Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB Serial ATA Hard Drive - 7200RPM, 64MB, SATA 6Gb/s $89.99 AR + S/H

Quote from wellhole : If anything, that'll make mechanical HD's more expensive. Lesser sales = higher price.

Um, no. [wikipedia.org]

Quote from NJMaster : I agree with your comment, but at the same time, newegg.com reviews section is probably the most useful single source of quality related feedback that we can refer to for PC components (2nd being Amazon reviews). In my opinion, of course. Although it isn't 100% reliable, it is fairly accurate. Yes, people tend to post reviews when they have a problem with it, but the % of feedback should be similar to pretty much all the categories within pc components. When products have 2.5 stars, there is usually a reason behind it. When products have 4.5 stars, there are reasons behind it. I work at PC component testing industry, and majority (not all) of the product reviews at newegg.com reflects the failure levels of the products that we normally see, except for may be some "exception" products or models with specific issues. Mostly, the review scores fairly accurately represent the quality of the product. Also, what people need to take into account is the content that makes up the review scores. (i.e. If a product maker has high level of customer support, they will most likely address a firmware issue right away) Still, you are right about the hit or miss of certain products. The difference is that certain models within each brand have higher quality, which occurs at design & factory production state, and those are the products that usually shows 4.5 stars, and those are the ones we should purchase. The rest are pretty similar in the failure rate within each category.

Include this with the "should be taken with a huge grain of salt."

Quote from Ferdinand33 : Include this with the "should be taken with a huge grain of salt."

I thought "In my opinion" pretty much covered that... Like I said, I actually work at a component testing facility, and I see and analyze failure data daily, so I thought I had a bit more insight on quality related information.

Please that that with a HUGE grain of salt.

Quote from landon87 : I still want that 3tb for $90 deal.

I am holding out until a return to pre-consolidation prices, because I am ticked off at the price gouging. Seems like prices are finally coming back down. Lack of selection in terms of manufacturer still bites though. All 5 of my pre-flood-consolidation Samsung drives are running fine, but can't get those anymore.

Quote from UA_Iron : here's them compared to the WD reds: Tom's Hardware - Benchmark Comparison Reds vs 7200.14 [tomshardware.com]

linked was cavier green vs barracuda somehow... but i don't think red are way better than barracuda performance-wise. it's just bluff of advertising and marketing in my perspective.

I have 5 Seagates 3TB from the BF deal on Amazon. Running them in a Win server 24/7 - these are perfect drives. No noise, low temps. But, yes - they park the heads. Since August last year the firmware seems changed and I have no chirping noise. Mine were October batch. I would assume anything from this series Barracuda should be fine now. $90 for 2 TB is not the best historically, but good price as of today.
If you need HDDs for a NAS 24/7 without the heads parking, these are not for you.

Quote from santiagoanders : Um, no. [wikipedia.org]

Are you kidding? Citing Wikipedia? Although, some of the contents are true. Take it like this: if there is a surplus of HDDs, 1000 vendors will get their hands on them --> thus, will lead to lots of competition. The price will then decrease. Now there is a shortage of HDDs and only 5 vendors have them. These 5 vendors will have certain control in the price --> price will increase because of the shortage.


Com'on, you can't just based it on the supply and demand model on the surface. Gotta go deep .

Quote from mr.unnatural : Most products on Newegg tend to have mixed reviews. Hard drives especially can be hit or miss, regardless of the brand. Some work great whereas others are either DOA or die shortly after being placed into service. It's really just the luck of the draw. Besides, most people only post reviews when they have something to gripe about. How many people that bought an item with no problems take the time to go back and post a review after they've had a chance to live with it for a while? All Newegg reviews should be taken with a huge grain of salt. The sampling is generally far too small to be of any real value.

Agreed with you to most extend. I am one of those who do not leave comments; neither the product is defective nor 101%.

Quote from cm0011 : Are you kidding? Citing Wikipedia? Although, some of the contents are true. Take it like this: if there is a surplus of HDDs, 1000 vendors will get their hands on them --> thus, will lead to lots of competition. The price will then decrease. Now there is a shortage of HDDs and only 5 vendors have them. These 5 vendors will have certain control in the price --> price will increase because of the shortage. Com'on, you can't just based it on the supply and demand model on the surface. Gotta go deep

What is this I don't even... You just summarized the supply and demand principle.

Quote from NJMaster : I agree with your comment, but at the same time, newegg.com reviews section is probably the most useful single source of quality related feedback that we can refer to for PC components (2nd being Amazon reviews).

Considering we know absolutely nothing about the technical expertise of the "reviewers", the level of quality in the reviews is highly suspect.

Quote : In my opinion, of course. Although it isn't 100% reliable, it is fairly accurate.

