Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500 GB SATA 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Hard Drive ST3500320AS

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Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 4 x 1 inches ; 1.2 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000026D8E
• Item model number: ST3500320AS
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (272 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank

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  Electronics > Computers & Accessories > Internal Desktop Components > Hard Drives

• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 23, 2008

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

278 of 302 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Works fine after applying firmware update, November 2, 2008

By	John Smiley (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 32MB Cache 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Drive ST31500341AS-Bare Drive (Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging) (Electronics)

Update: I wrote this review before a firmware update was made available and my comments reflect the situation at the time. When the updates were made available, I flashed my 5 drives and they've been working fine ever since. I'd change the rating to a 4 star if the editor allowed.

I and many others have been experiencing serious problems with these drives including:

* dropping out of RAID configurations for no apparent reason
* being ejected from a RAID configuration due to read / write errors
* freezing for up to 30 seconds

These problems have been reported on Linux, Vista, XP, and OS X and appear to be related to how the drives flush their write cache. In many cases, the drives work fine for days or weeks before problems appear. In my case, I bought five of these for my Qnap TS-509 Pro and they worked great for about two weeks under various read / write loads. Since then, I've had all three of the problems mentioned above on different drives and they are growing progressively worse. The latest problem was three of the five drives disappearing from the RAID5 volume while I was attempting to copy the files to a different NAS.

A work-around that has been successful for some is to disable the disk write cache. Other than the obvious performance penalty and reduced lifespan this causes, some systems do not provide a means of disabling disk write cache (such as the Qnap).

References to these problems can be found on many forum threads:

Qnap: http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=142&t=8826
Netgear: http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=20435&start=60&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
Synology: http://www.synology.com/enu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&p=47101
AVSForum: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1080005
macrumors: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=571843
Ubuntu: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=933053
Slashdot: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1003109&cid=25458241
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B00066IJPQ/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?_encoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

The most informative thread may be found on Seagate's own support forum, where it appears Seagate is blaming everyone but themselves for the problem:

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=2390&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

114 of 122 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I believe problems are resolved !, December 6, 2008

By	Honest Guy "geffroman" (Huntington Beach, Ca USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 32MB Cache 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Drive ST31500341AS-Bare Drive (Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging) (Electronics)

NEVER SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED:
I've watched the issue with these drives carefully for about 2 months. It looks like Seagate solved the problem and that a vocal few were ever really affected. By few I mean relative to the thousands sold. And I am not defending Seagate. This whole fiasco was unacceptable.

MY SYSTEM:
I picked up 8 of these drives. I'm running them in 4 separate DLink DNS-321 RAID boxes. I've copied about 4TB of data back and forth across them for days. My only firmware update needed was for the DLink so that it could properly handle the new 1.5TB drives.

In the end I believe all is well with both the drives and the DLink DNS-321. I will of course update this review immediately if I see any problems.

PERFORMANCE:
We are able to watch movies from this drive arrangement on 3 computers simultaneously across a 100mb network from the same drive while adding new files to the drive from a 4th computer.

This means I can be adding movies unattended to the system while watching an Epic Man movie on the plasma in the living room... while the kids are watching Monsters Inc in the bedroom... and the wife is off watching some chic flick in the Den. :)

The combination of DLink and these 1.5TB drives is fantastic and seems as stable as the WD 1TBs I was using previously.

PROPER DIAGNOSIS:
Don't confuse your drive DIEING after a week with the previous firmware problems of this particular drive. Blame the vendor that shipped the drive like it could bounce !

ON A SIDE NOTE:
I will say I am sick of Amazon, Tiger and other vendors shipping hard drives like they are indestructible ROCKS. Even if they arrive working, this inadequate packaging is certainly taking years off the life of our drives. One of my 8 arrived DEAD as a brick thanks to this nonsense. I am furious about this issue !

Will it take a class action to stop this behavior of guaranteeing future drive sales by damaging todays drives through deliberate mishandling of our purchases ?! Wake up AMAZON ! Wake up TIGER !

UPDATE: Dec 14 2009
One year later, I own 22 of these drives now. 12 are running daily in DNS-321 Raid boxes. The other 10 are used as back up drives in a drop in SATA adapter. No failures since 2 in the first few weeks, I believe due to poor packaging. About 6 of my drives came with the BAD firmware. I never had issues with that either. Call me blessed. I just think the DNS-321 and these drives work very well together.

73 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Updated firmware now available!, November 20, 2008

By	Ralph E. Richardson (Wayzata, MN United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 32MB Cache 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Drive ST31500341AS-Bare Drive (Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging) (Electronics)

Here's the "consumable" snippet from an email that was sent to tech support/sales/AE's, etc.:

Seagate 1.5TB Customers,

Some Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB hard drives may show uncharacteristic
operation when used with Mac and Linux operating systems in multi-drive
configurations. Users may experiences pauses in video streaming applications
or a dropped drive from RAID arrays. Customers seeing these symptoms should
contact Seagate Technical Support for a firmware upgrade.

In order to assure the proper application of the new firmware, please email a
description of the issues youre seeing to Seagate ([...])
Please include the following disk drive information: model number, serial
number and current firmware revision. Also, please describe your
system,operating system and the application in use when the issue arose. We
will respond, promptly, to your email request with appropriate instructions.