Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB $61 FS

These drives are fantastic. Their speed is comparable to the Spinpoints and even some of the last-gen raptors.

I think I will pick up one or two. Too much porn, dontcha know. :D
 
This is a steal. Looked at all the fine print and I didn't see anything that indicates refurbished. gotta wonder what they have in store for Black Friday. 1tb drive for $90?
 
kadozer said:
This is a steal. Looked at all the fine print and I didn't see anything that indicates refurbished. gotta wonder what they have in store for Black Friday. 1tb drive for $90?
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Yea, I bet they will drop to around 7-8 cents per gigabyte, but only for a short time. If you need a hard drive, just get one.
 
i wonder if there is any of those buy.com coupons floating around somwhere.
 
Is it just me, or wouldn't it be better paying the little extra for a WD 640GB's? They are $75 shipped, really quiet and fast as heck. Reliability on them is excellent thus far.

It seems that Seagate has been in the dumps latley in terms of reliability. I've had clients/friends with a few failed Seagate 1.5TB and 640GB drives, but it could be just these two particular models having problems.

Granted, 7200.11 line is one of the only ones fully taking advantage of NCQ, and if your just going to use them for storage it should be fine. For system drive I'd personally pay extra for the WD 640GB.
 
Are these 500's suffering from the same issues the 1.5TB drives are?

Mine has a SMART errors, haven't used it in a way to see if the freeze up is happening though.
 
I have this exact drive and it just dumped on me. BTW, deal appears to be dead; when I click the link it's $71, so the WD at the egg is cheaper and the 640 is well within range. I put a 640 WD in to replace this one....:mad:
 
I've seen SEVERAL of these 7200.11 drives arrive DOA from Newegg, and several more die a short time after being put into service. I love Seagate but I'm quite close to forming the opinion that the 7200.11 line is suffering from some kind of rampant defect - be it in design or in the facility they are assembling the drives in. Whatever the case something has changed in terms of reliability and durability between the 7200.10 and 7200.11 drives and I urge those thinking about making the purchase to consider other similarly priced options.

I highly recommend the Western Digital 640GB AAKS drives, or their new 'Black Edition' counterpart with the larger 32MB cache. Either drive is relatively inexpensive and delivers some impressive results.
 
i have had 2 of these in separate systems for about 1 year now. they match or better the 74gb 8mb raptors in every way except for access. quiet, and fast. and for loading levels and/or large files the 32mb cache cant be beat. the only drives better than these are the wd re3 drives (not around much yet) or possibly the wd black series.
 
ZzBloopzZ said:
Is it just me, or wouldn't it be better paying the little extra for a WD 640GB's? They are $75 shipped, really quiet and fast as heck. Reliability on them is excellent thus far.

It seems that Seagate has been in the dumps latley in terms of reliability. I've had clients/friends with a few failed Seagate 1.5TB and 640GB drives, but it could be just these two particular models having problems.

Granted, 7200.11 line is one of the only ones fully taking advantage of NCQ, and if your just going to use them for storage it should be fine. For system drive I'd personally pay extra for the WD 640GB.
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+1

For a few bucks extra, not only do you get 140GB more space (theoretically), you get a solid, fast drive. I was, and still am, a fan of Seagate but I've shied away from the 7200.11 series as the reliability seems to have gone downhill. Not sure if that's a result of Seagate buying Maxtor, Newegg's sometimes questionable packaging, or something else.

I say go with the WD 640GB; I'd much rather spend a few dollars more to get extra space and peace of mind.
 
Blue Falcon said:
I've seen SEVERAL of these 7200.11 drives arrive DOA from Newegg, and several more die a short time after being put into service. I love Seagate but I'm quite close to forming the opinion that the 7200.11 line is suffering from some kind of rampant defect - be it in design or in the facility they are assembling the drives in. Whatever the case something has changed in terms of reliability and durability between the 7200.10 and 7200.11 drives and I urge those thinking about making the purchase to consider other similarly priced options.

I highly recommend the Western Digital 640GB AAKS drives, or their new 'Black Edition' counterpart with the larger 32MB cache. Either drive is relatively inexpensive and delivers some impressive results.
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If you can provide a reasonably priced link to the 640GB Black, I'd appreciate it. The fact is that with newer games, the 32MB cache on these Seagates makes a significant difference in performance versus 16MB.
 
Stiletto said:
If you can provide a reasonably priced link to the 640GB Black, I'd appreciate it. The fact is that with newer games, the 32MB cache on these Seagates makes a significant difference in performance versus 16MB.
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

Same drive as the infamous AAKS, just with 32MB cache instead of 16MB as well as a "dual processor" logic board that's supposed to provide enhanced throughput.

Info straight from WD: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=551
 
Stiletto said:
Eh, the problem with 85 bucks for 640GB is that it's uncomfortably close to 100, which will be getting a terabyte soon.
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Mondo space or high performance, a lot of times you can't have them both... I'm betting that the $100 1TB drive you're bucking for won't have the performance characteristics of the WD Caviar Black or even the 16MB cache version.

But maybe Newegg will have a sale, you never know. ;)
 
xX_Jack_Carver_Xx said:
Are these 500's suffering from the same issues the 1.5TB drives are?

Mine has a SMART errors, haven't used it in a way to see if the freeze up is happening though.
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Try DFT, Hitachi's drive test utility. It is the best hard drive testing app out there IMO... and free. Works with all brand drives, both IDE and SATA.

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Grab the ISO, and always do Advanced test, not quick. It takes a while to perform but accurate. If you get a red screen then google up DFT codes and it will tell you what the error is. Green scree and your good to go. :c)
 
That Black Edition 640 GB Western Digital has a 5 year warranty on it. That is where most of the increase in price is coming from. I'd like to seem some benches on the 16 MB 1 processor vs 32 MB 2 processor drives.
 
Blue Falcon said:
I highly recommend the Western Digital 640GB AAKS drives, or their new 'Black Edition' counterpart with the larger 32MB cache.
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OMG... I did not know they had a black edition out now. That's sweet.

I like the "black" naming scheme. Kind of like the CLK AMG Black... I want both. :c(
 
imyourzero said:
+1
Not sure if that's a result of Seagate buying Maxtor, Newegg's sometimes questionable packaging, or something else.
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It's not just newegg. People ordering from ZZF/Amazon also have been having issues. ZipZoomFly has amazing packaging too... it's the drives.
 
Blue Falcon said:
Mondo space or high performance, a lot of times you can't have them both... I'm betting that the $100 1TB drive you're bucking for won't have the performance characteristics of the WD Caviar Black or even the 16MB cache version.

But maybe Newegg will have a sale, you never know. ;)
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The 640 16MB Caviars were beaten by the 500GB Seagate 32MBs in various tests, including my own. My guess would be is that the 1TB Seagates of the same type will have the same performance advantage. Whether they do over the black is something I'd be interested in, but if they're at least comparable, then 105 for 1TB over 85 for 640GB is the overriding issue.

I understand some people have had problems, but I have 5 of the 500GB drives advertised in this thread, and they've given me no problems. Might I ask if you've gotten them from Newegg? I've gotten mine from ZipZoomFly, and as I recall, Newegg is horrible at shipping hard drives. Might be more due to the Egg's tendency to wrap the thing in brown paper and stick it in a box with no bubble wrap or shell.
 
I have the 640gb version, very fast and silent drive. HDtune results for those interested:
33863369mt4.jpg
 
i need to dive into a 1TB for ~$100 deal. theyre all over the place for $120, but surely we will see many of them for $100 this christmas...
 
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