Seagate Barracuda 7200 1.5 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 32MB Cache 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Drive ST31500341AS-Bare Drive
by Seagate
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Our Price: $289.95 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $128.99 (click here) Category: Personal Computer See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Seagate Barracuda 7200 1.5 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 32MB Cache 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Drive ST31500341AS-Bare Drive
Customer Review: Good, then bad, then good.
Summary: 5 Stars
Installing on a P4P800 1019 BIOS (ICH5 82801EB)
I popped the drive into my chassis and connected the cables. Windows XP recognized the drive in compmgmt.msc and I proceeded to format it to NTFS (originally tried FAT32 but no joy for files over 4gb, and as this thing is destined to be a media drive, that would have been a poor choice). I pushed all my media over to the drive which entailed about 300gb. I decided to move my swap file over to the drive as well, then restart the computer.
BIOS hangs on the drive detection. It sees it, acknowledges it, and even shows that it is SMART capable and ready, but no joy. Digging into the ICH5 design, I came across a lot of material concerning RAID array problems with this drive and southbridge, which had nothing to do with me. However I couldn't find any answers that helped me. I tried to install the drive as the only IDE/ATA drive available, and it still hung on drive detection.
I decided to pull the drive and reconnect the main boot drive, go into BIOS, and DISABLE LBA on the new drive's IDE slot. Every other setting I allowed. I turned off the computer, reconnected the SATA ribbon, restarted, and it worked just fine.
For good measure I SiSoft Sandra'd the drive's read ability, and it was 97 MBps, way ahead of the other comparables. I don't put all my stock in the test, but the drive reads and writes like a champ.
Here's to longevity.
Customer Review: Click, click, crash
Summary: 1 Stars
After I used it for a week, it crashed. It's code was not one of the firmware codes that needed updating. I lost the receipt so my own fault for not returning or RMAing. It may have overheated cause I got it to work for a while by separating it from the drives in the cage more and putting an external fan on it. That and I'm seeing problems with that SATA port. Not to be too ambiguous, but I don't trust SATA as much as I used to.
So possible causes:
1) controller bad on the motherboard for that SATA port (seems unlikely, but one of the PS/2 ports went out)
2) SATA header for that port is bad. I tried the drive on a different port, but it may have been too late.
3) SATA 1/5 with SATA II drive? Not really compatible?
4) Seagate sucks (possible)
5) Drives too close in the cage, improper airflow, open case. (Heat damage)
So now I'm building a new PC with proper design, proper airflow, proper static precautions (no more popping drives out of the bag and handling without a wrist strap), hiqh quality motherboards, best cables I can find. That and buying only 1.2M MTBF drives from WD. No more data loss! Eventually RAID 1 and hot-swapping. I got a UPS too to clean the power in case that is a problem, and my new PC has well-spaced drives, 2 120mm high CFM fans, 5 hd 80mm fans in the middle bulkhead.
I don't trust SATA.
Customer Review: Quite Happy
Summary: 5 Stars
Much like everyone else, I read many of the reviews but made the decision to buy the drive anyway. I used the drive for the first month and was not experiencing any issues. However, I had read much of the talk about access problems and the recommendation to turn off Journaling on the that drive under when running OSX. I will admit, once I did it did "appear" to be quicker, but since I'm not running any real measurable performance metrics, I can't say for sure. Regardless, I left Journaling disabled on that drive for what risk it may (or may not) be (supposedly good for rebuilding the file tables in case of power loss during system writes?).
For reference, I'm running this in my Mac Pro as my "Home" drive for users. It is not my main system drive (as it doesn't need that much space). So I am accessing it quite often. I'm considering purchasing a second for backup purposes. Since most of the users that have run into issues note that they are in RAID configurations, I'm not planning on putting it into my system as a RAID of my current 1.5tb, but attached externally.
I can't responsibly tell anyone not to be cautious, but I did want to leave my experience and impressions as, from my perspective, the drive seems to be getting a bad rap. It may have issues in certain configurations, but as I'm using it, it's working quite well.
Customer Review: Poor Reliability -- Bought 2, One works, One Makes Clicking Noises
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought two of these 1.5 TB disk drives in Dec 2008 for $120 each and free shipping. I've bought a lot of hard drives dating back to 1982. And this is the first hard drive I've ever had fail in my life. It worked less than a day and now all it does is make clicking noises as if the read head is searching for the track, but cannot find it. The other 1.5 TB drive is working fine. I bought Seagate's 1 TB ST31500341AS NCQ model a few months ago and I think I will buy that model again. That model still uses three 333 GB platters versus three 500 GB platters on the 1.5 GB disk. Furthermore, the NCQ (native command queuing) on the 1 TB model provides significantly faster performance on fragmented files. There is an implied reference to NCQ on the 1.5 TB model, but I cannot find anything in print from Seagate that says it explicitly. I don't think the 500 GB platters in the 1.5 TB disks are quite ready for prime time. It is probably best to wait another six months to a year for this higher density technology to mature.
Update;
I received a replacement unit very promptly, and other than the fact the replacement is refurbished, it works. However, this replacement hard drive is still a little noisy, especially compared to the other new one I bought. (Originally bought two, one failed) But it has been a few months now and both are still working.
Customer Review: Why did I buy another Seagate?!
Summary: 3 Stars
I was looking for two 1.5TB drives to put in a NAS and setup in a RAID1 array. I decided to go with Seagate (again) because of their 5-year warranty; I mean, if you can warranty your product for 5 years, then supposedly it should be good, right? Wrong! The first issue I had with these drives is that they would just appear to die when trying to write or read large files to/from them. Turned out this was a firmware issue. Really?! I can understand upgrading the firmware in a Wireless Router, or a NAS, but a hard drive?! I know it's not unheard of, but it's verrrry rare and a pain the you-know-what! Anyways, they both worked perfectly after upgrading the firmware... They actually got SOMETHING right! hehe
It has now been just over two years that I've been using these drives and one of them has already started to fail... This seems to be typical of Seagate drives. I've had it happen before, and now it's happening again! I would RMA it, but I'm not in the US so the cost of shipping it back to Seagate is almost the same as buying a new drive. I think the reason for this is that Seagate drives in general tend to run quite hot. These drives are 7200 RPM so you can expect them to get warm, but they get HOT!
I think this time I'll go with Samsung's 2TB drives. I've read some good reviews on them.