New egg has the Samsung 500 GB HD for $124

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by geetrue

But is it any good? This Segate 320GB sata 16mb cache is sure running nice for the last three weeks. Cool and smooth too with the dual fan hdd cooler ... I'd like to get another one, but I'm afraid I would get the one made in China instead of Singapore.

Will 500GB slow down at the 250GB mark ... al of my other hdd's have been sluggish when they get near half full, some were only one third.

Defrag it. When you have excessively long seeks, it will slow down - which is probably what is happening when you get over half full. WIndows likes to dump data across the entire span of the drive for some unknown reason. A file system like EXT2/3 won't do this - hence why Linux systems don't suffer much from this phenomenon.

I also hate CHinese crap. I about dies when my Seagates came in and said made in CHina, but such is life. My retail 500 GB Seagate was made in Signapore however, so that drive I have most of my impossible to replace data on.

As for Samsung - they are very good drives. It would be my only other choice over a Seagate. Where they are made though, I do not know. I have a friend running some older ones, and I'd ask him, but that means nothing for where yours might come from.

-S