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This product is sourced from the open market in the best available condition.
Barracuda ES is a new family of high-capacity enterprise drives, providing 50 percent more storage space than comparable drives in the same system form factor. Barracuda ES drive leverage unparalleled Seagate enterprise technology to deliver the industry's highest 7200-RPM reliability for 24x7 business-critical applications.
Pros: Faster than my SATA-I Seagate 250gb 7200.8 (at least in formatting and installs). Enough space to work well as an OS and backup drive. No seeking noise at all from what I can tell over 2 quiet 120mm fans, a 120x38 Sanyo Denki (using a rheostat controller), and a quiet 92mm fan and minimal vibration. It's quick, and I don't have to deal with the noise I've experienced with a certain competitor's drives in the recent past. The drive is running a boot sector scan at 38C max behind a low-rpm 120mm fan in a 72F room at the moment. Probably overkill for a desktop machine but it was only a few bucks more than the non-enterprise model. Great warranty as well. No bad sectors found and no issues with installation on known-good hardware.
Cons: None so far. If it suddenly fails I'll be RMA-ing and posting a new review here, but everything seems fine on this end currently.
Overall Review: I was originally going to buy a 500gb Seagate drive for the extra storage, but as many of the recent reviews for those drives have been mixed I decided to wait it out for the time being. Can't complain about this one though. I was introduced to Seagate drives four years ago when I inherited an OEM Compaq box with an 80gig 7200.7. That drive is still running flawlessly and I hope I can expect the same performance out of this one.