Seagate Desktop HDD 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 16 MB Cache 3.5"- Internal Drive Retail Kit (ST3500641AS-RK)

With multimedia devices, it's easy to use up disk space quickly. I swapped out a 3TB drive and copied everything over, and this should hold me over for a while. Since the heads need to move half as far to work with contiguous data, I expected the performance to be good, and it was. For multimedia, you don't need great speed but you do need space. This is in a media center PC with four tuners. The computer is on a network, so there might be people in several locations using this concurrently. Since the computer might be recording four shows at once, while somebody is watching another recording, and several more people are watching something over the network, that's a lot of data. If a 7GB file holds an hour of recorded TV, the computer has a full hour to read it, so the number of MB/second is still relatively small. If you are copying files across a network, you will want more speed, and if the device is heavily used, the more speed the better. I benchmarked this, and got an average read speed of 171 MB/s, with a minimum of over 100 MB/sec at the slow end. I could have done more extensive benchmarking, but for my purposes, the speed is already above and beyond what I need. I can copy a recorded TV show or movie and measure the time in seconds instead of minutes, and on a day to day basis, I have more than enough capability for now. Although the peak speed I got (a bit over 200 MB/sec at the small end) would have been considered average for an SSD, this gives far more for the money and is more than enough for its intended purpose. Five years ago, I had a total of 3TB on this computer. It has undergone many changes, including motherboard, processor, disk drives, etc. But one thing that keeps happening is that I run out of space. Fortunately, this drive is cheap enough per MB that if I do run out of room on my other drives, I can swap them out too. My other current drives are Seagate 4TB versions of this, and have been in constant daily use for a long time. They also give me good performance, and it's good to know that I'll have room to expand.

After my WD My Book crashed with all my major files, I wanted to get a good harddrive that was reliable, fast, large capacity, quiet, and did I say reliable? I read many reviews on this Seagate 500GB Barracuda model, and decided to go with it. After getting 2 duds (OEM HD's) from another "eggcelent" online store, I basically gave up on it. I tried a 3rd time, and got it from here... and could not be happier with my choice. For the extra $10, I got a brand new, sealed haddrive with the full 5 year warranty. The harddrive itself is excellent and quite small. The SATA is super fast compared to ATA. Not only does it transfer my files in a flash, but the noise is whisper quiet. I read some reviews that this particular model is quite noisy when it writes, but I think those are just bad models, because mine is barely noticeable even when I'm transferring Gigs worth of data. I partitioned my drive in 2 parts, and have not had any problems with it thus far. If you're looking for a large storage HD with a small price, I highly recommend you go with this one. I haven't shopped much on Amazon before, but I was blown away by their service. Free super saving, which stated it would arrive in 9-15 days or something, delivered to my door in 2! I am very satisfied with the product and the service. PS. I don't work for Amazon nor am I trying to suck up to them... I was just really impressed with their speedy service.

This is my third Seagate Barracuda HD and it replaces my second Seagate Barracuda HD (300GB capacity) which replaced my first one. Each one of these drives was replaced when I upgraded my Windows OS (Windows 98 to XP and the one being reviewed today took me from XP to 7). So, each case, the drive was replaced to accommodate a clean install of new windows OS. None of these drives has ever failed or had any kind of technical problem of any kind and I've never lost data from any of the three. It is remarkable how reliable these drives are. They are also extremely quiet, this current one being the quietest of all. I simply cannot hear it run inside the tower case. I have to remove the access panel on the mini-tower and put my ear near it to hear it at all. Some people say Seagate drives are too quiet. But to me, If you've ever heard another brand hard drive clicking and humming away inside a computer case, then you'll appreciate the quietness of a Seagate. In terms of price, Seagate drives are similarly priced compared to competitors WD and Maxtor. With unmatched reliability and competitive pricing, this unit is definitely a great value. Installation was easy and the supplied mounting screws were machined perfectly to the threading on the drive ports. The drive booted up immediately with no issues and the Windows 7 OS was up and running with twenty minutes. A great value!

This drive isn't going to knock anybody's socks off with its speed -- it's only marginally faster than my 200 GB PATA drive -- but for $120, it's a whole lot of space. It also has a jumper setting to restrict it to 150 MB/s if you have a board with a Via chipset (as I do) that can not negotiate with a 300 MB/s drive. I have not yet attempted to use the included software, but it does claim to be able to clone your existing drive if you want to replace rather than supplement your existing drive. It's not particularly fast, but neither is it slow. It's fairly quiet, but not the quietest. It does run a bit warm, but not enough to worry me. It's a working class hard drive in all ways, just a very big one. If that's what you are looking for, you won't be disappointed by this drive.

Bought 8 of these drives on 9/15/13 for my home media server in raid 10 on a 3ware 9650se, so I can't attest to the longevity of the drives just yet I will update should any problem arise. I was skeptical about buying Seagate as I have bought only WD drives for the past ten years, and have never had one fail before it was just a logical time to replace it. Again I'll update if one kicks the bucket. UPDATE: 3/13/2014 - Still going strong had one occasion rise up where I had a drive time-out just reinserted the drive and let it rebuild. Haven't had a problem since. UPDATE: 9/7/2014 - Nearly a year since they have been running 24/7 and still no problems. And no time-out since my last update. UPDATE: 3/2/2015 - Over the weekend I had one of 9 drives i bought about a year a go start throwing S.M.A.R.T seek errors. Sent it in for RMA. Negated one star, as one year operation time is pretty sad. Still have some drives (WD) from 06 that are still working. Shall see if the rest are to follow. UPDATE: 12/16/2015 - Now have 12 of these drives have had no more problems since the one RMA. Bought 5 of them 5/12/2015 so far all of those are fine. Not a peep from the raid controller. UPDATE: 2/22/2017 - Had one of my original 8 die over the weekend, so over three years of constant use. Not bad?

