Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Pros: This is the third computer it has been in. I don't really remember when I bought it.....(ironic....don't remember...memory device?). I am not a huge fan of seagate....the reason I bought this is that it was the only large platter available in SATAIII at the time (very shortly after SATAIII came out). I have backed this drive up many times, and even had one of the BUP drives fail ...and this one is still going.

Cons: I have had my share of SGs brick. Enough that I use desk stars and caviar blacks almost exclusively for platters. I tried that ssd/hdd hybrid SG...it's probably still alive somewhere...but it didn't impress me.

Other Thoughts: I currently have this drive in line with an SSD cache....and I don't know if it is just this drive or not.....but it has been a solid performer for 2 years or more?....and one of the few parts that made the move into the last 2 upgrades.

Pros: reasonably priced drive

Cons: i built a server and it took roughly 8 months to gather parts and get up ad running. this drive was in use a little over a year in a raid 6. it failed. i've been warned against using seagates, and hope this isn't an example of them. i understand that drives fail, but i'm disappointed in how fast it occured adn yet outside the warranty time period.

Pros: Have two of these, one in my PC that is used for data (movies, games, music, photos, etc.) and the other is in my Synology DS211j NAS and they are basically copies of each other (although I don't copy some of the ISO's I have on the data drive).

Works great and both have been running strong for more than a year without a single hiccup.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Going to be upgrading these to 3TB drives soon as I'm running out of space, but Seagate has never failed me. These drives are great.

Pros: None

Cons: Failed once. Went back to WD caviar Black 1.5 raid. Used this seagate as backup. Failed when needed. Have never owned a decent seagate.

Pros: 6 GB SATA 3. 2TB. Whats not to like? Says it handles desktop RAID

Cons: Built up my new system last week with 3 of these in a RAID 5 config, restored my files Thursday and working along... Disk 2 dropped out of the array today (Tuesday). I am having the AMD RAIDXpert rebuild the array, but seriously - less than 4 working days and already having problems. It states it is for desktop RAID. I see it is discontinued so I guess I will see if I can get more dependable drives from a different manufacturer.

Other Thoughts: At least I have my old machine with a different manufacture's drives and the backup I made to move to this new faster machine.

Pros: Rock Solid.

Cons: none

Pros: Good performance; reasonable price.

Newegg has gotten better about packaging... the five drives came wrapped in six inches of bubble wrap, and were taped so tightly I probably could've dribbled the package. But the box was still crushed in in one corner. C'MON, GUYS!!!! People have been complaining about your packaging for years : (

The replacement drive (see below), and two drives I subsequently ordered to expand capacity were packaged much better... they had plastic drive holders that fit snugly into the box, with plenty of space between the drives and the sides. The boxes were undamaged.

Cons: Two weeks of typical usage, and one of the five drives in my raid array died.

Two stars may seem harsh, but a system's hard drive is The. Most. Critical. component of any system. Any other component can be replaced, no harm no foul. But when a hard drive dies, everything on it dies with it. Family pictures? Gone. Tax records? Gone. Email? Projects? Anything you've ever downloaded? Gone. For good.

Yes, backups are critical. But how many people have the means (or know-how) to back up 2 TB of data? That's 40+ Blu-Ray discs (assuming you have a burner).

I have a raid-6 array, because years ago I had two drives drop out of a raid-5 array... lost everything (see "too much to back up", above). Losing a drive so quickly killed my confidence in the security a raid array provides. A raid array is designed to protect against eventual failures... now, it's a front line defense against poor quality control, instead.

Can I even rely on raid-6 being enough, now?

Other Thoughts: If you're in the hard drive business, a 20% failure rate is unacceptable. You can't use my five drives as a fair base, but there are entirely too many other reviews about failed hard drives.

This is unfortunately true of every major manufacturer out there today... the quality is just terrible, and with the amount of data that is stored digitally, backing up data is now more critical than ever.

The only reason I gave two stars instead of one is because they are not 'Enterprise-Class' drives. But two stars is still being nice.

Newegg made the return without hassle.

Seagate, Please - Do something about this.

Pros: I have 7 of these in a raid 6 and none of them have failed yet. All of them got to my house in working condition. Very reliable!

Cons: They haven't stopped working.

Pros: When it installs it seems to run fine.

Cons: I bought 3 of these, only 1 of which would format. I returned the 2 that did not format for 2 more which also did not format. So out of a total of 5 drives, only 1 was usable. In the end newegg refunded my money, but I wasted over a week trying to format 4 bad drives.

Pros: Fast, quiet. After failure, put it in the freezer for a couple hours and it'll revive just long enough to get your files off it.

Cons: Failed

Other Thoughts: Seagate's been building drives for how many years and they still can't get it right? Really?