Seagate BarraCuda 7200.9 ST3250824AS 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: I used these two drives as a Raid (0) or (Striped) Sata I array. They are incredibly quiet even when writing and seeking information. I HIGHLY recommend these drives for anyone looking to get more performance out of their pc. My startup times were much quicker. You also get another 2 years warranty on these compared to some others brands for the same price.

Cons: NONE!!!! I wish I had SATA II connectors on my board to take full advantage of these drives. I only have SATA I and they stepped down perfectly.

Overall Review: AMD Athlon 64 2800+ OC to 2000MHZ 1GB Patriot PC3200 1TB HD Space GIGABYTE K8NS-Pro Socket 754

Pros: Decently performing drive... formatted capacity is right around 230GB. SATA I and II capable, by changing a jumper.

Cons: Drive is a bit noisy, but that's all.

Overall Review: If you have a SATA II (3.0) capable motherboard or controller, remove the jumper on the drive. The drive ships with a jumper limiting it to SATA I (1.5) speeds.

Pros: Great drive with warranty to boot! Own 6 Seagate SATA HDD's ordering two more to make a RAID-0 with 4/250's.

Cons: Keep them cool with good air flow. Lost only one out of 6 to an intermittent controller interface error which kept generating SATA log events. RMA'd,replaced,trouble cleared.

Overall Review: Great warranty support for 5 years. Like NewEgg service and RMA it's why I keep coming back for great service and pricing! They stand behind their products.

Pros: Very quiet, big, and relatively cheap. Have two running mirrored on a Promise controller.

Cons: Be sure your power supply is healthy. Drives appeared DOA until I realized my +12 was drooping. Everything else, including two other drives still worked fine.

Pros: Good warranty support, nice quiet drive, surprisingly doesn't get too hot.

Cons: Some problems when trying to use then with a 3ware SATA RAID controller. You will need to get a firmware update on the drive from Seagate, as well as if you use them on a SATA1.5, you WILL need to find jumpers and change the drive from SATA3.0Gb to 1.5Gb with instructions on the seagate site.

Pros: After seeing benchmarks at StorageReview.com, we purchased 2 of these for our 750 GB RAID5 at the office several months ago. Now it's time to cycle the remaining PATA drives out of the RAID and replace them with a couple more of these ones, so we're buying two more. I've had bad luck with hard drives of all brands, so I will probably stick with Seagate for their 5-year warranty. (Note the warranty does not provide peace of mind in case of a failure; it only means you can spend $10 shipping to replace the drive when it dies, rather than buying a drive outright.)

Cons: None so far. Anyone who complains about this not coming with cables shouldn't be buying OEM equipment in the first place.

Overall Review: Linux doesn't have very good support for SATA interfaces yet. We had to stick with the 2.4 kernel in order to install our Promise controller. Normal utilities for working with ATA drives won't work because SATA drives are treated as SCSI devices.

Pros: Big jump in speed from a PATA, quiet drive, large capacity for cheap $$$. With this drive Windows XP Home edition installed in about 20 minutes.

Cons: Yeah right.

Overall Review: Gotta get another one for my new system and toss out the old PATA 120 GB Seagate drive.

Pros: Lots of space, fast, inexpensive, _excellent_ warranty.

Cons: This is my second Barracuda disk, and unlike the first, this one has an unusually loud seek sound.

Overall Review: Despite the unsettling noise that it makes while seeking, it appears to be as healthy as my other Barracuda (via the SMART function of speedfan), and I have not been affected by any obvious I/O errors. Even if I ever do, I take comfort in the superb warranty. In the meantime, I just use it for backing up my CDs and DVDs for my home theater - I have no fear of permanently losing my data in the event of a catastrophic failure. However, the non-confidence-inspiring noise costs 1 egg from this review: I would not be comfortable using it as a solo system drive.