Hitachi GST Deskstar 7K2000 HDS722020ALA330 (0F10311) 2TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Pros: *Seems* to operate well under nominal conditions

Cons: Out of 20 or so drives used over 3 years, about a 40% failure rate in that time frame. Concurrently bought Samsung and WD models are doing fine.

Other Thoughts: It's not a really scientific analysis, but HGST is on our do-not-buy list until they improve their engineering.

Pros: Fast, quiet, cheap (at the time)

Cons: Failed with corrupt sectors after six months - also in an area of the disk I hadn't previously used so who knows if it was there all the time? I did run a surface test when the drive was new. RMA'd and have my fingers crossed.

Pros: I've had these installed for 9 months as a software RAID1 on my basement server. I get 119MB/s writes and 126MB/s reads. drives run relatively cool (~40C) as well.

Cons: no cons so far. we'll see if they fail catastrophically or fade with unrecoverable errors...

Other Thoughts: I keep these drives powered 24/7. after 9 months they have only been power-cycled 9 times...

Pros: Fast, reasonably cool running, quiet, Sata 3Gbs., good capacity for price.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: My drive has been running just fine for two months now. I hope I won't have to RMA it anytime soon as Hitachi's packing requirements for RMA are difficult to meet. Keep this in mind.

Pros: NONE

Cons: I went to throw a brand new packaged drive into my computer today and it would not boot. The drive is dead as a doornail. I unfortunately bought the drive 4/6/2011 and now it is 5/5/2011 so of course it is out of Neweggs 30 day RMA so I have to deal with Hatachi direct.

Other Thoughts: Check ANY drive you receive the day you get it to make sure it works.

Pros: I purchased 10 retail boxed versions of these HDs back in November 2009; configured in a RAID6 array for 16TB of storage. I added 3 more of the bare drive versions (being reviewed) 13 months later (December 2010). I haven't had ONE drive go bad after 24/7 operation for 18 months! Performance: 300+MB/s (that's megaBYTEs) sustained file transfers from one partition to another on the same RADI6 array...

Cons: Absolutely none to mention! ;o)

Other Thoughts: Controller: HighPoint RocketRAID 4321 PCI-Express x8 SATA / SAS + BBU-04 Battery Backup
Enclosure: PC-Pitstop 15-bay SAS Expander Enclosure w/4-meter SAS Cable
Server: Thermaltake Armor Series VA8000BWS Black Aluminum / Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case; Tyan Tempest i5000XL; Dual Xeon X5355 2.66Ghz Quad-Core; 10GB DDR2; 4x 1TB HDs in RAID5 Array

25+ years experience assembling/troubleshooting PCs and other types of computers...

Pros: Can't beat 2TB of space...when they work.

Cons: I bought 4 of these drives with the intent to setup a small RAID 5 NAS at home. One of the drives arrived DOA, wouldn't even spin up. I RMA'd that drive, and by the time Hitachi had a replacement to me, I've had a second drive fail. Same issue, doesn't want to spin up. I'm now a bit concerned about using these in a RAID if they're failing at this rate. I could end up with multiple failures before a rebuild could complete. To date, I have not been able to setup my 4-disk RAID due to drive failures and I bought these almost 2 months ago.

Pros: lots of space

Cons: Very high failure rate. My drive died after 6 months. Very annoying to lose 2 tb worth of important data.

Pros: I've had two of these running day and night for over a year with no failures of any kind.

Cons: Price is a bit higher than similarly sized 2TB drives... but it's worth it!

Other Thoughts: I've also had two more of a prior generation (everything the same except for the revision) running for a year and a half. No errors at all!

Treat them right and they'll take care of keeping your data safe!

Pros: I have 4 of these in a raid 5 (6TB total array) using my mobo's Intel ICH10R controller. Read speed is insane, write speed quite acceptable. Reliability has been excellent (thus far)

Cons: All I have on my array is data and I have windows set to spin it down after 15 mins of non use. Spin up times are a bit slow, much slower than the 300GB drives I replaced. Takes about 10 to 15 seconds to access data and sounds like a plane taking off (all 4 disks spin up at same time, so take this into consideration). Once array is spun up its pretty quiet like a small case fan. Seek noise can be loud but unless you're running a database this shouldn't be that annoying and probably about on par with any current hd.

Other Thoughts: I'm hoping these drives last 3 to 4 years. 11 months in I haven't had a single problem. 3 year warranty means I *hopefully* free replacement if problems do occur.

Windows format of 6TB = 38 hours. Ouch! So, full format of one should take about 10 hours.