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

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.

Pros: Performance and reliability comparable to an enterprise-class drive. No gimmicks and no cut corners.

Cons: These drives forego the Ultrastar's RAID-optimized firmware, so while they will work very well in a conventional RAID application, they won't be ideal.

Other Thoughts: If the A7K2000's are "the best of the best," then these 7K2000's might only be "the best," but they are still excellent quality drives. If you're using conventional hardware RAID, you may find suboptimal performance. But if you don't need hardware RAID optimizations — namely, if you're using ZFS — these drives lack nothing you'll miss. I've run a dozen of these continually for over a year now, with (knock wood) zero faults. I'm taking the time to write this review because, well, I'm back for more.