Are these any good or am I looking at hard drive that transforms into a really expensive paper weight after 6 months?

Nope. Been running 2 of these (one as my data drive, one as a backup) for about 6 months now. Fast and quiet. I've had no issues at all. I'd also check out the Newegg reviews.

The F1's still have an excellent 333GB/platter density, and therefore have very good performance. Yes, it is not as good as the 500GB/platter that recently came out, but there is still not a large increase in performance. To compare, look at a review of a 7200.12 from Seagate.

Cliff's notes: Yes, it's good.

#1: the seagate drives have been having lots of problems recently. These samsung drives have been working great. High performance, great prices. I'm running a 500gb one in my laptop right now.

#4 is BS. There was a firmware bug that has been corrected and can be fixed with a simple update. <$100 for a 1.5TB Seagate is a *much* better deal than this plus Seagate hardware reliabiity has been superb.

#3 makes sense. A higher platter density means that more data can be transferred in one revolution, providing the bus capacity will support that. That is why a dense 5400 rpm drive can be much faster than an older 7200 rpm, the rpm BS posted in various other places in this forum notwithstanding.

I paid $86 shipped with tax #4 for my 1.5 Seagates and they already had the fixed firmware

#3 does not know what he is talking about. This is for a desktop. Not a laptop dude. You r just BS.

#5 - Yes, the 1.5TB Seagate for <$100 was a much better deal, but we haven't seen that deal in a while, and most of us that tried to get it missed the brief window it was available.

Recommend: Get a screamer 350 [mb] drive for C:
and 2 1 TB's for bulky data (1 for data, 1 for backup), The 1 TB drives sit idle most of the time, and you get a lot more life out of them. Only have to replace the 350 when she goes.

Seagate continues to have issues with their big drives, despite #5's rousing support (work for Seagate, #5?).

The other issue being that they first stonewalled and then lied outright about their problems. That kind of sh!t has consequences, one of which is that you get called on it for a long time after the problem has gone away. And let's not get into the problem Seagates have with HEAT. It is not possible to find a drive that runs hotter than any Seagate over 500 gig. Just pathetic. The ONLY thing they had going for them for years was that 5 year warranty which they discontinued on OEM drives.

I have three 500 gig Samsungs here, one of which is hooked to an HD TiVo and has been running 24/7 for well over a year with no issues.

#10 you are nuts. FYI I am from MIT, former Bell Labs researcher, and tech consultant. If you want to shovel out BS about heat transfer, do the math or get a muzzle. Perhaps a proctologist can help you?

Every powered disk drive converts work into entropy, g heat. So what's new schmoo? Rather than post misinformation, try reading a book on elementary heat transfer (if you like I"ll look for one with cartoons to recommend to you). Let us know.

#11 danpi, you might be from MIT. Like other people have posted in this discussion, lately Seagate has some serious issues with their big drives. I have had two Seagate 750 and GB retail drives fail and they ran super hot. And the Samsung Spinpoint 750GB that I have has been running flawlessly for almost an year and does not get hot at all even after 2 days of continuos use. So in this case your MIT credentitals don't mean anything. So go read on the issues and then post.

Got one. Runs very quiet. Runs very cool. No vibration to speak of.

Happy with it.

#12- I have no Samsung drive and made no comment about any. My comments were only about the Seagate. Actually, I have several different recent Seagate models and the case temperatures vary with model. The MIT remark, reluctantly disclosed, was to rebut the foamy accusation that I work and/or worked for Seagate.

The "issues" with Seagate were only firmware. Drives don't die from firmware and this hiccup was easily fixed (wish you could say as much for MS Window's years of continuous updates!!!).

The recent 1.5 and 1.0TB 5-in Seagates run relatively cool. I have a 750 that *does* subjectively run appreciably hotter. However none of the Seagates I have owned ever failed and the 750G has been in use over a year. On the other hand I have a bunch of WD's that have died a soft death. Plus the WD cases are relatively "tinny."

I am no drive designer. However it is apparent that the internal mechanism temperatures and the outside case temperature can in principle be rather different. g, a drive could run cool on the outside and hot on the inside- although I can see no valid engineering reason to make it this way [unless to fool #10 into a subjective belief )].

Best regards,
danpi

Do not mind #7's retarded comments. I never said anything about this being a desktop or a laptop drive.

FWIW, a link to the newegg page for the 500GB 7200.12 drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148395

#7, 145 posts worth of mindless arguing? It must suck to be you. Even if you were actually trying to refute #4, compwiz, which I do applaud you for.

#16, yes I suppose if you pull the plug while the firmware is updating, on a drive, a cell phone, or even your bios, you can brick the device. I don't believe that the firmware from Seagate, without more, bricked a drive when instructions were followed, but I suppose Murphy is alive and well.

If you personally know of unhacked Seagate firmware bricking one of their drives during a proper burn, then I stand corrected or at least qualified. I don't argue with data, only when bs.

Cordially,
danpi

#17: yeah, not only was the original firmware causing drives to stop working permanently, the fix that Seagate put out, when applied, caused even more drives to stop working.

People in the data recovery industry have estimated that between 30-40% of Seagate's 7200.11 drives have now failed.

here's a couple articles on it:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/374/1050374/seagate-barracudas-7200-11-failing

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/530/1050530/seagate-bungles-firmware-update

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11672&Itemid=38

I doubt he's from MIT, more like SDSU. He claims to have several drives from seagate but not once does he claim to have the one in question, meaing the 7200.11.

I got a 1.5TB seagate hard drive during the 83 dollar deal from Dell and it had the SD1A firmware preinstalled. I'm already regretting the purchase. It takes about 2 seconds to access the drive after being idle and makes a loud click.

I've also owned a freeagent Go from seagate which started making a loud click and became a brick after 2 months... so go figure.

#17, pull your head out of your ass. The entire issue with Seagate is that their firmware caused massive hardware failure and irrecoverable data loss on a huge number of their drives. Their firmware bricked their drives, and their firmware update bricked drives that had no problems to begin with. Thanks for the post #18, but if #17 wasn't so busy being a complete retard, he/she could have done a 10 second Google search and found the truth on their own.

That being said, a lot of companies have issues with their products that they may or may not disclose. How long did it take Sony to disclose their rootkit issue? How about Microsoft's X-Box 360 red ring of death problems? If, every time a company lied or failed to disclose important information about their products, people boycotted that company forever, chances are they would never own a name-brand item again.