Seagate Laptop Thin 500 GB 7200RPM SATA 6 GB/s 32 MB Cache 2.5 Inch Hard Disk Drive (ST500LM021)

While the Seagate website may be quite frustrating, By and large, I have had good experience using Seagate (and MaxStor) drives over many decades ever since my first $300 (bought used) ST-506 five megabyte MFM full-height 5.25 inch Seagate Winchester "fixed disk drive" which may still work and I should donate to someones museum. This more modern drive may not be the absolute least expensive choice, but it's now installed and working well as should be expected. It has16 MB cache, compared to 8 MB on the now dead WD Scorpion drive in the laptop I'm refurbishing, This larger cache should reduce wear and tear on the drive. It spins at 5400 RPM, compared to 7200 RPM on many new drives. I prefer the lower RPM. In my mind the lower RPM should increase the drive's longevity because of less friction, thus less heat, and slower motor and bearing wear. A slower RPM gives the R/W heads more time to accurately and dependably read from and record to the disk surface. Faster RPM's of course reduce access time and response time due to reduced latency. But it's negligible given my requirements.I was concerned about the 7mm vs. normal 9.5mm thickness, this being my first 7mm. I worry sometimes about miniaturization because it often seems to come from making things "cheaper" and less sturdy, and less durable and reliable. But sometimes it comes from using superior materials, greater simplicity with fewer moving parts, brilliant engineering and manufacturing advancements. Whatever the case, the drive fits perfectly into the existing caddy, using the existing screws, which is good because it doesn't come with any screws.This is a "bare" drive with no documentation. So what, these days even the retail packages for many electronics products include nothing but a piece of paper describing how bad the warranty is. Seagate provides good support and supporting software from their afore mentioned website.Perhaps the most worrisome thing about buying a hard drive online is the packaging and shipping. Hard drives are expensive, delicate and fragile, highly precision devices. Yet some sellers put them in a sandwich bag, thrown loosely into an envelope, where they will spend days being tossed, dropped, crushed, and bouncing around in one truck to another. Then deposited somewhere in the vicinity of your front door, where they may as well put a "steal me" sign on it. They are no longer given the time to even ring the doorbell as a notification. That would mean taking the risk of a "chat" which, cumulatively, could result in expensive overtime and termination of employment.I am most pleased with the packaging of this drive. Better, I must say, than some of the retail packaging of many new drives. which has become less substantial in recent years. Inside the Amazon box with its air-filled pillows, the Seagate box is sturdy and an couple inches larger than the drive all around. The drive was securely kept in place within the center of the box by resilient impact cushioning holders on front and back. Very well done!

Have bought 2 of these drives, and for the price they seem to be good quality, and so far reliable. While the drives I received were "new", be aware that these were manufactured over 10 years ago (which you can clearly see on the label in the product picture). The seller does claim to offer a 2 year warranty however.Although these are slower 5400rpm SATA 3 drives, I've found them useful for a number of things. First off, they are great for long term data storage. HDD, so the data won't degrade over time, and 2.5" so 4 fit in a 3.5" storage case. And despite the slowish data transfer rates, the max size is only 500gb, so filling it should still only take about 90 minutes. I also have one as a backup drive for my PS3, which normally runs a more expensive old Seagate SSHD. While this drive doesn't perform anywhere near as well as the SSHD, it's performance is almost identical to the OEM drive, only with more capacity. Plus I can easily run a straight clone any time I want to backup and it copies flawlessly in a $25 cloner. In conclusion, sometimes it's a pleasant surprise what $12 can get you!

I bought this for a retro-gaming system build. It's working just fine and holds tons of games. I'm not a huge Seagate fan but this is the second drive I've bought from them recently and both drives are doing great.

excellent price for the storage capacity and works very well, for domestic use is a good product.

Worked perfect for my laptop. I was able to do an exact copy of my old HD to this new HD using a online how to by booting off a USB flash disk and using software to make an exact copy of my old HD to this one. It was a bit technical, but I didn't have to reinstall anything and even now I am using the new HD and everything is the same on my laptop and all my files. If you get a new HD, consider making a exact copy of your old one to this new one as it saves hours if not days in not having to reinstall everything.UPDATE: I am writing this update on my laptop that is running on this very hard drive! I was able to use a hard drive clone program, to clone my old hard drive onto this new one and then just swap them out. So I did not have to reinstall all my software on the new one, and I am sure that saved me days of time! However, the process was very complex and I backed all my files up first onto a external hard drive incase the process went bad, because if you do it wrong it will erase the data on the old hard drive and it is gone. I don't remember what software I used to do it, or even if I am using the right terms for it, but what I do know is this hard drive has worked perfect and for my HP Laptop is had been great! If you are buying this because your laptop is telling you that your current hard disk is going to crash soon (that is what my HP was telling me) then I would suggest you backup all your files before you take it somewhere or attempt to do a clone of your hard drive first because if you or the company you take it to, does it wrong, you would lose all the files on your old hard drive.