The Prius of Hard Drives

After my dad's hard drive died, I upgraded him to a 500GB Seagate Momentus XT. It's a hybrid hard drive, with 500GB of storage on a 7200RPM spinning platter, and 4GB of flash memory. By storing frequently used files in flash, it can boot and load programs faster.

And it works. Boot up is noticeably faster, as are common program start ups. It's slightly nosier than the stock 5200 RPM drive, but I think the performance boost is worth it.

The coolest aspect is that by learning what files he uses often, it will get even faster over time.