best cheap boot drive?

[birthdaymonkey]

I'm looking for a hard drive to put in a secondary system for an OS drive. Prefer one platter and good performance... and cheap too! WD Black? Samsung? What's the best buy right now?

I don't need more than 500 GB, and I can't afford another SSD at the moment.

Thanks!

 

[Xorp]

Samsung F4 320GB. Has a 640GB single platter, but only uses half of it, so only has to seek half the disk.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

Ordered an F4 320. Hopefully it'll be a bit faster than the Seagate SATA I drive it's replacing.

 

[Emulex]

think about it you use both sides you get higher data xfer rates. most half drives are oem built since they don't need the space and half-cache. this is about 10-15% slower. why buy one platter and use half of it? silly.