Product Description

Seagate Barracuda (ST3500630AS) 500GB SATA300 7200RPM Hard Drive The Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 desktop hard drive features innovative perpendicular recording technology and is the first drive on the market to provide capacities up to 750 GB. Barracuda 7200.10 hard drives deliver superb performance, efficiency, speed and durability for all your application needs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #450 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Seagate
• Model: ST3500630AS
• Dimensions: 1.02" h x 4.00" w x 5.79" l,
• CPU: Intel Celeron 0 MHz
• Memory: 0MB DRAM
• Hard Disk: 500GB
• Processors: 1

Features

• CAPACITY - 500G
• SATA 3Gb/s
• 16M CACHE
• 7200 RPM
• 3.5"

Customer Reviews

A great drive undone by Amazon's negligent packaging
As noted in other reviews this is a bare drive, wrapped only in a thin plastic anti-static bag. In stark contrast to every other hard drive that I have ordered over the Internet, Amazon provides almost no protective packaging for the drive in shipment.

When I opened the package from Amazon, tossed on my front porch by the UPS driver, I noticed a few air-packs on top of the drive and ABSOLUTELY NO PROTECTION BETWEEN THE BOTTOM OF THE DRIVE AND THE BOTTOM OF THE BOX. In other words, the bare drive was placed in the box, a few air-packs were placed on top, and the package was shipped.

It is worth adding that Seagate will void the drive's 5-year warranty if "the drive experiences shock in excess of 350 Gs." How much is 350Gs? I am not sure, but I assume dropping the drive qualifies.

What this means is that Amazon's shipping practice for bare drives may void the warranty. The drive may not fail right away, but when it does, Seagate may not replace it if Seagate determines that the drive was dropped.

Until Amazon changes their packaging practices, I don't plan on buying any more bare drives from Amazon.

Update: October 15, 2008
Amazon exchanged the drive that had been poorly packed for one that was much more sensibly and protectively packaged -- double-boxed with the inner box resembling the retail box, where the drive is suspended and cradled at both ends by shock-absorbing plastic.

Drive works fine
Currently being used in my ReadyNAS which hosts all our company data as a raid drive.

A great drive...with a lot of noise
This drive has been working great for the month I've had it so far. But, as other reviewers have noted...this drive can be noisy. At first, I didn't have this problem when I had the drive in my USB enclosure. However, when I put the hard drive in my Dell machine, I had to mount the drive on its side...and that's when I heard the noise. You can hear the data accesses...even with the side of the case on. Thankfully, I usually have some music on in the background so it's not very noticable.

Overall, it's been a great drive; however, I'd recommend trying to mount the drive flat instead of on its side.