Seagate Barracuda 500GB 3.5 SATA HDD 7200 32MB

To be fair, in my experience using this drive for nearly 1.5 years, it has performed quite well. I have used it as a Windows OS drive running software which is not incredibly write-intensive which is reportedly a weakness of an HDD like this. It has performed well for my purposes, so I have nothing to complain about usage-wise. This HDD uses SMR (shingled magnetic recording) technology to record data to its platters. This technology allows HDDs to be built at higher capacities with fewer platters making them cheaper. What makes write speeds in this drive slower is that it must rewrite multiple tracks just to update as little as a single sector on disk. Such write operations can get pretty lengthy and complicated when lots of random writes are being performed which ... MoreTo be fair, in my experience using this drive for nearly 1.5 years, it has performed quite well. I have used it as a Windows OS drive running software which is not incredibly write-intensive which is reportedly a weakness of an HDD like this. It has performed well for my purposes, so I have nothing to complain about usage-wise. This HDD uses SMR (shingled magnetic recording) technology to record data to its platters. This technology allows HDDs to be built at higher capacities with fewer platters making them cheaper. What makes write speeds in this drive slower is that it must rewrite multiple tracks just to update as little as a single sector on disk. Such write operations can get pretty lengthy and complicated when lots of random writes are being performed which is why the drive needs 256 MB of cache memory (plus other measures) to mitigate the performance impact. But even that is not enough in some applications, especially certain RAID configurations used in some NAS and enterprise systems which got Western Digital in trouble in 2019. While Seagate didn't at first disclose the use of SMR in some of its drives, at least it didn't promote any particular series of drives using SMR technology for use in such configurations. I suppose, given my experience running an SMR drive as a Windows OS drive, I might buy one again for the same purpose; but it does still irk me; like it has irked so many others as shown by ridiculously popular reviews dumping on, ripping, destroying SMR drives; that such a technology was not disclosed early on in better detail to help customers make an educated decision on what they needed to buy in order to avoid setbacks caused by crippling performance issues in certain applications. The Barracuda line of drives is intended for typical desktop applications and storage. It is not intended for extremely random-write-intensive applications like large databases and sophisticated RAID configurations. For such high-performance applications, look to the Barracuda Pros and the IronWolf lines which all use good, ol' conventional recording methods. Sure, they cost a bit more, but you get what you pay for.

I Think the pros says it all, but I could add that since I tested these outside of a case, on mounts that have foam rubber edges to protect the drives from vibration, that while I was reading from one of these and writing to another, I felt very little vibration, so I have to say these are finely crafted drives. It has 7 platters after all with each platter holding approx 1.75TB, and spinning 7 platters @ 7200RPMs with almost no vibration is quite an accomplishment. Using Win7 and a fresh boot to make sure nothing was happening in the background that I didn't know about, I copied about 200GB of data from one to the other and the end write speed was 220MB/s. Edit: I wrote lots of data to these drives, I found they write around 200-210MB/s mid disk, and around 190MB/s ... MoreI Think the pros says it all, but I could add that since I tested these outside of a case, on mounts that have foam rubber edges to protect the drives from vibration, that while I was reading from one of these and writing to another, I felt very little vibration, so I have to say these are finely crafted drives. It has 7 platters after all with each platter holding approx 1.75TB, and spinning 7 platters @ 7200RPMs with almost no vibration is quite an accomplishment. Using Win7 and a fresh boot to make sure nothing was happening in the background that I didn't know about, I copied about 200GB of data from one to the other and the end write speed was 220MB/s. Edit: I wrote lots of data to these drives, I found they write around 200-210MB/s mid disk, and around 190MB/s towards the end (drive being almost full) with files from 1GB - 4GB. I LOVE these drives. 5 yr. warranty puts the icing on the cake. This is a no-brainer purchase @ < $350 USD for those who need the drive space. As far as people making any comments about there not being 12TB on the drive. I can't say what I think of people who don't do any research before making a review on a product, which has consequences, but I can say they don't know how to look at detailed information. They also don't understand that Microsoft should have NEVER programmed a dialog box that shows a rough approximation for the amount of space on a disk, or the size of a data file. So, EVERY manufacturer of storage, of ANY kind lists capacity based on numbers that humans work with, which is the decimal number system, also referred to as base10. You have the characters 0 - 9, and it's the number system you learned as a child and have used all your life. This value is a REAL representation of the amount of storage on whatever media it is you purchase. Now, if you're smart and know how to use Windows, you can go to the properties of this hard drive, and you see TWO, count them, TWO different numbers. One is a rough value and the other is a REAL value. The rough value shows 10.9TB, the REAL value shows 12,000,002,306,048 bytes, and that's what both my drives show. I read that number at 12 trillion, 2 million, 306 thousand and 48. Or to use computer and other tech language for numbers, I read that as 12 terabytes, 2 megabytes, 306 kilobytes and 48 bytes. Rounding off that number, I get 12 terabytes, which is EXACTLY what this drive is advertised to be. I could go into why Microsoft should have NEVER included a rough approximation of media based on binary bits, where computer scientists decided at some point that since the binary (base2, where the only characters are 0 and1) bit positions represent starting at bit0: 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048, etc...., with each next significant digit doubling in value, that they would call 1024 - 1K. 1K (1024) is the number you have when binary bit 10 = 1 and all the other bits = 0. It is also the number of combinations you have with 10 binary digits to make numbers, 0 – 1023 in decimal, or in hexadecimal, 000 – 3FF, or in binary, 00,0000,0000 – 11,1111,1111 (grouped in 4 to read easily in HEX). This is an interpretation that should have stayed in the field of computer science, computer engineering and digital logic and never left that field to the common user of computers, which is what happened because MICROSOFT didn't think about the consequences of showing that value, which is only useful if you work on computers, which requires an understanding of binary and hexadecimal math, or work as a computer engineer. Actually to work on computers today you don't have to know anything about hex or binary math, because it's simply a matter of swapping out components, but in the old days, when a CPU wasn't on a single die, packaged as one component, but instead a CPU was made up of many ICs or going back even further, discrete components, so to fix a computer you have to partially be a computer engineer. I know this because I worked on 1950s and 1960s computers, along with other electronics. To say this another way, in the field of computer science they can use terminology that best suits them, and if they want to call the value 1024 1K, it's their right. Outside of that world, 1 Kilo = 1000. What is never true in real values is that 1000 = 1024. As you can see those numbers are different. We should all know that 1000 = 1000, and 1000 cannot equal any other number, not even 1024. Leave the computer terms to those who work in the field, you should continue using numbers that the rest of the world understands. I hope this explanation is helpful, and explains why us human beings should use numbers that the typical human understands, and why Microsoft is mostly to blame for this misunderstanding. BTW factory math = decimal math. 1000 = 1000. I can't imagine working in a factory where I have to use math, and 1000=1024. Puzzled

Works great so far. I got an external dock to connect this drive to my laptop, and it transfers files just fine. It's fast and it was easy to set up. I didn't really know how to format it, but a quick google search helped with that. Before I bought this drive I had a conversation with someone from support about if the drive would work in an external dock. I don't remember his name, but he was amazing and helped me iron out how it would be done. All in all, and amazing experience and I will definitely be shopping with Seagate again!