$100 - Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003 2TB 5900 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal - Newegg OR Amazon FS

Quote from whisk3rs : I'll chime in - I put in an SSD into my 4yo Thinkpad (SATA I, boy!), and it is not noticeably faster than a 7200 RPM drive, but still much faster than a 5400 RPM drive that came with the laptop. It is completely silent though. I have an Intel and a Crucial SSDs in much newer HTPC and at work, and they make a lot of difference, so it's nice to be somewhat future-proof.

No such thing as "future-proof" in tech

If I need a 1TB or 2TB to store media files like photos, movies (from my camera), is this 5900 RPM drive sufficient? I do access the photos and movies quite often. Not sure if I should pay $10 extra to get the 7200 RPM one. TIA

I am using one for storing videos and pictures and it works fine. Have a SSD for my OS/Boot drive and this for storage.

BTW, has Amazon shipping improved at all in regards to poor packaging? Seems like there were a ton of complains about hard drives being shipping with little or no padding or just thrown loosely in a box.

thanks for the info - u guys talked me out of buying this for my NAS

i can wait.

Quote from jgg204 : yes they are. ask anyone with extensive server management experience (or just at the consumer level building home servers). Hitachi drives are garbage

Actually, they are not in my experience. The "green" hitachi drives play very very well in RAID setups, better than all the other manufacturers (especially WD). My RAID setup with 90% hitachi drives has been running for nearly a year, little to no problems and extremely fast. The only problems have come from Seagate drives falling out of the array because of the TLER (debatable if its the TLER values in reality). I tried putting a WD 2TB harddrive in it, what a mess.

Quote from jgg204 : if you think just because a part comes from the same manufacturing location, means that it is manufactured the same way, with the same components, following the same processes, with the same level of quality control you are mistaken and it just goes to show how little you know about production and manufacturing, supply chain, and quality. in my line of work, your kind of assumption would get you fired. now with that said, that doesn't mean that manufactureres slap their own label on identical drives. that happens a lot. but making that kind of assumption about everything that comes from the same manufacturing site is negligent

Agreed 100% with this part. China has the capability to produce EXCELLENT goods if the right controls are in place. Some of the most high-tech injection molding facilities are in that country (FLEXTRONICS, FoxConn...).



Hard-drive reliability has been shown to be directly related to the age (run time) of the drive. This really isn't that surprising to me, its typically how reliability trends with with mechanical components. Around 1 year we expect to see the failure rate increase substantially.

You can buy a reg version for 119 from just about anywhere. Prob a better idea to get it elsewhere.

The pair I bought is looking like failsauce.
As soon as I saw the packaging I knew there was going to be trouble.
I got two drives. They were in bubble wrap in small boxes but then put right on the bottom of the bigger box with paper over em. Nothing to pad from underneath.

It was a long night running scanning tools and getting up to through the night to check on em.

I tried running Hard Disk Sentinel (a freebee a couple weeks ago here) twice. Seems like good software because you can scan more than one disk at a time. But it would find errors and then lock up about 2 hours in. Tried it twice.

Then I tried HDDScan. It is coming up with bad blocks o' plenty. (460 bads at 39% of the way through a read test) Screenshots attached.

I ran Seatools. Both failed "short drive self test" And one failed "short generic"

I contacted Newegg to ask about their specs showing a 2-year warranty vs Amazon's 3-year warranty. I just got an email back today stating that they checked with the manufacturer, and it's actually a 1-year limited warranty. They updated the product page and it states 1 now. Even though someone else said earlier that Amazon confirmed a 3-year warranty, I'm going to check with them again. If it is only 1 year I'll pass.

Fantastic. You took a screen shot of the page with two year still up right? anyone?

Quote from ShovelWare : The pair I bought is looking like failsauce.

Just out of curiosity, where did you order from, Newegg or Amazon?

Quote from ShovelWare : Fantastic. You took a screen shot of the page with two year still up right? anyone?

Unfortunately I didn't. I just wanted clarification, I wasn't expecting them to come back with a lower number and update the page. I'm willing to bet Amazon's is the same and their page is wrong as well.

Anyone who bought one of these in the past week from Amazon or Newegg should be able to tell us what the box says. Or use Seagate's warranty tool to determine how long of a warranty is left on the drive based on the S/N.

Quote from jgg204 : yes they are. ask anyone with extensive server management experience (or just at the consumer level building home servers). Hitachi drives are garbage

Anybody with "extensive server management experience" knows it's a mistake to buy three drives from the same batch; all at the same time.

I've seen thousands of hard drives over the years, and guess what? They all fail- hitachi, seagate, samsung, western digital. I'm my experience they all are about the same. You guys are reading into reviews way too much. The only reason hard drives seem to be failing more frequently now than in the past, is because of the massive increase of sectors in the drive over the years. More space=more things that can go wrong.

Quote from nfs924 : Anybody with "extensive server management experience" knows it's a mistake to buy three drives from the same batch; all at the same time.

easier said than done. you don't have that information when you are purchasing these hard drives. you can't call up Newegg and ask "which production lot are these from?" besides, if you need 3 hard drives and you think buying each hard drive from a different retailer means you are getting 3 different batches, you are greatly mistaken.

you think IT at the large business / enterprise level, medium business level, or at my small business level will go around and buy each hard drive individually from a different distributor spaced out every few months? wrong.

Quote from Croq : Just out of curiosity, where did you order from, Newegg or Amazon?

Newegg. Started an advanced (cross ship) rma today.

Quote from modus23 : Unfortunately I didn't. I just wanted clarification, I wasn't expecting them to come back with a lower number and update the page. I'm willing to bet Amazon's is the same and their page is wrong as well.

True. Just ribbin. Kicking myself for not screen shotting it which I normally do.

Quote : Anyone who bought one of these in the past week from Amazon or Newegg should be able to tell us what the box says. Or use Seagate's warranty tool to determine how long of a warranty is left on the drive based on the S/N.

Its a bare drive and not retail packaging so its just a brown box. Some completely inadequate shipping packaging by the way. Not Staples hard drive shipping bad, but pretty close. My two bad drives out of the box might have something to do with the lousy padding. (they shipped out of the Memphis center)
If warranty is up to Seagate and is based on serial code then whatever it says on Neweggs site isnt going to matter much I guess. I can't picture a scenario where a year and a half from now I am showing Seagate a screen shot at Newegg and they say "well, ok then".
Don't know what I am going to do if the next ones test bad out of the box, but anyhew - if you are reading this it would be a good idea to run some tests on yours before putting it into service. I am glad I did.