives. The long warranty gave Seagate a huge advantage over its competition when it came time to assess overall value.
If you're looking for the best performance and don't expect your drive to last more than three years anyway, Western Digital's Caviar SE16 appears to be the drive to buy.
Conclusion
It took a reasonably long time for 500GB drives to replace 320GB parts at the mainstream $120 price point, but anyone who's waited to increase their storage capacity on the cheap won't be disappointed. One need only look back to the transfer graphs of our previous shootout to see that the added capacity also includes a small increase in disk transfer throughput.
Seagate offers the best value because of its five-year warranty, but performance seekers who aren't interested in keeping their drives around that long will love Western Digital's higher performance. Seagate's performance is something of an anomaly, with the highest of all cache burst speeds but only third-place disk transfers.
Another look at today's transfer graphs proves that Samsung is no slouch either, and it too beat Western Digital in cache burst transfers which could aid some programs. With equal warranties between Samsung and Western Digital price could become the greater consideration for many buyers. Although Western Digital currently beats Samsung on average price, that's likely because the better-known brand is available at a wider variety of discount sellers. Availability at your favorite store might not bear out our value findings.
Hitachi came out average in nearly every respect, and might be worth considering if price fluctuations make them somewhat cheaper, especially for small system integrators who can save a bundle of money during the purchase of multiple drives. SysOpt Product Info
Product:
Deskstar T7K500 500GB
Model HDT725050VLA360
Category:
Hard Drives
Avg. Price:
$107
Manufacturer:
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, Inc.
5600 Cottle Road
San Jose, CA 95193
(408) 717-5000
Availability:
Now
Ratings: (Best of four stars)
Features: 
Performance: 
Value:
Product:
Spinpoint T166 500GB
Model HD501LJ
Category:
Hard drives
Avg. Price:
$119
Manufacturer:
Samsung Information Systems America, Inc.
3351 Michelson Drive
Irvine, CA 92612
(949) 975-7000
Availability:
Now
Ratings: (Best of four stars)
Features:
Performance:
Value:
Best for:
Best Cache Access
Product:
Barracuda 7200.10 500GB
Model ST3500630AS
Category:
Hard Drives <
Avg. Price:
$112
Manufacturer:
Seagate Technology, Inc.
920 Disc Drive
Scotts Valley, CA 95066
(877) 271-3285
Availability:
Now
Ratings: (Best of four stars)
Features:
Performance:
Value: 
Best for:
Longest Warranty
Product:
Caviar SE16 500GB
Model WD5000AAKS
Category:
Hard Drives
Avg. Price:
$107
Manufacturer:
Western Digital Corp.
20511 Lake Forest Dr.
Lake Forest, CA 92630
(946) 672-7000
Availability:
Now
Ratings: (Best of four stars)
Features:
Performance:
Value:
Best for:
Best Combined Performance
Author: Thomas Soderstrom
Read article at Internet.com site