The Seagate ST500DM002-1BD142 500GB is a hard disk drive, which means it stores data using quickly rotating disks, or platters, that can be read and written on via the moving actuator arm. Hard disk drives generally have a large storage capacity, and so are perfect for large amounts of data. The potential performance is well below that of solid-state drives, but they can definitely still hold their own. The Seagate ST500DM002-1BD142 500GB is a good example of a high performance hard disk drive, and should complement any PC build as a primary storage device.

With a cache of 16MB, the Seagate ST500DM002-1BD142 500GB can store a relatively small amount of data temporarily, which will result in fast loading times but only for a small amount of previously loaded data. At a speed of 7200 RPM, the hard disk drive spins at about the market average for desktop PCs. This speed is widely considered the desktop standard, providing a good balance between reliability, cost, performance, and noise.

With a capacity of 500GB, the Seagate ST500DM002-1BD142 500GB has a fairly small amount of storage for an hard disk drive. Using the SATA 3.0 6Gb/s interface this hard disk drive will never be limited by its connection with the motherboard. In fact, mechanical hard disk drives cannot even reach the bandwidth capacity allowed by SATA 2.0 3Gb/s, so it would not matter even if it were plugged into a SATA 2.0 motherboard slot.

A form factor size of 3.5" is standard for desktop drives, and this will fit into any standard case drive bay, or into a 5.25" drive bay with an adapter.