Seagate 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 Bulk/OEM Hard Drive ST31000340AS [Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging] by Seagate
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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: Better than most
Summary: 4 Stars
I've been using the Barracuda line of Seagate drives for years now and I work in the IT industry. Basically I don't see much difference in drive lifespan between the big drive vendors. Reliability varies from one model to the next but on average I see between 2.5 to 4 years lifespan on a given drive. Lately two of my Barracudas have gone bad. They had a nice 3 year lifespan and performed as expected. The thing that keeps me coming back to the Barracudas is the noise level. It is indeed, "whisper quiet". This seems to be the one thing that distinguishes it from the competition and the one reason I'll keep buying them.
As for warranty. Don't bother. I used to send in for warranty replacements on my drives. Every drive I've ever received back would last about 2-3 months and then die again. It's standard procedure for drive companies to send you remanufactured drives for your warranty exchanges. Unfortunately, the reliability quotient on remanufactured drives is very low. Also, you must pay for special packing material to return the drive if you didn't save the original packaging. (They won't accept it any other way.) The price of materials plus shipping doesn't justify the short lifespan the warranty replacements provide.
Also, most drives tend to get noisy after about year two. Even the wonderfully quiet Barracuda will start to sound like a mini jet engine after about 3 years. The noise level starts at near silence and very slowly progresses to intolerable noise after 3.5 years. This might actually be a good thing. After that long the drive media can start to deteriorate at which point it's a good idea to move your data to a healthy new drive or risk losing some (or all) of it.
Bottom line, you're paying for 2.5 to 5 years of service from your drive regardless of manufacturer. Your drive will become increasingly noisy with age. The warranty for almost all vendors is not terribly helpful due to the remanufactured drive failure statistics. So DO buy this drive but do so because it has one benefit over the competition. It's dead quiet when it's new.
Digital camera Review: Solid SATA Value
Summary: 5 Stars
I have used these HDs in an external eSATA host appliance connected into my MAC Pro via an eSATA / PCI Express card. Used this way, the HD becomes essentially a removable, high capacity disk. The Seagate has given good speed performance and represents the most cost effective way of obtaining this facility.Digital camera Review: 21 Days Until It Stopped Working
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought this drive for a new home built HTPC and file server. I loaded WinXP on the computer and the Seagate drive worked really well until today. Now, the computer will not boot beyond the BIOS's drive detect. So, it seems the controller is bad. The drive never was detected when the BIOS was set to AHCI whereas my two Seagate 750 GB drives are detected in AHCI mode. I am going to send it back to Seagate. I am not happy they want $20 to send me a new drive ASAP after only 20 days of use. It's a big job reloading many GBs of backup. They should pay me $20+. Looking at the distribution of reviews it doesn't look like this drive will come close to Seagate's claimed MTBF. Too many early failures!Digital camera Review: Seagate 1TB
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought two. Note the drives are OEM made in China. Received 12/2/2008. Put into service 12/4/2008. One died 12/9/2008. Sent back to Seagate on 12/16/2008. Enough said - you get what you pay for.Digital camera Review: Good value with Seagate Drive
Summary: 4 Stars
Installed and configured without any issues. Be aware that this is NOT a retail version of the drive, just the bare drive. If you don't have SATA cables you will need to buy one as well.