bit-tech Shopping: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB Hard Drive

Rating: 2

Time with product: 18 Months

Strengths: Cheap to buy

Weaknesses: Very high failure rate

Summary: I've had 6 out of 8 drives fail in less than 2 years.The first failure was after 1 month.Warranty service is spotty. Better to not expect good service than to be disappointed when you don't get it.

Rating: 2

Time with product: 2 Months

Strengths: None

Weaknesses: Dead after a few weeks, Bad customer service.

Summary: I had the drive for a couple weeks and the performance was very bad, after a few weeks of use the drive just stop responding. Its a well know issue. SEARCH THE INTERNET ABOUT THIS DRIVE! Their return policy is terrible and customer service is even worse. Its like Seagate is trying to tell me that it is my fault for buying a Seagate drive. They sold me a piece of crap and their reaction almost sounded like they are saying "oh well too bad, you should have known better. Now deal with it!"I will never buy Seagate crap again.

Rating: 10

Time with product: 2 Months

Strengths: 5 Year warranty, decent performance, rather low heat, 1TB of space.

Weaknesses: Energy could be lower (the WD GP's still hold crown for this)... that's about it.

Summary: This drive is a great buy for anyone who needs a lot of storage space and want to feel comfortable with the warranty that is provided. EVERYONE who has a drive like this should always be using it in conjunction with some backup system. To store all your data on a big drive like this without any form of backup is just asking for it. I use 6 of these drives in my home for my UnRaid Media Server... they work GREAT!!

Rating: 10

Time with product: 12 Weeks

Strengths: This drive comes with the 5-Year Warranty. A reliable drive you can count on. The SATA II interface and large cache (32MB) provide great transfer speed.

Weaknesses: The only weakness I can think of is that it is a little bit costly per GB than those small size ones in the market.

Summary: To get the SATA II interface working, you have to remove the jumper before installing the drive. Refer to page 20 of Seagate's manual at http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/desktop/Barracuda 7200.11/100452348b.pdf I have had several Seagate drives and really like them. For the Barracuda 7200.11 SATA line, I am using ST3500320AS (500GB) as a main drive and now this 1TB drive serves as video storage.

Rating: 8

Time with product: 1 Month

Strengths: Great capacity; decent price; good RMA system; 5-year warranty

Weaknesses: Shaky quality; gets hot

Summary: I bought four of these for my Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ NAS device. Unfortunately, one of the four was bad! It made a very loud clicking noise upon insertion, and was really slow. Kind of disappointing to have to deal with an RMA out of the box, but at least Seagate support was good. They shipped me a replacement drive via FedEx ground within 2-days of receiving my defective drive (their center is in Texas). I did have to pay for shipping my drive to them, which was kind of a bummer. The replacement (and the original three) have been working great for the last month. They are relatively quiet and perform fast enough for my NAS box. They do get hot, hovering around 40 degrees Celcius, but that is with so-so airflow.Overall, I'm happy with my purchase. The five-year warranty is good, but I hope I don't have to use it again!