Which 500GB to 1TB hard drive for hdd upgrade?

My hard drive is failing on my Macbook Pro so I was going to buy a new drive, I thought I could just get any 2.5" SATA disk again but from reading through the the forum, it looks like there issues with certain drives, motion detection issues, etc. I'm confused now.
I was interested in the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB 4GB SSD Hybrid drive but I'm reading reports about that drive causing problems with Macbooks on this forum and Amazon reviews. Then there's drives where you need to actually downgrade the EFI firmware to get the system stable? Yikes, this doesn't look as simple as I thought.
BTW here's my current system now:
MacBook Pro 5,5 (Core 2 Duo 2.53 GHz) Circa 2008/2009
Boot Rom: MBP55.00AC.B03
OSX 10.6.8
This is my main work computer so I want the safest and fastest drive I can get. I rather not have to do anything funky like downgrade firmware if I don't have to. If there are specific model numbers I should avoid, please let me know and I'll them to the list below with a warning. My external backup drives are composed of 750GB USB drives so max drive I probably won't go with the 1TB drive but I'll add it in case anyone researches this in the future.
I'm probably learning toward the Seagate Momentus 750GB right now.
Brand/Model
Capacity
RPM
Buffer
Notes
Western Digital Scorpio Blue
1TB
7200
8MB
Reports it works fine: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2376976
Western Digital Scorpio Blue
750GB
5400
8MB
Seagate Momentus ST907503N1A1AS
750GB
7200
16MB
Samsung HM640JJJ
640GB
7200
16MB
Samsung Spinpoint HM500JJ
500GB
7200
16MB
Hitachi TravelStar
500GB
7200
16MB
Seagate Momentus XT STAN500100
500GB w/ 4GB SSD Hybrid
7200
32MB
Varying reports on compatbility with Macbooks.
Western Digital Scorpio Blue
500GB
5400
8MB
Seagate ST905003N3A1AS
500GB
7200
16MB
5 year warranty!
Seagate ST905003N1A1AS
500GB
5400
8MB

Get the Samsung. The WD Scorpio Blues are more often troublesome than most other drive lines, and I've had several lousy experiences with Toshiba drives in years past. I haven't seen any negative reports about the Samsung.

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