Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500 GB Internal Hard Drive

Awesome drive and warranty

Strengths: 5-year warranty (longest in the industry), SATA-2 NCQ, Quiet

Weakness: SATA-2 mode not compatible with some Mac G5 systems (workaround available)

I've owned Western Digital, Maxtor, and Seagate drives, and I've stuck to Seagate drives for the last 6 years from the excellent experience I've had with them. The 5-year warranty is definitely a huge plus and mark of confidence from the manufacturer that these are the best drives in the industry. Not only that, they are perhaps the quietest operating drives in the industry. I use them...
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I've owned Western Digital, Maxtor, and Seagate drives, and I've stuck to Seagate drives for the last 6 years from the excellent experience I've had with them. The 5-year warranty is definitely a huge plus and mark of confidence from the manufacturer that these are the best drives in the industry. Not only that, they are perhaps the quietest operating drives in the industry. I use them exclusively in a studio environment.

The only drawback is that I ran into an incompatibility issue between a Power Mac G5 with a regular non SATA-2 controller. It did not recognize the drive at first. After some Googling and a call to Seagate, I was able to obtain a PC-based utility that would disable NCQ (Native Command Queueing) in the drive that is added in the SATA-2 spec. After disabling this feature through the PC-utility, I was able to install the drive back in the Power Mac G5 and use it as a regular SATA drive. The disabled feature can be re-enabled at a later time using the same PC-utility.

By tonytang - May 11, 2006

Awesome Capacity Drive

Strengths: Tons of storage space; 16MB Cache; SATAII; 300gbps; quiet; 5-year warranty

Weakness: Expensive; not preformatted; no cables or screws included

I have been a Seagate fan for about six-months now, previously using Western Digital. I have had one RMA with a drive, and it was fairly painless. In less than two weeks, they sent me a 400GB drive as a replacement for my 300GB drive! I just love the fact that they have a 5-year warranty! Indicates to me that they stand behind their product. I use this to host DVDs & MP3s that I have ripped, so...
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I have been a Seagate fan for about six-months now, previously using Western Digital. I have had one RMA with a drive, and it was fairly painless. In less than two weeks, they sent me a 400GB drive as a replacement for my 300GB drive! I just love the fact that they have a 5-year warranty! Indicates to me that they stand behind their product.

I use this to host DVDs & MP3s that I have ripped, so speed is not really an issue. While this unit comes with a 16mb cache & is 300gbps SATA, I have absolutely no idea whether it is giving me any performance advantage! I'm not a performance benchmarks kind of guy, so if you want to know that, read elsewhere! ;-) Perhaps if it was your main C: drive, the 16mb cache might make sense. It sits in an external enclosure, right on my desk, and its as quiet as can be! Only downside to this setup is that the drive does not come preformatted, so I had to install it in my system first, then format it, then put it in the enclosure. Perhaps the Seatools would have found the USB drive, but I didn't check that first...doh!

While you can buy two 300gb drive for less than this single drive, that would not have worked for my setup, so I had to pay more per GB. Usually the way it works for a single vs multiple drive configuration.

Since this is an OEM drive, it does not come with any cables or screws, so hopefully you power supply has SATA power connectors and you motherboard already has some SATA cables. If not, you'll have to pick these up.

By SDTechDeals - May 2, 2006

Exellent

Strengths: Alot faster than my original!

Weakness: I havent found one yet.

This product has went past my exspectations, my old hard drive is nothing comapred to this one, Its fast, no lockups, easy installation. I am able to store more than 3 times as much as my old one.

By Swedine - Oct 10, 2009

Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB SATA300 ST3500641AS

Testseek.com has collected 27 expert reviews for Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB SATA300 ST3500641AS and the average expert rating is 82 of 100. The average score reflects the expert community’s view on this product. Click below and use Testseek.com to see all ratings, product awards and conclusions.
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By testseek.com - Oct 31, 2008

Seagate wants it all these days....

Seagate wants it all these days. Barracuda 7200 desktop hard drives initially did not offer the capacities IBM, Maxtor and Western Digital offered, but they were quick and quiet . The 7200.8 started a race to catch up with the competition by going straight from 200 to 400 GB. Today, the latest 7200.9 generation increases capacities up to half a terabyte. However, its performance is commensurate...
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By tomshardware.com - Nov 30, -0001