skshow289

As others have said...give it a try and make a decision for yourself. I despised Windows 8 when it first came out as many others did. Now, however, I have to admit that it is starting to grow on me. If I recall from the days of old (at least for me) there was were some dissatisfied users when Microsoft first introduced the Start Button. Some people are more open to change than others. I purchased a Y500 a little less than a month ago (GT750M) and swapped out the 1TB drive for the Corsair Neutron 256GB and holy cow! The SSD paired with the i7 3630QM makes the machine fairly beastly. My final words: Give Windows 8 an honest go, install an SSD, and (depending on your situation/preference) use the factory installed drive as an external.

I usually bank on WD or Seagate personally. Passmark has some pretty helpful information if you're wanting to make your decision based on what's popular with other users. Here's their Hard Drive Market Share in the Last 30 Days. Something else to consider....I noticed that the WD drive you're interested in is powered by the USB hub it's plugged in to--I also have an external drive that works this way and I (and others on the internet) have had trouble getting the USB hub powered drives to spin down with Windows 8. Basically, I perform the "safe removal" steps but the drive continues to spin and results in a fairly audible click noise when I finally do unplug it and this, from what I can gather based on the testimony of others and my personal experience, is very hard on the drive and will likely result in decreased lifespan. It may be worth looking into a drive that draws its power from an AC adapter. As far as transfer speeds go, the drive I mentioned above is nothing more than a Samsung 1TB, SATA 3, 5400 RPM, 2.5inch drive installed in a Sabrent USB 3.0 external enclosure and I get a max transfer speed of 70-110 MB/s on large files and around 25-40 MB/s when transferring large quantities of small (100KB-2MB) files. If cost is an issue, (and you or one of your friends has a spare hard drive) it is very easy to build your own external drive. I've been doing a lot of laptop SSD swaps lately (mostly on new machines) and all I do is put the conventional drive in a $10-20 external enclosure, wipe the drive thoroughly, and bam--I now have a new external drive, basically, for the cost of the enclosure. Hope this helps--good luck!