Seagate 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 Bulk/OEM Hard Drive ST31000340AS [Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging] by Seagate
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List Price: Our Price: $219.99 You Save: $347.01 (61%) Availability: Usually ships in 6-10 business days Buy Used: from $63.00 (click here) Category: CE See more digital camera details and other models |
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Digital camera reviews of Seagate 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 Bulk/OEM Hard Drive ST31000340AS [Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging]
Digital camera Review: 1TB Seagate Will FAIL!!!
Summary: 1 Stars
Don't buy this hard drive. Seagate is not recognizing a problem with these drives and others that they are manufacturing. Many users, including myself, have had these hard drives fail within 4 months. Specifically, it's the hard drives with firmware version sd15 and from thailand. If you get brave and buy it anyways, then back up your data everytime you move something to it. It's not a matter of if... but when it fails!!! Don't say you weren't warned.Digital camera Review: Priced Right- bare bones.
Summary: 5 Stars
Just the bare bones. No cables, adapters, screws. However, it works well, and runs quiet in my Popcorn Hour Media Server. Price was right, too!Digital camera Review: Terrific Drives
Summary: 5 Stars
These are great drives (performance and capacity) backed with a greater manufacturer and warranty. Have many of these, some workj 7/24, and perfectly happy with them. I keep coming back.Digital camera Review: Hopefully it doesn't die on me... Update: One down, one to go.
Summary: 3 Stars
I got two of these for Christmas (for a software RAID) and immediately knew that something was off. The BIOS took a while to scan one of the SATA ports and eventually failed, unable to find a drive. "Great, DOA" I thought.. After a few reboots, the system did find the drive, but it also said there was a SMART failure. smartmontools showed a failing drive with a Spin_Retry_Count of 54, along with a number of concerning values on other attributes, and the drive was unable to pass short self-tests. Oddly enough, long self-tests passed. After some research, I booted the SeaTools CD and did a low level format, then rebooted. The drive passed the SMART check in the BIOS and short self-tests as well.
Seagate's phone support, while fairly nice, wasn't particularly helpful. I was regularly put on hold over the course of a 45 minute call as they conferred with coworkers. I would have liked to get some answers on values of several SMART attributes, especially the high spin retry, but they didn't have any. In the end, they said that if the drive passed self-tests, it was good to go.
It's been a few weeks now, and although the Spin_Retry_Count has increased by 2 on both and other attributes are fluctuating daily, the drives appear to be functioning normally. Hoping for the best, expecting the worst.
*Update* 01/30/2009: The drive with the high spin retry just died on me. It doesn't appear to be the bricking problem reported by so many, supposedly fixed by the SD1A firmware (which both drives were flashed to), just a regular old drive failure. Against my better judgment, I assembled a raid5 using these and a new 1TB WD Caviar Black, when uncorrectable sectors started to appear, *just* as I was finishing the file restoration. A few minutes later smartmontools reported a failing drive and mdadm pulled it. Hopefully the remaining Seagate drive holds up until I can get a second WD Black in.
This was the first time I've used something other than WD for my main system drives, and it's been a terrible experience. Sure, every manufacturer produces drives that fail at one time or another, but this combined with my initial problems and their firmware fiasco has scared me away. I definitely won't be buying Seagate again anytime soon, and I suggest you steer clear of their 1 and 1.5TB (AS) models, for now.
Digital camera Review: An obsolete drive - most shouldn't buy this unless the price fits your use
Summary: 3 Stars
This drive uses an older, lower density, slower, hotter-running configuration (four drive platters). Most people shouldn't buy this ST31000340AS drive at this point unless you get a really good price on it, and plan to use it only for backup storage (and ideally not run 24/7).
The current version is the newer three platter Seagate 1TB ST31000333AS 32MB Cache SATA Hard Drive. Given the importance of a drive and the time you'll spend installing and using it, spend a few dollars more and get the current version.
The new 7200.12 generation of drives is coming out, with still higher densities, so this ST31000340AS drive will soon be two generations behind the times.
By the way, for Bulk/OEM drives the Seagate warranty is as of today 3 years, not 5. Not a big factor, really - what really matters is that the drive is reliable and doesn't need a warranty. Time will tell.