★★★★★Worked great for a few days and then..... I got a replacement...
The OEM drive showed up and S.M.A.R.T. testing proved it was a brand new drive with 0 hours of operation. Plugged it into the server and rebuilt my RAID array and everything was working fine for about 3-4 days then the drive turned off and was ejected from the RAID configuration. I attempted to bring the drive back online and it failed again.
I realize drives can fail, I was just surprised that an Enterprise Grade drive failed so fast with <100 hours in operation.
UPDATE:
The return / replacement process with Amazon & WPIIUSA was extremely smooth and very fast, I dropped off the broken drive at a local Khols and received a new drive within a couple days of reporting the issue with the original; so far everything appears to be working as expected.
I knew going into the purchase that the drive itself seemed to have a higher than normal failure rate but honestly didn't believe it until I experienced it for myself. The quick response received on the replacement was a great testament to these guys and their want to provide amazing customer service
Additionally the company WPIIUSA.COM offers a 5year warranty of the product purchased though them, so it's a no brainer for me. I'll be shopping here again.
Sam · 2022-08-01 · via amazon
★★★★★Much consumer research ultimately drove me to this hard drive as a replacement for my Windows 7 OS.
Performance and true value considerations
After much online research about storage upgrades and considering my current older motherboard, CPU and RAM requirements, I chose this hard drive's performance for running my Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium Operating System. It's definitely worth spending more on 128 MB cache and 7200 RPM spin therefore future-proofing the PC system with having more storage capacity.
Workaround considerations for legacy technology
The bonus was doing research online to discover Seagate has partnered with Acronis in developing a FREE workaround solution for allowing the large capacity hard drives to break the 2 TB barrier in older systems running a BIOS that only reads the MBR (Master Boot Record) or as my BIOS labels as 'RAID' protocol; unlike newer BIOS systems that use the UEFI protocol, a requirement if you plan on using SDD or SDD-HD hybrid storage.
Noise considerations
I read that some owners complained of this hard drive being noisy or loud. I however did not hear anything out of the ordinary when compared to my older 1-TB drives. I did have to replace the hard drive once which I blame the re-seller for not beefing up the internal packaging for shipment. It lasted less than a day and went dead. Interestingly enough when the drive died, it emitted a soft, faint, steady beeping tone much like a typical BIOS error code beeps on a motherboard when something is missing like RAM, video card or keyboard, etc. It also was cold to the touch since the platters no longer spun. Also the first hard drive was noticeably louder when accessing data so the chatter was more evident. When I replaced with the second drive, it was almost unheard. Now that I have a quiet, healthy drive, I have a comparison that may signal a foreseeable dead drive in the near future should the replacement drive create chatter in the future.
Cloning an outgrown hard drive considerations
To be sure that I will not have to replace the second drive anytime soon, I performed a low level format in Windows 7. It took over 12 hours to format the first half (1.99 TB of 4 TB partitioned on the drive and another 8 hours for the remaining 1.6 TB on the second partition. I wanted to make sure that every sector was good and it was. If not I would ship it back for a refund and go elsewhere. I also cloned the old outgrown C:\ drive to this one and that took another 4 hours but all in all, it was totally worth it. Not having to spend a week or two running Windows Updates is very liberating.
Thermal considerations
This drive ran warm under a load outside of my rig for two days of burn-in testing. No fans assisted in cooling while located in a large open area room in my basement with an average room temperature of 68 degrees F and 50% relative humidity. All I did was prop up the drive where air could vent all around and underneath it to allow radiant heat that it generated to ventilate. In this condition it consistently ran at 40 degrees C. Once I placed it inside my full factor tower, it now runs 27 degrees C situated behind a 20 mm fan with no other hard drives immediately stacked above or below in the same hard drive bay. This hard drive will climb another degree or two when under a heavy load. I think in part of the exterior 20 mm fan on the front side of the drive drawing cool air in, I also have a Corsair H-100 CPU cooler placed directly behind this hard drive which further draws in the air movement flowing over the drive. So having the radiator with a second 20 mm fan behind the drive has to further enhance cooling on the hardest working drive in my tower. In comparison, my two other 1 TB drives that also run 7200 RPMs run 22 and 23 degrees C respectively. Bottom line, more platters means more thermal radiant heat generated.
Size considerations
In terms of dimensions, will the drive is considered a 3.5 bare drive, the length is considerably longer in the drive bay so keep in mind you may have to consider your case's space. In my case, I had to move my CPU radiator and fan assembly back further over the motherboard to compensate for the added length and cable management for SATA and power on the rear of this drive.
Legacy motherboard SATA considerations
I'm running this hard drive with a Semlos PCI Sata Internal Ports Raid Controller Card (4-ports) Sil3114 Chipset and running a simple RAID 1 configuration. The read/seek times are comparable running a legacy SATA configuration so no complaints. Once I outgrow this PC in another 5 years this drive will be still running as a backup local storage in a new custom-built unit. Currently I find my boot-ups to be within a few seconds via the RAID card SATA port vs. the motherboard's SATA port. Plus I also have FULL access to the formatted partitioned 1.99 TB + 1.63 TB drives I created. I have already used 0.62 TB just in Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit and my required software programs to run video post production and digital audio workstation (DAW) for music compositions, recording, sequencing and mixing. So this leaves plenty of remaining space for mandatory software programs and updates (137 TB remaining).
A note about quality
I love the fact that Seagate stands behind this hard drive with a five year warranty. Downtime costs so much more in terms of dollars lost in production revenue and frustration. You really do get what you pay for.
travtek · 2015-04-11 · via amazon
★★★★★Works, but on rapid path towards failure
Will the drive fail fast enough to qualify for return? I don't know. My disk diagnostics showed the drive as having only fair health rating, fair performance rating, and running on the hot side of what you want for long-term life. Now, a few days later, the drive's health and performance have dropped to fair.
(By comparison, the Western Digital 4TB drive I bought at the same time is running like a champ, with healthy diagnostics all around.)
Seagate was once my go-to drive company. The Barracuda was a SCCI workhorse. Cheetahs were screaming fast. This SATA drive, though, seems to have low quality manufacturing. I am not impressed, and will not be looking to Seagate again until there's proof that they've changed their ways. Very unhappy with this purchase.
My main regret is that it isn't failing quickly enough, so I can get my money back through Amazon, instead of going through some prolonged warranty claim.
Amazon Customer · 2013-03-29 · via amazon
★★★★★Looks Good...but Wait!
Drives arrived and were secure as promised but there is one problem: no screws!
I'm adding these drives to a NAS and they need to be secured to a tray in order to be plugged into the NAS. Now I'm left with the task of finding screws to fit the drive holes so I can mount the drive. Unfortunate. If the seller had said "set of four securing screws at additional cost of $1" I would have added them. My error for thinking they were included with the drive.
Happy Teacher · 2022-07-22 · via amazon
★★★★★Seagate 4TB Enterprise edition HDD
I read some of the reviews about receiving old used drives so was bit worried.
Received drive in plain box.
Inside the drive was in sealed anti static bag and had proper mounts to keep it in center of the box.
I then went and installed the Hard drive in PC and after doing base configuration and setup to add the HDD to my system I ran CrystalDisc to check whether the HDD indicates usage
It showed that the HDD has been started up 2 times which is the amount of times I started up the PC with the drive
And had not yet reached 1 hour running time.
I have now used the drive for couple of days and it runs great
No issues to report and drive is quite quick for normal HDD