I ordered the 32mb cache, 3.5inch 3gb/s SATA drive as pictured and described in the information. When I received it, the box was correct, same model #, showed it was 3.5", etc. However, inside the box was a 2.5", 64mb Cache HDD. It was brand-new, etc, however, its not what I ordered. Most people would be quite happy with this BETTER harddrive, however, I HAD TO HAVE the 32mb cache and no higher, because the device its going in cannot handle 64mb cache and does not work. So, although the HDD might be a pleasant surprise for someone on the positive, for me, it was negative and I had to return it. So when you open the sealed box they send you, make sure the HDD is the model that is shown on the box (and on the sale-description) as in my case, the HDD inside was a completely different model # and different specs.

I can certainly empathize with the failed hard drive woes a number of people have experienced with this Seagate Barracuda 500GB SATA Internal Hard Drive but I've had this hard drive for a year and a half and I've had no problems with it. I got it to replace the hard drive on my Dell Dimension E521 and I've been very satisfied with it. Fast and Quiet -------------- Read/Write access on this hard drive is fast. Programs load up quickly with minimal "grind" noise as the hard drive is accessed. Installation ------------ I installed this drive without a hitch on my Dell Dimension E521. "Installation" simply involves cracking open my computer case, removing the data and power cables from my old hard drive, and plugging these cables into their respective connectors on the Seagate Hard Drive. That's it. Windows (XP) recognized and formatted the hard drive with no problems. Hard Drive Capacity Discrepancies --------------------------------- When I installed XP on the new drive, Windows (XP) reports the total capacity of the hard drive in My Computer under the "Total Size" column as 465 GB. However, if you right-click on the hard drive icon and select Properties on the pop-up menu, Windows brings up a dialog box which shows the full capacity of the hard drive as 500,096,991,232 bytes (465 GB). The discrepancy between 500,096,991,232 bytes (~500 GB) and 465 GB is the result of the use of "SI Prefix" system of units and the "Binary Prefix" system of units. The "SI Prefix" system of units is based on the metric system where 1KB is 1000 bytes, 1MB is 1000,000 bytes, and 1GB is 1000,000,000 bytes - very straight forward. Thus, 500,096,991,232 bytes converted to GB by is done by: 500,096,991,232 bytes / 1000,000,000 bytes per GB = 500.096991232 GB. The "Binary Prefix" system of units is a little different. In industry speak, 1KB isn't 1000 bytes but 1024 bytes. Here's how it works: 1 KB is 2^10 = 1024 bytes 1 MB is 2^20 = 1,048,576 bytes 1 GB is 2^30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes As a result, when 500,096,991,232 bytes is converted to GB in the "Binary Prefix" system of units, the result is: 500,096,991,232 bytes / 1,073,741,824 bytes / GB = 465.7516174. This explains why Windows reports the capacity of the hard drive under My Computer as 465 GB, not 500 GB. --- The Seagate SATA Internal Hard Drive is fast, ultra quiet, dependable, and provides plenty of storage space. Windows (XP) recognizes and formats it with no problems. If I needed another hard drive, I would get a Seagate again!

I purchased this drive to hold media on my home theater PC (running Plex Media Server) almost two years ago. I have not had one issue with it. I've installed Windows 7 and stripped it down a little to make the system more efficient in terms of streaming video. This drive handles 1080p video with no issue, I've never had clipping or a choppy stream that has to buffer to serve the video to the TV. Of course, I've added a higher-end video card to help with that. Let's face it, most people just want to install the drive and forget about it. That's pretty much what I've done with this drive. It's there and works when I need it to. I keep the PC case well-ventilated, which I feel is one of the secrets to making sure your drive and computer hardware will last. I don't recall this coming as a "kit", I generally tend to have extra parts laying around anyhow. Installation was pretty standard, as I recall. Two years (with rare power-offs/resets on the PC) and no issues. Can't complain about that, especially at this price point.

una muy buena relacion calidad/precio. muy satisfecho con la compra, aunq tenia recelo por los resultados anteriores de HD de la misma marca

Works great

Works great! I use it as external backup.

Die Platte an sich ist top und verdient eigentlich 5 Sterne! *Allerdings stimmen die Angaben des Verkäufers NICHT!* Ich benötige für meinen Zweit-PC, altes Mainboard und WinXP 32-bit EXPLIZIT eine 1 TB - SATA II (3 GB/s) HD, so wie hier angeboten und auch auf der Rechnung ausgewiesen! Geliefert wurde allerdings eine 1 TB - SATA III (6 GB/S) Festplatte, die ich dafür nicht nutzen kann da sie auf dem System nicht erkannt wird. *Es ist ziemlich enttäuschend, wenn man sich auf die Angaben eines Verkäufers NICHT VERLASSEN KANN!* Deshalb nur 2 Sterne!

Hey, who would not love this? 6TB in a fast, reliable drive! I have tired many HD's over the years; Seagate always comes out on top. Perfect addition to my NAS