Seagate BarraCuda 7200.11 ST3500620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: If drive has newest firmware, it works well and no problems. Fast and quiet.

Cons: Seagate actually made a mistake and released the firmware update that broke these drives last year. Later firmware fix took care of all problems.

Overall Review: I previously wrote a bad review because I have had several of these fail. I bought 4 of these drives last year, 3 of them failed. The failures all had the Jan 2009 firmware that Seagate released to fix a previous problem. Seems there was a problem with this firmware and eventually bios will quit reporting the drive, as happened in my case. The refurb drives with the Jan 2009 firmware only had a 90 day warranty. Seagate rushed a fix for the buggy firmware, but in my case it was too late. My fourth drive from Oct 2009 has the newest firmware and is still going strong after 11 months with no errors and no problems. I decided to order another one of these drives. It came about two weeks ago in a box that UPS had obviously played box soccer with it. I was going to call UPS and refuse the package, but decided to check it. Unbelievable, the drive worked with no problems and passed all diagnostics after being abused, dropped and kicked by UPS.

Pros: price looked good

Cons: didn't work. lots of clicking and intermittent recognition by pc. Tried copying to it for backup under windows to no avail. Tried installing Ubuntu and would not be recognized by the software long enough to go through the installation process.

Overall Review: should have tried it out before refund policy expired. Recertified in this case just meant repackaged. :-(

Pros: Very inexpensive

Cons: I put 4 of these in a RAID5 array and two of them failed immediately after migrating my data to them, before I had a chance to set up my backups. Lost all data, including my 4 virtual machines, including my website and domain controller. Who loses 2 drives at once?

Overall Review: Newegg covered the RMA without any trouble at all, including shipping costs. Newegg continues to be the best in the industry due to great service like this.

Pros: Bought 4 of these. Runs cool, low noise. Running 24/7 for twenty one days in a raid 5 external drive. No problems.

Cons: None

Overall Review: Go on take a chance, you won't be sorry!

Pros: Inexpensive. Good storage capacity vs. price.

Cons: 2 out 4 drives have failed or were DOA. S-L-O-W access times and transfer rates.

Overall Review: Buy something else.

Pros: I've have 4 of these (with this model no.). They all work excellent. The recertified drive I just bought a month ago works excellent. Recertified means its been factory tested and works excellent. Why would you think that "recertified" is a way of pushing defective drives, (that wouldn't work out at all for the manufacturer in the long run, and would be illegal).

Cons: None!

Overall Review: I'm very happy with this purchase and I wouldn't think twice about buying another one.

Pros: Bought 2 and both were worked great, one died after 2 years which is not bad and the other is still going. Gave it a 4 egg review because I have older WD that are still runnning.

Cons: None, mechanical HDDs can fail and 1 failed after 2 years, not bad.

Pros: none

Cons: Started clicking after 1 year. granted this was refurbished, I wasn't expecting the S.M.A.R.T fail that soon. I will be sticking with WD from her on out.

Overall Review: it should have been cheaper