Barracuda ST1000DM003, 1TB SATA 3.5" Internal Hard Disk Drive - (6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 64MB Cache)

Seagate have been one of the few drive manufacturers that I have good luck with and I have to say this Barracuda still proves that. I've used it for nearly 6 months and the speeds are great, having seen average read/write speeds when copying hit about 155-160mb/s. It's quiet and doesn't provide a lot of vibration compared to my other WD drives. I've not had any SMART errors with the drive (as should be expected) and it has been thrashed with quite a few spin ups and some continuous 24/7 use for a couple of months on end while doing replications of one of my dedicated servers - more than average home use. So far so good and I'm pretty hopeful for Seagate's acquisition of Samsung - the last two drives I bought after the Samsung takeover (see my other review) have given stellar performance and reliability!

I have been running a Netgear Ready Nas duo v2 for the last 9 years continuously , with a pair of Seagate ST3000DM001 hard drives. I needed to replace one as it failed the other day. Before Buying I read up about recent NAS specific hard drives and the fact this particular model suffered a high degree of failures. In the end I decided that I wanted a matched pair of drives so it was simpler to just replace like for like. As I say I have had 9 years service out of the last one before it failed , it’s always been quiet and this replaced the old one without any fuss and seems to be working ok . time will tell how reliable it is but if it last another 9 years i will be happy. So Based on the old one lasting 9 years , reasonably good value and the fact its quiet I'im going to give it 5 stars.

Fast delivery, well packed, nice drive and good value for the size and speed and silent well built drive you get? Brought it for a brand new 64 bit verion AMD gaming version of PC which also will be used for 3D design work and media work? Can't tell you how great it is in the new PC as after receiving the new PC it had somewhere in it a fault which stopped me fro using it with this great 3TB drive which I know work ok as: I tested it in my older 32 bit xp home gaming PC and although it only showed up as a drive of 746.5 Gb because the 32 bit system is not upto reading any drive bigger than a 1.5 TB one so I been told? it still only showed as a 746.5 Gb size drive? But I just have to wait for the company which sent me the new 64 bit based AMD gaming PC to pick it up now I re boxed all the parts as they were when I got them? ( note here for you buyers > when you buy a item always if possible take photographs of the unpacking steps of the items you got using a digital camera like I do? that way if you need to send it back if it is faulty, you will be able to re-pack it as it came? ) Also another tip I tell you byers of tech, if the item works ok, always if you can carefully scan the user manual pages for it on a flatbed scanner into a folder named for it onto your PC and save a copy onto a usb memory pen too for later use in case you loose or damage the original manual? So just wait now for the replacemnt new 64 bit PC and I can use the 3TB drive at last? I recommend this seller totally as a great seller to use?

I have had this item for around a week now but only managed to get access to the full 3TB today. I bought this hard drive to put in a USB enclosure for data backup and I met some issues which I though I should share. On first connecting this hard drive via USB, my Windows 7 was only recognizing ~746GB. At first I was concerned the drive was faulty but being a PC techy I suspected it could be down to software/firmware of the caddy (Icy Box) as I have owned this for the last 6 years now. So I started searching the net. It seems that the limitation in storage can be the result of 2 things: 1) In case the hard drive is connected via USB - The caddy is a bit old and with the current firmware, the USB-SATA bridge can only access storage of hard disks with ~2.2TB or less. 2) In case the hard drive is connected directly in a PC - The Intel's Rapid Storage Technology Driver needs to upgraded 10.1 or newer. Following this link to see how - [...] Not knowing the above 2 scenarios I first updated the driver (as shown in number 2) thinking it would solve my problem. It didn't. Then I found it was due to the fact that I was connecting via USB and not SATA (as shown in number 1). I scoured the internet to find a firmware or driver update to solve my problem but could not find one. When I thought my only option was to buy a newer caddy which would recognize the full 3TB, I noticed my ICY BOX has also a SATA output at the rear together with the USB. So I thought, what would happen if I had to bypass the USB-SATA bridge and connect via SATA directly? So I ordered a SATA to e-SATA cable from amazon so I could connect my caddy via SATA as I was blessed that my laptop has an e-SATA input. I got the cable today and hey presto! As soon as I connected the cable I could access the full 3TB! I was delighted as I did not need to send the hard drive back! Please note that for this option, one would also need to upgrade the Intel's Rapid Storage Technology Driver since now the laptop is recognizing the drive as being connected via SATA and not USB! Unfortunately, if you have tried to connect the drive via an old USB enclosure, met this limitation and could not find a firmware update for your caddy nor have a SATA output from your caddy, then you would need to buy a new enclosure. Sorry for the lengthy review but tried to go in as much detail as possible. Hope this helps someone ease some headaches I went through! With regards to packaging, it was very well wrapped in bubble wrap and 2 carton boxes and was safe crossing the continent to another country. In the meantime I am really happy with my Seagate (my 3rd one now) on the first day and would say it is extremely silent and fast! Hope it stays that way!

