Hey. I want to upgrade my drive to a 500GB one. I'm thinking about buying a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 SATA 3Gb/s 500-GB Hard Drive ST9500420AS. However, two things are bugging me: first, will a 500GB drive work fine with my PS3? I keep hearing that 320GB is the max before the console starts having problems. Second, should I pay $10 to get the drive with added G-Force Protection? I heard the drive vibrates more than a 5200rpm one, so maybe I should to counter this?

one does not need g force protection i've used quite a few 7200 rpm hard drives and bar your hard drive being made so cheaply it shouldn't vibrate any more then a 5400 rpm harddrive 7200 rpm drives are made to stand up to the rotation speed of their platters.
as for 500 gigs i've not heard of any problems with them on the ps3 as long as you keep them deframented which i do believe the ps3 has a utitlity for that.

I do not think it poses any problem, however if you are in doubt google around, when I last bought my HDD for my ps3 I found a website that listed all proved compatible HDD drives, fish one out of that list and call it a day