You'll spend the $20 saved on this drive in shipping it back for the RMA.

#1, what would you recommend? A WD instead of this?

#1: only the Seagate 7200.11 hard drives had problems with high failure rates. You should be ok with Seagate's 7200.12 drives.

On the other hand, there is a 640GB WD drive on sale for the same price right now, so it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to buy this drive.

i purchased this exact drive about a month ago for the same price. its a good deal for the money. plus this drive is the thinner model. its nice to see technology catching up to the times.

Is this not the one with a single 500gb platter ?

ZZF has a 1TB Hitachi for $70AR. It has the new 3-platter drives that run faster and cooler than previous generation 4 and 5 platter drives.


http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10009440
I run the Hitachi and the seagate with no problem.
Hope that helps #2!

Blah blah blah, Seagate failure rate, blah, buy WD, blah, no it's only a problem on the 7200.113493b models, blah, warranty only 3 years, blah, this was $1.73 cheaper the third Thursday of February if you drove across state lines to avoid paying sales tax because it was a waxing moon, blah, This will be worth about $3 in a year, blah, so will my mom, blah...

Sorry #7.... this is just the way discussions go at Ben's Bargains, and we happen to enjoy it. We air it all out and hope someone finds helpful information.

#7 nails every HD discussion lately. Tired of it too.

Sorry to hear about my mother farm person. Hope she can cure foot in mouth disease. Both the Seagate and Hitachi drives are fine as the others have said. I know because I have them.

On the other hand, this is another POS posting from Ben because this price for 500G is no bargain at all. Much more for less elsewhere. Flame Ben for posting this self-serving stuff.

YANBFB

I've switched from Seagate to the WD Black (5yr wty), because I sent so many Seagates back over the last 3 years.

Seagate will send you a refurbished drive for the RMA, even if your drive was 10 minutes old. I wasn't always like that, though, I used to get a new drive back from them a few years ago, and one time they sent the next size up. They've gone downhill in their consumer-level drives. I'll wait and see about the .12 drives, thanks very much.

I still think the ES series Seagates are fine, and I use them for some applications.

Oddly enough, all my WD drives are still cruising along, though their older SATA drives seem to run hotter than the Seagates. (Yeah, I've heard people say all the same stuff about WD.)

It's only a matter of time for any drive, but Seagate lost me after nearly a dozen returns of .9, .10, .11 drives.

Thanks for the great find #6.

I got this a few weeks back, its a good drive.