Faster in what respect? Sequential transfers? Fine, perhaps. You're comparing it to a 2 year old hard drive. Even still, I'm sure that the 640gb Caviar has lower seek times and would serve better as an OS or gaming hard drive.
If all you store on your hard drive is huge video files, then this Samsung drive is fine. I'm just saying that the 7200rpm Seagate drives have been showing up regularly here in Canada where things are typically more expensive for $90-100. I would also take the 7200 Western Digital drives over the Samsung, even if I had to pay $10 extra.
OP I don't appreciate all the hostility. If you can't handle people's opinions, I don't know why you're even here.
Somehow hard drive manufacturers keep taking turns with series that fail more often than average. At one point Seagate was great with 7200.8 and 7200.7 series but after that had several duds, including firmware disasters in several series. Western Digital was successful with Raptors (and VR) and after was very successful with GP series but had several duds lately (last 2 years). It is almost impossible these days to associate one company with good quality or low quality hard drive series.
Samsung appeared in HD space recently and is mostly known for low power consumption, average /below average performance drives (segment matching WD GP drives). It has not had terrible line of drives (most likely it will at one point) so it has good reputation at this point.
I, personally, cannot care less about my HD company lifetime repution. It all comes down to the observed quality of the specific line of a drive that I plan to buy. HD failure is not the end of the world (all of my important data exists on 2 physical drives and a backup copy, stored away from my home and updated every 2-3 months) but it is rather time consuming to recover (ever tried WHS system drive replacement?). A 5400rpm drive is fast enough for server storage for almost all tasks, including 1080p HD content. It does not really pay to have 7200rpm drive, if it produces more heat and fails more often.
For people who put big drives in PCs it is probably different but faster rpm does not automatically translate into better performance, including seek time. You might be making a mistake by ruling out 5400 drives, based on rotational speed only.
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