I just started reading this thread just now. LOL. I heard the Westen Digital Caviar Black series is a good alternative. Sure, it ain't as fast as the Raptor, but it's got one of the better overall speeds in the biz as far as internal drives go.

I was just doing a little research on storage because I was hunting for either an external drive or an internal drive (that I'll put inside of an external case). I have a 750gb Seagate FreeAgent Pro (USB/Firewire) with the orange light bar. I bought it because a couple friends had it. So far so good after 13 months so far, but reading the reviews for the FreeAgent Pros didn't sit too well for me in the long run. Any particular 1tb+ external solutions can anyone recommend? I'm looking to back up a 320GB in a Mac Mini (I just bought one yesterday) via Time Machine and use the other partition with the left over space for the usual back up storage.