If an update's needed to the old Ben Franklin adage, let us be the first to suggest that it be reworded to "nothing is certain but death, taxes, and hard drive capacity increases." Yes, with practically every new season, we need yet another new plateau in hard drive capacity. Not that anyone's complaining, mind you: Storage requirements continue to boom as well, on both the home user and corporate side. In many respects, the pace of innovation is keeping up with demand.

Today, we're examining the Western Digital Caviar SE16 750GB. At 750GB, it's not the largest single hard drive in mass availability, but it's far from the most common models sold. It also boasts a number of features increasingly important to the middle "performance" -- such as a high-capacity 16MB cache – which stands to augment its already swift 7,200 RPM speeds.

All told, its built-in performance plus sizable capacity could stand to make the Western Digital Caviar SE16 750GB one of the best buys for your money. Let's have a closer look to see how that initial assessment stands up.