Joined on 02/22/04
Affordable Storage
Pros: Four platter drive with a solid, well built, appearance. Retail packaging, the sturdy box with plastic inserts cradling the drive helps absorb the shock of home delivery. Basic in box inclusions, mount screws, SATA cable, molex to SATA power adapter. Very quiet operation. Saved $35 and got free shipping with a daily promo code, so keep your eyes open for savings.
Cons: The SATA cable could have been a little longer and had snap connectors. I suppose everything else was good considering the price for this drive.
Overall Review: I ran a pass of badblocks on the drive upon delivery, verifying working order. Before partitioning, I ran a read/write benchmark using linux's disk utility. Minimum Read Rate: 71.9 MB/s Maximum Read Rate: 205.1 MB/s Average Read Rate: 142.5 MB/s Minimum Write Rate: 59.3 MB/s Maximum Write Rate: 155.3 MB/s Average Write Rate: 114.9 MB/s Average Access Time: 16.8ms
Requires Firmware Update
Pros: Still in the packaging waiting for a firmware update. None to report.
Cons: This model is listed as a drive currently affected by the potential to "stop being detected by the host system while powered on" bug in the firmware. You must file a support ticket to get the firmware update, and then question whether or not the drive is anymore reliable afterwards. Newegg shipping did a sloppy job on the bubble wrap, only three sides were protect adequately.
Overall Review: http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931
Great Media
Pros: Burnt the whole spindle backing up DVD9 movies. Not a single coaster. Great media. Made in Singapore.
Cons: Premium product with premium price. Promo codes?
Best Value Nov 2012
Pros: Ivy Bridge architecture, 22nm fabrication, low-power consumption, quad core with hyper-threading. Stomps absolutely everything else in the Intel price range. Basically an i7, minus the iGPU, for an i5 price. Mind blowingly fast in x264 video encoding work loads where hyper-threading is full utilized and all logical processors approach full load for duration of task.
Cons: Comes with a probably decent stock cooler but I don't have any use for it, let Intel keep it and knock another $20 off the price!
Overall Review: Works perfectly with ASRock P67 Extreme4 Gen3 (B3) on 2.10 firmware; 8GB (2x4GB) G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3-1600; Nvidia 9800GT; on Fedora 16.
Great Drive
Pros: Very quiet operation. Have used with Verbatim DVD+R SL and DL discs to backup video dvds, backups have played flawlessly.
Cons: Nothing really, except that Sony will be shutting down Optiarc production in March 2013. Start hoarding these great drives for later.
Overall Review: Re: 'Frustrated Tech' view the features tab or google the model you would see that the price difference for this drive is due to it being designed as an archival grade burner. Stabilization anti-vibration and stable burn rate features, as well as DVD+R DL overburn 8.7GB > 8.5GB makes this drive very valuable.
Performs as expected.
Pros: Worked flawlessly with ASRock P67 Extreme4 Gen3 motherboard. Good price point. Looks good.
Cons: Not red enough.
Overall Review: It's ram. It works. No DOA product.