It's only accurate if it represents a true cross-section of all customers who purchased the item. Since Newegg doesn't post the total number of a particular product that's been sold we have know way to determine what percentage of items were part of the sample. In this case, there were 363 reviews posted, with 67% of them giving it 3 stars or better. We don't know if 100% of the customers posted reviews or if it was limited to only a couple of percent of the total. It's pretty clear that a lot of people don't post reviews and we have no way of knowing whether the majority of them liked or disliked the item. In this case, about one third of the buyers had negative responses to their purchase. If all buyers were queried, there's a realistic chance that the percentage of negative responses would drop to less than 5%. The product could simply not survive if it had a 33% failure rate. I also have a hard time believing that Newegg would carry a product that had a return rate of 33%.

Quote : Yes, people tend to post reviews when they have a problem with it, but the % of feedback should be similar to pretty much all the categories within pc components. When products have 2.5 stars, there is usually a reason behind it. When products have 4.5 stars, there are reasons behind it. I work at PC component testing industry, and majority (not all) of the product reviews at newegg.com reflects the failure levels of the products that we normally see, except for may be some "exception" products or models with specific issues. Mostly, the review scores fairly accurately represent the quality of the product. Also, what people need to take into account is the content that makes up the review scores. (i.e. If a product maker has high level of customer support, they will most likely address a firmware issue right away)

Sampling the failure rate of any product is standard practice, but it only provides a rough estimate of how the product will perform in the real world. If you test one out of every ten items off of a production line and half of them fail there's no way to know if the other 9 out of 10 items aren't perfect or vice versa. The same goes for the review samples we see on Newegg. FWIW, I also take Amazon reviews with a huge grain of salt. For the most part, they're not actual reviews but merely opinions and have to be taken as such.

FWIW, I've bought hard drives from just about every major vendor that's made hard drives over the past 20 years and I've had failures with every brand. The thing is, I've had far more drives survive for long periods than I've had failures. I don't recall ever getting a drive that was DOA, although it does happen.

It seems that some people are taking my comment the wrong way. Here is my point. Although you do need to take the online reviews "with a grain of salt," if you had to go to a single website for customer feedback, where would you go? If you had to recommend one website for quick quality feedback of pc component, which site would you recommend? I usually go to newegg.com, just because it is probably the most popular pc building centric online store, and I purchase stuff here regularly. I don't simply "trust" the reviews, but I do take them seriously when I make purchase choices for components (along with various expert reviews of the product). If I was looking at two hard drive choices, and product A had 4.5 starts with slightly higher price, while product B had 3 stars with lower price, I would definitely go with product A (unless the cost difference were huge).

Example would be the two SSDs below. If the price difference were mimimal, would one would you choose? Which one would you say is actually more reliable? I bought Vertex 3 for $70, and skipped 830 at $100, because of the price.

SAMSUNG 830 128 GB SSD - 5 stars- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6820147163
OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD - 4 stars - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6820227706

FYI, if I only see test results for a small "sample" of parts, then the test results I see may not mean much. But I see tens of thousands of quantities of the "same model," of various products (I don't mean all stuff in newegg, but I do see some of the popular products). What I mean is that newegg reviews are not too far off from the test results I see at work. And that is based on a fact, so more reliable than a few people complaining at some PC forum. If product A has failure rate of 5%, while product B has a failure rate of 10%, , so on, and newegg reviews correspond to that data fairly consistently with, say 27 of 30 products, my conclusion would be "newegg reviews are fairly accurate, and useful."

I just wanted to share my opinion on the matter. I have had some bad experiences too, but most of the time, newegg review did not fail me (actually, I my method would be newegg -> amazon -> slickdeals forum -> expert reviews). If there is a better way to check quality feedbacks, please let me know because I am all ears. It is not like I am affiliated with newegg anyway.

Quote from santiagoanders : Um, no. [wikipedia.org]

Supply does not increase when demand decreases. Do you really think they'll keep making the same amount when their sales are dropping? So, yes the price will increase. Consider the price of DDR2 memory.

Quote from wellhole : Supply does not increase when demand decreases. Do you really think they'll keep making the same amount when their sales are dropping? So, yes the price will increase. Consider the price of DDR2 memory.

Um, gee. That's why it's called supply and demand.

Quote from wellhole : Supply does not increase when demand decreases. Do you really think they'll keep making the same amount when their sales are dropping? So, yes the price will increase. Consider the price of DDR2 memory.

When demand drops, price drops. When supply is low AND demand is high, THEN prices go up, not just because supply decreases.

I mean really, do you think, when the price of SSD drops to the price of HDD, the price of HDD will go up?

Quote from celeritini : linked was cavier green vs barracuda somehow... but i don't think red are way better than barracuda performance-wise. it's just bluff of advertising and marketing in my perspective.

I updated the link, my bad. The comparison tool on that site is broken, I click on the reds and gives greens!

the 7200.14 are very fast drives, beat out the reds in nearly every category. The reds aren't slow drives by any means though, especially for a 5400rpm drive.