179.99...bleeding edge lol...but MSRP was 249.99

I bought a Seagate Momentus 7200.2 ST9200420AS 200GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive in March. I don't notice any additional heat or noise from the drive. The drive cost $170 back then. There really isn't much of a benefit for the installs from Blu-ray, as you pointed out the Blu-ray is the bottleneck. I do notice that downloaded games load faster. If I had to buy another drive, I would probably choose a 5400 rpm drive with more space.

Certainly the 3.0Gb/s is overkill though. As far as I know the PS3 will only do 1.5Gb/s, right?

I thought having a higher than 5400 RPM HDD in the PS3 could cause heating problems? Someone clear that up.

But this is a good post. When i get my PS3 back from Sony, the first thing I'll do is upgrade with a 160gb or 250gb HDD.

The specific model I reviewed Hitachi TravelStar does not cause additional heat. Its 20$ off sale ends tomorrow.

Others in the thread have reported no problems with other models too.

Sweet. I'll go ahead and buy the 200gb version tonight.

 The PS3 has a 150 contoller capable of 1.5Gb/s, so my drive runs at that speed.  I bought the 3.0Gb/s because I was not certain I was going to leave the drive in the PS3 and I wanted some flexibility.

Interesting.

One thing you didn't really point out though. In section 2 of your tests, you save 15 seconds between hitting the x button and the progress bar showing up. (both tests had the same savings)

That is pretty substantial and worth mentioning, as when you add that with the time for civ revolutions, you save almost 1 minute total.

Thanks, I never really noticed it, because it was the total figure that actually interested me and because I have no clue what the "x delay" is all about. Does anyone have an idea what the "x delay" is for? Perhaps unpacking the installation file or setting aside HDD space for installation?