Seagate BarraCuda 7200.12 ST3500413AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Works as expected. Cheap, got even cheaper in a combo deal with a DVD drive.

Cons: Came somewhat poorly packaged. Lots of room to move around in its box.

Overall Review: Too bad I couldn't afford a SSD.

Pros: Single platter design optimizes speed while reducing moving parts, which in theory should lead to better reliability and a longer life. 7200 rpm and half a terabyte for $40.

Cons: None

Overall Review: It doesnt make much sense to buy a 500 GB drive for $40, when you can get 2 TB for $70 nowadays, but sometimes you just dont need all that space. I bought this drive as the operating system drive for my Windows Home Server. You shouldn't store your data on the same drive as the operating system, plus, I have a RAID5 setup, so I didnt want to expose it to a small drive, so this drive is connected straight to the motherboard and bypasses the RAID array. 500 GB is still way more than I need for a server operating system drive, but the drive works well. As I mentioned above, the single platter design should lead to a more reliable drive, but only time will tell.

Pros: Great price for the size and it's Sata3 if that really matters...

Cons: I bought this drive for a new system build. In Windows 7 installation, the drive would disappear when attempting to create a partition or format it. In many attempts to run through the Win7 install, the drive would only be recognized about 1/4 of the time even though it showed up in the bios. Connecting the drive would also make booting spotty, sometimes it would hang at the start and not even allow entering bios. I tried gparted to create a partition. It successfully partitioned and then gparted also reported no drives detected. Back in Windows 7 installation the drive wouldn't show up any more.

Overall Review: Taking the drive out and putting in my old SATA 160gb Seagate Barracuda completely solved all problems. The system will boot no problem and the old drive showed up in Windows 7 installation. After installing Win7 on the old drive, I tried connecting the new drive again to see if I could format it in Windows. Again, booting became spotty. It took a couple of tries to get into windows. In windows the drive again didn't show up as an option in the formatting tool. In this whole process I tried multiple SATA ports on the motherboard, all with the same results.

Pros: Pretty fast when comparing price to speed and capacity. Doesn't score very high on windows 7. Only a 5.8-5.9. I don't know what it is with seagate drives, but you can always seem to hear them. I've had three other drives from other manufacturers and they are completely silent, but not these babies.

Cons: First one tested with 14MB of bad sectors about a week after I got it. RMAed it and the new one tested clean. Has ran better and faster than the bad one though. 16MB cache is kind of a draw back compared to the better 32MB-64MB cache drives.

Overall Review: Think I will go with a bigger cache and size next time, maybe a 1.5TB or 2 TB.

Pros: It works. I don't hear any noises. Seems to be pretty fast. Win7 installed quickly on these drives.

Cons: I cant stick them under my car and make it hoover.

Overall Review: Hardrives typicaly work or dont work. Make noise or dont make noise. I own 3 seagates now and I haven't had any problems. It seems many manufactors are having hd issues these days from all the feed back im seeing. I purchased two and have them in a Raid0 configuration.

Pros: I am not a Seagate fan, but the priced seemed right. Bought 2 of these and set them up in a RAID 0 configuration and they ran real good!

Cons: One of the two drives died after one day during some burn in testing I performed. I am not taking off any eggs on this, because its the luck of the draw with any manufactures equipment. NewEgg rocks and has been prompt in processing my RMA, so no complaints other than having to wait a couple more days for the replacement drive.

Pros: It makes virtually zero noise and has had no issues at all. It was a tad too expensive but considering the floods, it was understandable.

Cons: None that I can think of

Overall Review: Biostar Ta990fxe mobo AMD Phenom II X4 975 CPU Sapphire Hd 6870 GPU Gskill Ripjaws 4x2GB 1600mhz OCZ Fatal1ty 550W PSU Seagate Barracuda 500GB HDD Asus Black DVD Rom drive NZXT M59 Case Antec Tri-cool 120mm x3

Pros: 2 in service on my machine for a year. No problems.

Cons: None in my shop.