for 7200 RPM HD

The Hitachi 500GB SATA II 16mb cache is the best

Yes, The new contenders after Hitachi slowed down all their HD business:(

The new contender is from Seagate 7200.10 and they are FAST!!!!
with 16MB cache they are making Raptors run as well.

On the other hand Seagate's reliability on IDE drives have always not been very encouraging. So that is the place for a * pause* here.

An how did WD react? they push out WD5000YS, their RE2 series. LABELLED as ENTERPRISE drives these drives boost a MTBF of 1.2 million hours (in theory) and boost the same 5 years warranty like Seagate.

Price and Peformance Seagate have it covered for now.

Reliability.. the WD RE2 is still on top.