Hi supstring, no problem man, glad to post here. The T7K500 seems genuine, can check the warranty status online. The sad thing is instead of 3 heads, i got 4 heads resulting in 125GB per platter. The different spec sheets at HGST website make it even more confusing.

The vibration seems much worse than my Seagate 7200.10 320GB PATA. Was holding the HDD in my hand when doing seek time. Not sure how it compares to older Hitachi HDDs (all sold away) as vibration is not much an issue for me in my current casing, heh.

Will be sending this back for a new Raptor 36GB, or 7K160 160GB SATA. Samsung T133 400GB is nice but too expensive here.