I don't think you read the comment clearly. He bought an external 2.5 drive, opened it up and installed that drive in his laptop. Sometime you can get a better deal if your handy with things like that.

Which Protege model do you have? It might help to know the specs that your motherboard can support.

That's a desktop drive, not a laptop. It's not going to fit, nor will there be enough power.

I've also had a lot of bad luck with Seagate recently.

You're right; I did not read the comment fully. That being said, I don't trust myself enough to open up the external casing to get the drive out and install on my computer.

Which one?

I think one of the best drives now is the scorpio BLUE 1TB, which actually spins at only 5400 rpm, but manages to match 7200 rpm drives for read/write performance. Seemingly lower power consumption, less vibration and heat, but doesn't sacrifice performance. Make sure you get the one that will fit in YOUR device, this drive comes in a 9.5mm and 12.5 mm form factor.

Laptop drives in the 1tb range are pretty new. Issue is:
Some are OVER SIZED as in yes they are 2.5" form factor BUT they are also THICK as in 12.5mm tall -v- 9.5mm tall. ie they physically will not fit in the laptop.

While the spindle speed may be 5400 rpm they are as fast as some 7200rpm drives due to data density.

To get a drive meeting your needs you are looking at enterprise data drive specs and they are just above your threshold in cost $210 per drive. Catch is they also need more power then some MBs can supply. Think I read idle was 3.31 watts, 15mm thick and since it is a SERVER drive it will bake it self in a laptop if you manage to wedge it in.

To be honest, unless your editing video the spindle speed isn't critical.
A lot of people will do a SSD drive with nothing but the OS on it (128gb) then toss a 750gb spinner in.
I like the Western Digital Scorpio Blue 750gb drives cheap and they work. IF you really want/need the 7200rpm drive add the $20 and get the Scorpio Black

Where are you seeing that from WD? On their site, I'm seeing nothing larger than 500 GB?

Which is why I said to "open the case, remove the bare drive, and install it in your laptop".

Maybe that is too hard for some people, but it takes all of 3 minutes.

Which I responded to before:

And it voids the warranty.

+1

Be careful with this... most laptops need a 9.5mm drive... not all 2.5" drives are 9.5mm thick. A 12.5mm drive will not fit in most laptops.

Tough gig for 2.5" HDD.

Maybe some lateral thinking to confuse you?

You can install a second HD in the optical bay??

I've had generally good luck with Seagate, but I've never seen such bad reviews on Amazon as there are for this drive. 75 reviews and 28 of them are 1 star.