After reading the many reviews of this and other Seagate models, it does seem to be a bit of a lottery as to whether or not you get a good one. Having said that, reviews are not statistically accurate, as they are written by people who have taken the time to do so, and they do not reflect all the sales of a particular item. So, with the knowledge that I could send it back to Amazon if it was no good, I bought one of these discs direct from Amazon (not through a third-party seller). It came in a sealed anti-static bag in its own foam-padded hard disc cardboard box, and then that box was in an Amazon box and surrounded by brown paper. Having received many hard discs over the years simply shipped in a foam-padded cardboard box (and they've been fine) I could say that the Amazon packaging was excessive, but I was happy to see that it arrived over-protected rather than under-protected. It had a sticker on it saying 'Made in China' which was a disappointment at first, as the reviews seem to say that the ones made in Thailand are better, but that's what turned up so I started to use it. I hooked it up to a PC and gave it a good seeing-to with HD Sentinel (with such a big hard disc it takes a LONG time!) and it passed 100%. I then I did the same with Scannerz (Mac OSX) and it passed those tests too with no problems. Only then was I prepared to fit it into my iMac and use it. As iMac users will know, replacing the HD isn't as easy as it is in a PC, and I didn't want to have to take it out again if it was faulty, once I'd fitted it. When I registered it on the Seagate website I was pleased to see that it had just over two years' warranty, which was what I expected from the small print in the listing (even though the useless Amazon details at the top of the listing said 12 months). It is almost silent in the iMac - the old one sounded like a bag of nails and was well on its way out (although it didn't come under the Apple recall for faulty HDs built around the same time) and it is much faster than the old HD. The old HD was a Seagate as well, but obviously had developed mechanical faults. I have been giving the new HD a good workout, synchronising it to other drives for backups and doing some sound editing on it, and it is working fine. It has been on every day for the past two weeks, starting and stopping each day, with no problems. I use the iMac most days so if any problems do occur I will update this review. In conclusion I can say I am very happy with this purchase of a Chinese-made Seagate HD, as well as the way it was packaged and delivered by Amazon.

I've purchased many hard drives over the years and have mostly stayed loyal to Samsung. I always prefer reliability and quietness over speed and their HDDs have delivered that promise without a single failure. Samsung 3.5 inch HDDs are hard to come by now and I don't like buying used hard drives, so I thought I'd give Western Digital a try in my recent PC build. Unfortunately, after less than a year, I've already had to swap one out. So that means I needed two 2TB hard drives and was looking at a different manufacturer this time around. I spotted this Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD and the price point was very attractive at around £50.00. I purchased two and they were delivered very quickly, so no complaints about that. The first drive was installed and formatted without a problem. The second drive was DOA (Dead On Arrival). I tried to recover the drive with the usual tools and even downloaded a Disk Recovery program from the Seagate website. The drive was beyond repair with a fatal I/O error. Amazon offered an immediate refund so I thought I had just been unlucky and ordered a replacement. The 3rd Seagate 2TB HDD arrived within a few days but was also DOA. Once again I tried to recover the drive but it also had a fatal I/O error. I decided to run a scan on the drive that did seem to work ok, only to find that had issues too! The first time I booted up the PC, the drive had "disappeared" entirely. The Windows 7 Disk Management program couldn't "see" the drive at all. I re-booted, and second time around the drive appeared in My Computer as normal. I won't have a drive that isn't reliable, so I sent that back too. So the final score is: Purchased 3 Seagate HDD drives. Returned 3 faulty Seagate HDD drives. I will not buy Seagate ever again. I did a bit of research on Google and my bad experience with Seagate is fairly common, with many users complaining about dead and failing drives. My advice, to anyone thinking about purchasing this drive, is to look elsewhere.

Brought 2 drives. Both arrived in one box and were wrapped up in plenty of bubble-wrap to secure them. Each drive was sealed in their original anti-static bags which was great. Installed as secondary drives and was visible in windows7 straight away. They are already formatted into to two partitions (2TB and 1TB) due to a 2TB limitation in MBR but in windows 7 you can go in to disk manager and reformat them to GPT (google it if you need instructions) and get the full 3,000GB on one drive. I needed 1 drive split in to two and the other split in to three which gave me 2 x 2.5TB & 3 x 1TB drives on windows explorer! The drives take a little while to start up from being parked but its not much of an inconvenience and they do make a sound which you have to expect from the speed and size they are after all. Some comments here about them making cases rattle loudly but this is a problem with the case not the drives - I can just about hear them when they spin up as everything including the drives are pretty much securely fitted in my case. You can always purchase dampners (rubber rings that you place between the drive and the case) to stop this they are only a couple of quid and can purchase them from Amazon too.

The drive's pretty decent. Performance is solid, and the price was excellent. But a couple of things have disappointed me. First, sometimes the drive can make random thudding noises even when idle. It's not deafening, I find them just about noticeable and they can be annoying. To be fair on Seagate, though, this is certainly not the noisiest drive I've ever come across. I'm just a little picky. A second issue has annoyed me more, though. When I looked up the drive on Seagate's own website this series was advertised as using 1TB platters - meaning this drive should have 2. Many of these drives - particularly ones that have gone out for review - do. But some (depending where they were manufactured) do not. Some of them use 3 666GB platters, and these drives are louder and slower. I drew the short straw and got the inferior 3 platter model. It's a pretty poor showing from Seagate that certain drives can be completely different but share the exact same model number. Not to say this drive is bad, but I could've got a better performing, quieter drive with the exact same model number, possibly from the exact same seller, if I'd simply been lucky. Bottom line: the drive will be a solid performer, and your mileage may vary, but some drives of this model are better than others.