Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
-5 stars, March 10, 2009
stay away look for updates in other reviews for failures.
Pros: Works fine until it dies!
Cons: I have had 3 failures of this model disk in the last 45 days in 2 different systems. These were not gamer systems and are well cooled in large Antec boxes. Clearly Seagate has a problem and expect additional failures - next time I will put the service / shipping charges towards Western Digital units rather than replacing junk with junk.
Cons: ... died without any warning after two months.
The return policy is horrible - you are literally not allowed to use packing peanuts, bubble wrap, or newspaper to package a dead drive when you return it for warranty replacement. It has to be 2 inches of foam rubber in a corugated box or your warranty is void.
Also, you are sent a REFURBISHED drive as a replacement.
You are also required to pay for shipping the drive back, and can wait as long as 30 days from the day they receive it to get your new one.
This last point isn't too bad in itself, but when mixed with everything else, it's stupid.
Oh, and the RMA form on the website was down for two or three days before I could actually get it sent in. Customer service couldn't even fill out an RMA request for me - the entire system was down for "maintenance".
They also make sure to withhold the detail about packing until you already submitted the form... and possibly gave them $20 to avoid waiting a month for your replaceme
Other Thoughts: What happened, Seagate? I have two more of the older 7200.10 drives in here and they've run absolutely beautifully for the year I've had them - as a matter of fact, they're the only thing holding my degraded RAID5 up right now. I still have the old 160GB drive that came with my Dell five years back, and it still works like a charm. I order a couple 7200.11 drives, one arrives DOA and the other dies within two months without any warning.
Cons: Had a SD15 failure. Drive was making a high-pitched noise just before it failed on machine reboot. Was able (with effort) to get SD1A flashed onto drive. But then drive became very noisy -- every few seconds, it would sound like the head was tracking accross the drive (a 'farting' noise, as some have said). Performance would also drop to near zero at these times.
Got a warranty replacement from Seagate (which cost me $20) -- another drive with SD15! Sure enough, one week after install this one just started to make the high-pitched noise, so I'm typing this before I'm computerless once again.
Other Thoughts: I will never, EVER buy Seagate again. I will do everything I can to make sure no one I know buys their products, either. Shame, shame, shame on you, Seagate.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Serious firmware bug, January 21, 2009
All versions of this drive manufactured prior to Jan 2009 may be affected by a serious firmware bug. A firmware update has been released but according to multiple reports the update may brick this drive. I would recommend staying away from this model until the affected drives are out of the supply chain.
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16 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
h2benchw test with jumper removed., September 1, 2008
I no longer recommend this drive since the 7200.12 series came out and one of my drives died. I would like to change my rating to three stars.
The drive I bought from PEAK ZONE was shipped without a antistatic bag and it died, do not buy from them.
this is a oem, meaning just a drive in a antistatic bag, no screws, cables or literature or box.
this drive needs a firmware update, I had troubles with one of my drives, after updating with new firmware which applies to all 7200.11 drives they work much better and quiter.
You must remove a jumper to enable sata 300 mbps transfers, it was very hard to remove because the edge is below the socket. I use a small screwdriver and the jumper went flying somewhere into the room. I tested it with h2benchw a test program used by toms hardware to compare drives. the results (most relavent part) are pasted below. to summarize the min read speed was 49.8MB/sec, average was 84.0 MB/sec, max 113MB/sec. Write speed minimum 49.6MB/sec, average was 83.1MB/sec and max 111.7MB/sec
Disk: ST3500320AS
Capacity: CHS=(60801/255/63), 976768065 sectors = 476938 MByte
Interface transfer rate w/ block size 128 sectors at 0.0% of capacity:
Sequential read rate medium (w/out delay): 112837 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate w/ read-ahead (delay: 0.62 ms): 175203 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential read ("core test"): 135101 KByte/s
Sequential write rate medium (w/out delay): 75328 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate write cache (delay: 0.93 ms): 166107 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential write: 80768 KByte/s
Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors):
Reading: average 84019.3, min 49850.8, max 113113.2 [KByte/s]
Writing: average 83129.2, min 49696.5, max 111786.7 [KByte/s]
Random access read: average 12.22, min -1.28, max 25.70 [ms]
Random access write: average 7.03, min -5.63, max 31.49 [ms]
Random access read (<504 MByte): average 6.13, min -3.69, max 16.74 [ms]
Random access write (<504 MByte): average 2.72, min -5.59, max 96.31 [ms]
Application profile `swapping': 12745.4 KByte/s
Application profile `installing': 18513.2 KByte/s
Application profile `Word': 37773.7 KByte/s
Application profile `Photoshop': 26142.8 KByte/s
Application profile `copying': 28029.1 KByte/s
Application profile `F-Prot': 11437.4 KByte/s
Result: application index = 20.0
ATA disk: ST3500320AS
Serial #: 9QM4A4J3
Firmware: SD15
Version of specification: ATA-ATAPI-8
Supported UDMA modes: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
UDMA mode 6 active.
capacity (28-bit addressing): 268435455 sectors (131072.0 MByte)
Capacity (48-bit addressing): 976773168 sectors (476940.0 MByte)
acoustic management not supported.
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