Introduction

Back in my college days, I put together my very first PC.  It was a 486 DX2/66.  I was excited to have a 2MB VRAM VLB graphics card, and a 420MB hard disk.  After a few months of use, I saved up $200 to buy a 1GB hard drive from Fry's.  Man, getting a 1GB HDD was like hitting the 1GHz on the CPU speedometer.  That was about ten years ago.  Now, things have changed, about five hundred times as much...

From producing the first 400GB drive, HGST has once again led the way into the 500GB drive market.  Their 7K500 is the first half-a-trillion-byte hard disk the world has ever seen.  Not only does it have a seemingly endless amount of digital real estate, it also sports performance features such as a 16MB buffer and 7,200 RPM spindle speed.  Its SATA-II interface also adds command queuing which improves data transfers a bit. 

The following are the 7K500 specs as stated by HGST on their website:

The 7K500 is backed by a 3-year warranty.