Question 1

What is the rotation speed of this Seagate 4TB HD? 7200?

Accepted Answer

5400 rpm

Question 2

I didn't receive any •Interface cable, power adapter, mounting screws, and CD with software and manual* so I don't have way to connect this hard drive to my computer. So why didn't I receive anything but a bare replacement hard drive when I ordered this drive?

Accepted Answer

Notice in the description it says "Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive".  That last part.  "Bare Drive".  That's what it means.  just the drive.  You basically buy these to replace an existing drive.  Therefore, you use the screws, power, and SATA data cable from the old drive.

There are "Retail Package" drives that include data copy software or other ways to get the data from the old drive to the new one.  That's what you want to purchase.  They come in the cardboard retail box with all those kinds of instructions.  Bare Drives are for hobbyists or system builders who know how to format a drive and install Windows on it.

Hope that helps.  By the way, the power adapter is already inside your computer (there are usually a few empty ones coming from the power supply), you need a standard SATA data cable to connect to your motherboard (most motherboards have 4 connector ports, so you should have 1 or 2 unused ports, but you still need a cable), and the screws...well, most of us hobbyists have jars filled to overflowing the all the different screws we need.  But if you are adding this to an existing system, try taking 2 screws from your existing drive so you have 2 holding each drive in place.

Good luck!

Question 3

how many rpm is this? my son wants a min of 7200 rpm.

Accepted Answer

The spindle speed listed on the overview is 5900rpm which is great for a 4TB secondary storage drive. I wouldn't use such a large drive for a primary OS drive, you'll run into a lot of issues with the setup and such a waste to burn it out from continuous use. Use a 1 to 2TB drive with 7200rpm for the primary and this as secondary storage. This way when the primary burns up you can just swap the secondary out into another system with all the stored files.

Question 4

I have a acer ax1420g-u5832 and I would like to know if this hard drive would work in my desktop computer?

Accepted Answer

Yes, it should work fine.  That PC has SATA hard drive connections and the Seagate is a SATA 6.0 drive.

Question 5

This is probably a dumb question, but will this hard drive fit in any desk top, or do I need to look for a specific size? The hard drive that came out of my computer was recycled, so I can't compare or measure.

Accepted Answer

It's a standard size for desktop computers, will fit any desktop computer ever made.  That's for the physical form factor.

As for the interface:
The interface is SATA (serial ATA).  This standard has been around for about 10 years.  Before that it was Parallel ATA (PATA, or simply ATA back then).  If your desktop computer is older than 10 years, then don't get this drive, get a new computer.

PATA is the very wide ribbon cable, 20 or 24 pins .  SATA is the very narrow (6 pins maybe) ribbon cable.  This drive uses the narrow ribbon cable.

Question 6

Will this drive work as a primary drive for a new build does any thing special have to be done with it ?

Accepted Answer

In order to use a drive larger than 2 TB, you will need an operating system that can partition and format that drive. Windows 7, Vista, Windows XP (64-bit), Mac OSX 10.4.x (Tiger), Mac OSX 10.5.x (Leopard), Mac OSX 10.6.x (Snow Leopard), and Mac OSX 10.7.x (Lion) all have this capability through the GUID Partitioning Table (GPT). The GUID partitioning scheme has the ability to partition both internal and external drives far beyond 2 TB's in size.

It may be easier to use a 2TB drive for a new operating system build.

Question 7

is this really worth the money for the price? and should I be concerned about reliability?

Accepted Answer

Not sure how to answer that.  I bought 4 of them, and use them in two NAS devices set up in RAID 1.  They have been great performers, and no complaints, and certainly fast enough for what I use them for (video streaming).  Hope that helps.

Question 8

Will this go with a e-machine computer?

Accepted Answer

Its standard sata so yes.  Getting it to boot from a 4 tb is ofter more work than its worth but for storage it will work fine. Make sure you have a free hdd bay,  I. E. Somewhere to put it as some oem computers have limited expandability. Also you may need to buy a sata cable if you don't have one lying around.

Question 9

Hi, I bought this Seagate Desktop HDD bit didn't come with any documentation or cables for turning it into an internal hard drive??
Please help

Accepted Answer

I saw there were 5 SATA sockets on the Mother Board. Am also upgrading the processor AMD Phenom 9950 QuadCore and the main memory to 2-channel 16GB. Just wondering about bios holding up. How do check if the Bios is compatible with new processor?

Question 10

I'm curious to know if anybody has any real experience with these newer Seagate drives?  I'm sure most people have already seen BackBlaze's long term reliability on previous Seagate models primarily the 1.5-3TB drives have been notoriously unreliable.  However their recent reports state that Seagate's 4TB specifically ST4000DM000 model version as their most common version they use and far more reliable than previous smaller models or discontinued  models.  Also some interesting factor is that they have 34,000+ of the ST4000DM000 HD with a failure rate of a decently low 2.54%.  Its still not as low as HGST, but the Seagate is a fair bit cheaper usually.  Though there is a sale going on with the HGST for same size HD, I'm not sure if its worth the extra coin to go with a HGST, or save some money and get the Seagate that seems to have improved their reliability.

Though this is the exact same Seagate model that BackBlaze is using, the HGST Deskstar that is on sale isn't exactly the same, rather it seems the Backblaze comparisons were with Ultrastars, but I've been told they're almost the same.  Save some money? Spend more on HGST?

Accepted Answer

Short answer: get the least expensive brand name drive. These are commodity items, not long term investments. Always follow rule of 3 for backup.

Long answer: I never used and of the Seagate 1.5-3TB drives but I have 10 ST4000DM000 used between 2 NAS devices and a PC.  Hard drives incur the most wear during spin up. Back blaze drives are probably rarely turned off and thus do not spin up as often as home users. My one NAS runs 24x7 and is set to sleep when not in use.  The 2nd NAS is powered up once a week to mirror the 1st NAS.  My PC is turned on only when needed.  The 10 drives have not failed yet in 1-2yrs of use.

Questions & Answers