Customer Reviews

Seagate Barracuda 500 GB 7200RPM SATA NCQ 16 MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Desktop Hard Drive ST3500641AS-RK-Retail Kit

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I have two of these drives, one for video editing, one for a server. I've been completely satisfied with them; they were easy to install and their performance has been excellent. The SATA cables are a huge improvement over the old ATA ribbon cables, both for ease of installation and for improved airflow inside the computers. Windows recognizes SATA drives without a problem.

The disk comes with a CD that includes installation software (not needed, for me at least) and Seagate's BounceBack Express backup software.

After my WD My Book crashed with all my major files, I wanted to get a good harddrive that was reliable, fast, large capacity, quiet, and did I say reliable? I read many reviews on this Seagate 500GB Barracuda model, and decided to go with it. After getting 2 duds (OEM HD's) from another "eggcelent" online store, I basically gave up on it. I tried a 3rd time, and got it from here... and could not be happier with my choice. For the extra $10, I got a brand new, sealed haddrive with the full 5 year warranty. The harddrive itself is excellent and quite small. The SATA is super fast compared to ATA. Not only does it transfer my files in a flash, but the noise is whisper quiet. I read some reviews that this particular model is quite noisy when it writes, but I think those are just bad models, because mine is barely noticeable even when I'm transferring Gigs worth of data. I partitioned my drive in 2 parts, and have not had any problems with it thus far. If you're looking for a large storage HD with a small price, I highly recommend you go with this one.

I haven't shopped much on Amazon before, but I was blown away by their service. Free super saving, which stated it would arrive in 9-15 days or something, delivered to my door in 2! I am very satisfied with the product and the service.

PS. I don't work for Amazon nor am I trying to suck up to them... I was just really impressed with their speedy service.

I originally bought two of these bad boys to put into a NAS (network attached storage) that was going to be tucked away in a closet. Well the NAS (linksys) was a bust (returned it since it was so slow). I kept the drives and put them in my HP computer as a RAID-1 (mirrored) pair. They are fast but do click a bit as the heads do their reading ans writing. Overall a good buy and reliable so far.

Well, I purchased this for my HP Media Vault NAS device (which I love, and is the subject of a separate review), as one of the only drawbacks of the Media Vault design is that it has no redundacy.
Doing a search for the best price / performance ratio, I selected the Seagate Barracuda drive. Also, as a note to potential purchasers of a second drive for the Media Vault, there are a number of drives that it will not work with. Since there are no incompatibilites with the Seagate drives (seems to be mostly Western Digital drives that won't work), that also helped me pick this model. It works fine with the MV. You can choose to install it as an additional 500 GB of storage, for a total of 1 TB, or add it as a mirror as I did, giving you a total of 500 GB of redundant storage. Now I finally have the peace of mind to fill this sucker up and not worry that I'm going to lose my entire digital life in one hard drive crash. The odds are very low that both drives will fail at the same time. Also, and I didn't know this at the time of purchase, but this is the exact model that already shipped with my MV, so I now have a mirror of two of the exact model drive. Cool! If HP likes it, then it's good enough for me.

Yes, some people are going to have troubles with hard drives. No matter WHAT brand you buy, there's going to be some bad/loud/finicky drives here and there. Yes, I've had at least one of these drives die, but I've bought LOTS of hard drives from various manufacturers and have had some bad luck with ALL of them.

However, Seagate is the only one who gives a 5-year warranty on all of their drives, retail or bare OEM. Western Digital only recently started offering up to 3-year warranties (on Retail packages), which is the best warranty length of any of the other drive manufacturers. The only complaint I'd have in this aspect is that Seagate is a bit slower to RMA bad drives than they used to be.

Just a tip...DON'T put 400GB+ hard drives into poorly-ventilated external USB/Firewire enclosures (ones w/ internal fans recommended). Oh...and REGULARLY BACK UP IMPORTANT DATA!

Anyway, don't listen to the anti-Seagate people...just because they haven't had another brand die on them (yet) is just luck of the draw.

This drive works great and was very easy to install. I was a little disappointed with how loud it is when accessing data - it can compete with my iTunes music late at night. I have a feeling that most of the larger capacity drives will have these noise issues though. I still recommend it.

Head crash at nine months. Hard drive had four fans to keep it cool, so was operating just above room temperature. Zero shocks to the drive (unless they occurred in shipping before I got it, of course). I wonder if these are designed based on Maxtor mechanisms (some of which were prone to heads breaking off due to a design flaw). Either way, my trust in Seagate drives just went way down....

It sounded like low frequency hum and high frequency whine as the head etched a groove in the media. By the time the dd to clone the drive to a spare was finished, the drive was completely unreadable (including the parts that I'd already read).

Edited 9/25/2011: I just lost the drive that Seagate sent to replace that one, also to a (mechanical) head crash. I wish I knew when I wrote this review so I could say how long it lasted, but at this point, I can safely conclude that this drive series is *seriously* mechanically flawed. Seagate, recall this piece of junk.

This drive isn't going to knock anybody's socks off with its speed -- it's only marginally faster than my 200 GB PATA drive -- but for $120, it's a whole lot of space. It also has a jumper setting to restrict it to 150 MB/s if you have a board with a Via chipset (as I do) that can not negotiate with a 300 MB/s drive. I have not yet attempted to use the included software, but it does claim to be able to clone your existing drive if you want to replace rather than supplement your existing drive.

It's not particularly fast, but neither is it slow. It's fairly quiet, but not the quietest. It does run a bit warm, but not enough to worry me. It's a working class hard drive in all ways, just a very big one. If that's what you are looking for, you won't be disappointed by this drive.

Seagate drives are usually high quality, and I have no reason to think that this one isn't, but it is quite noisy, and at a high frequency that really irritates me. It's so maddening that I'm considering unplugging the drive, and only reconnecting it once a month for backups.

This Seagate ST3500641AS-RK Barracuda 7200.9 500GB SATA was a complete surprise to me. As expected and is the case with most WD and Seagate internal HDD's, installation was exceptionally easy. The real surprise was the included software. In my case, I had an old and small HDD that was beginning to make noise. Rather than wait until it crashed, I decided to upgrade the size and speed of this boot disk drive. I thought I was going to have to either A) re-install Window and installed software and drivers and copy the files from my old drive (a major headache) or B) use cloning software (I purchased one for this purpose). However, upon installing the Seagate HDD as my second drive, the included software AUTOMATICALLY prompted me to specify if this was to be A) a new boot drive, B) a mirror of the existing drive or C) simply a second HDD for additional storage. I selected the mirror. In no time, the system was copied and operational. THANK YOU SEAGATE

I have only had the device for a few weeks, so I cannot comment on its reliability as this time.