Seagate BarraCuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: No problems with this drive. Purchased 2/27/10 That's almost 4 years, can't complain about that

Cons: None

Overall Review: I am going to replace this drive with a newer speedier WD of about the same size. I have all my games on this drive and they all run fine.Time to sell this Seagate or put in closet as another backup HD.

Pros: I bought another one since the original one I had was working so well. While my WD drives failed (first an internal, then an external), these Seagate drives seem to last!

Cons: None that I can think of!

Overall Review: AMD Phenom X4 2.2 GHz Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 4x2GB Seagate Barracude 7200.12 500 GB x2 XFX Geforce 8600 mobo Nvidia 9600 GSO 768 MB

Pros: Price.

Cons: Sketchy reliability. Not that fast. Other brand hard drives will blow it away as far as speed.

Overall Review: Using this as a boot drive on a new build. I usually use Samsung, and just found out that Samsung sold out to Seagate, so only time will tell if Seagate quality improves. Seems to be working ok for now but not my first choice for a boot drive in a new system.

Pros: HD Tune 2.55 test results: 128.6MB/sec maximum 102.2MB/sec average 63.1MB/sec minimum 15.3MS average access time 145MB/sec burst transfer rate 40C max while testing in passively cooled ULTRA WIZARD atx case This drive uses two 500GB platters for an insanely high arial density, resulting in a drive that performs almost on par with the newest RAPTOR drives in everything except seek times, at a very much lower cost. This drive is of the 7200.12 series, which is a different animal than has had the firmware problems, which SHOULD not plague this drive as well unless the maker flubbed up a whole new firmware for this different drive series.

Cons: None found so far.

Overall Review: I tested this drive with Windows 7 x64 beta build 7068, with a gigabyte EP43-UD3L (intel p43/ICH10 chipset) with an intel e1500 2.2GHz core 2 duo (which has 512KB L2 cache), and 4x2GB DDR2800 Kingston DIMMS. This drive performs beautifully and I am very glad I waited for the 7200.12 series 1TB drive to come out. The drive holds over 120MB/sec off-platter transfer rates past the 40GB mark on the drive, which is quite a nice feather in it's cap performance wise. It's a firecracker for the price, in my opinion!

Pros: Insanely fast for a spinning disk. High data density results in the fastest data TRANSFER speeds I've seen out of spinning media. They are NOT the fastest seek times ever. Seek times affect boot up a small amount but really are only a relevant factor when building a Database server. Average users will not notice a few milliseconds of seek time from one drive to another.

Cons: Shipping. 100% of the four bought locally with retail packaging are still in service with no issues. 2 of the 6 that were shipped failed. One within a week, the other 2 weeks. BOTH that failed had all the bubbles popped on one side of their wrap, and were on the edge of the shipping box. I can't fault new egg for their customer service but I CAN FAULT THEM for not shipping them better! Seagate says bubble wrap is not effective for a reason. Although bubble wrap protects to some degree from physical injury it does NOT adequately protect from impulse g-forces or "shock" incurred as the package is tossed/passed/field goal kicked by ups. Some of my UPS containers look like they did a tour in bosnia right after being used as a football for a rugby team. These REALLY need to be shipped in slotted foam that holds them secure and dampens shock impulses to protect them. Noisy drives, clunking, whirring, vibration, bad sectors new are ALL SIGNS OF SHIPPING INJURY NOT THE DRIVE!

Overall Review: Think about it, seagate at the end of their assembly has to spin up the drive to flash the firmware and check it's operation. I'm sure they don't go extreme with testing it, but i'm pretty sure every drive spins quietly without vibration or clunking at the factory. If the drive gets slammed around on it's way to you, the platter can be knocked off alignment and cause failure. The bearing hubs for hard drives on ALL MANUFACTURERS are pressed into position by an automated process to line it up with the arm and case. Slam them hard enough and the inertia of the disk/hub assembly will adjust this and cause minor issues (such as vibration, or read/write errors due to the head being far from the platter now) or serious ones because contact is made. Consider any hard drive you SHIP that is not in a RETAIL BOX a risk that shipping might damage it.

Pros: Twin 500GB platters and fantastic benchmarks on real world tasking. Using this drive as a scratch disk for Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Sony Vegas Pro 8. Write times are as good as any 1TB drive I have ever used. This drive makes NO noise. Honestly I can't hear it even with my ear close to the case with the side panels off. No clicking, no scratching, no humming. Quite surprised by this as I have used WD 1TB drives in the past that I could always hear. This drive should be a top choice for people wanting a fast and quiet computer. Heat lvls seem to be low during extended read/write sessions.

Cons: Access speed is a bit slower than 150gb and 300gb Raptors. But overall value (size vs speed) more than worth it. Going to buy another one of these Seagate drives next week.

Overall Review: System: Windows 7 RC1 Q6600 at 3.4ghz - 8GB GB ram - 4850 ATI - Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard - HTOmega Striker sound card - LianLi A05NB case.

Pros: Started off great, ran cool, ran fast, everything seemed nice.

Cons: Seemed nice, up until 8 months later. I rebooted my machine and accidently left an Ubuntu live DVD in my drive. Didn't think any of it until the Ubuntu desktop booted and a large red SMART screen came up stating I had several hundred bad sectors and I should immediately back up and replace the drive. Surprised to say the least, I quickly rebooted back into Vista to see. Vista made no outward notification of the bad sectors, but when I started digging through the eventviewer, sure enough. There were hundreds of "Bad Sector on disk..." errors. So I checked my other machine, bought a pair of these at the time, and it had nearly a hundred bad sector errors in the eventviewer. RMAing is equally frustrating. Seagate will only accept specific packing material, foam rubber lined packing. And each drive has to be shipped seperately...or I can just pay $20 per drive to have them send new drives and packing. Annoying that I have to spend $40 to replace them, maybe the new ones will w

Pros: These are some of the fastest drives you can buy, especially considering they're 7200RPM hard drives. No issues with firmware as with the Barracuda 11s, I had a bit of trouble with my 1.5TB B11 but that's solved now.

Cons: None to speak of.

Overall Review: Transfer Rate Minimum : 63.2 MB/sec Transfer Rate Maximum : 130.1 MB/sec Transfer Rate Average : 104.1 MB/sec Access Time : 15.6 ms Burst Rate : 127.3 MB/sec CPU Usage : 68.5% This is with HDtune, if I were to use a better format utility I know I could get better performance. Running 2 in RAID0, getting ~220MB/s read WITH the OS and 5-10 other programs running on it.