Seagate 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 Bulk/OEM Hard Drive ST31000340AS

by Seagate

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000UC3CN0
• Item model number: ST31000340AS
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (78 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 7, 2004

Product Description

ST31000340AS Seagate

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Reliability issues, November 23, 2008

By 

Eric Hopper "Omnifarious" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Seagate 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 Bulk/OEM Hard Drive ST31000340AS (Personal Computers)

I bought 4 of these for a RAID5 setup in September. So far I've had two of them fail. One was a hard failure in which the controller stopped working completely, and the other is showing a lots of seek errors in the SMART data and tells me its going to fail soon. They both started clicking the heads (a symptom of a reset because of an error) just a few days after I got them.

Seagate replaced the total failure within a couple of days after I reported it, and now I have to ship them back the failed drive. I bought a new unit I'm expecting tomorrow as a spare replacement, and I will be reporting and shipping back the drive with all the seek errors soon.

The drives have otherwise been great, but 50% isn't such a good reliability statistic, and that's my primary measure for a drive.

On the other hand, I did buy two other drives from the same family, two ST3500320AS drives. They have been working away flawlessly in my workstation in a RAID1 setup since I got them.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Drive once you receive a good one, November 23, 2008

By 

N. Goodman "Midlander" (Midland, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Seagate 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 Bulk/OEM Hard Drive ST31000340AS (Personal Computers)

This is an OEM drive as several reviewers have noted, but this should be expected of any drives sold by Amazon unless the retail box is shown in the product description. This should not be a problem for most people since most motherboards come with extra SATA cables and most power supplies now have SATA these days, but if you need these items along with mounting screws opt for only drives sold in retail packaging. Now, about the drive. The drive is very quiet and works well once you get a good one. I had to reurn as many as I kept to get good drives. I think the reason is due to the poor packaging that others have noted. Drives that arrived in good working order were in sealed anti-static packaging with the black plastic end caps supporting the drives. The ones that were problematic were in anti-static bags but arrived only wrapped in one layer of bubble wrap or in syrofoam. One arrived in a plastic snap-around holder which was not even sealed. This was totally unacceptable. I have to think Amazon would find their hard drive return rate much less if they mandated their sources use acceptable shipping practices. The drive really is a 5-star device particularly with its 5-year warranty, but the shipping practices rate 1-star. That's why my overall rating is 3-stars. Two items of note: 1) Remember to remove the jumper on the drive to make it operate in SATA-II mode (300 mb/s vs. 150 mb/s), and 2) at Seagate.com you can download their SeaTools diagnostice program to checkout your hard drive but be forwarned. With version 1.1.0.21 of Seatools the Short and Long diagnostic self tests failed against my drives. I worked on this a long time thinking it was a motherboard or cable issue since the drive worked fine otherwise. I finially realized that the version of SeaTools on my othe PC was v1.1.0.19 and it ran without any problems!!! I called Seagate and got mixed answers. Initially one tech said "Drive is bad. Send it back for replacement". After figuring out that 1.1.0.19 works just fine, I called back. New tech said, "yes, we don't recommend running the Windows version since there can be interaction with the OS". I understand his comment but given that v1.1.0.19 works just fine, I'm inclined to believe Seagate needs to work on their Windows version of SeaTools. He recommended only booting the PC up in DOS and using the DOS version for better test reliability. Anyway, wanted to pass this along before anyone else goes down the SeaTools yellow brick road.

29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars OEM Not Retail, September 19, 2008

By 

Paul Hackel - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Seagate 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 Bulk/OEM Hard Drive ST31000340AS (Personal Computers)

This is a OEM drive so that it all you get no screws or SATA cable so have them on hand. Also Register your drive Before you install you need the serial # off the drive to do so for your 5 year warranty. Good Value for the price per GB. Great Drive for back-ups