Seagate BarraCuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive HDD – 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM 256MB Cache – Frustration Free Packaging (ST2000DM008/ST2000DMZ08)

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I purchased three drives for data since they were on sale. There are lots of reviews here about documentation not giving them a step-by-step walkthrough on how to install these drives. Not bashing them or anything but as my title states please know what you are buying. This drive is completely blank and its like that for a reason. The reason there is no documentation on how to install it is because there are hundreds of different uses for it. The internet is a wonderful thing! For me though, everything worked great! Popped my drive into my hard drive enclosure loaded up disk management through windows formatted and there were no issues. As far as noise goes, its almost non-existent compared to my old 7200rpm WD blacks. Honestly cant even hear the ramp up. Speed is the thing that surprised me the most. Amazons store page states that the 4TB version has a sustained transfer rate of 190MB/s and I was actually achieving that. Usually, they push the numbers up a bit to look fancy but I was 180-190 through most of my transfers. The only reason I knocked off a point is because nowhere on the site does it actually mention the drive is SMR. As stated, you should know what you are buying, and not having that listed in the drives information/specs is kind of crummy. It literally takes two seconds to find it out on your own, but not being presented with all the important information about the drive is definitely an issue. Sorry I rambled...

Bought this to replace a ten year old 1tb hard drive that only just started failing in the past few weeks, and installation was a breeze, product came carefully packed and secured in a tiny, tiny box my cat loves to try and sit in, despite barely being able to get her rump and feet in it at the same time. Only, very minor, complaint is that the hard drive doesnt arrive pre-formatted, which I didnt realize initially, so you have to have a LITTLE knowledge or a guide on how to format a drive via your operating system. Once I got that done, I was able to start transferring data over no problem. Drive is fast enough for my purposes, which is mostly storing digital art files. Its a solid product thus far, will update if I encounter issues with it down the line.

Easy to install. Its quick to bring up files and quiet.

Very hesitant on Seagate but cheap and for original xbox. So far so good

I purchased the Seagate BarraCuda 8TB Internal Hard Drive HDD – 3.5 Inch Sata 6 Gb/s 5400 RPM 256MB Cache for my computer desktop PC and was happy with it until it died too soon. I only had about 5TB of data on it when it started to fail. I purchased it in June 2021 and it died in March 2023 (1 year, 9 months), which is a relatively short lifespan for a hard drive. Unfortunately, when it died, it did so very quickly, and I wasnt even able to backup all my data before it completely failed. However, I will say that it performed well until its untimely death. I had no issues with speed or data transfer during its time of use. Overall, I recommend this hard drive but with the caveat that it may not last as long as other drives on the market.

I store a lot of information on external drives. I used to use 1T drives, but now the price of 4T is about the same as I used to have top pay for the 1T. I have a Sabrent docking station that holds 4 drives, so I can synchronize backup drives, or just use more than one drive at a time. It is much better to use these bare drives in a docking station than to buy enclosed external drives, where you pay a fortune for a plastic cover! I have too much life to experience to know whether they are good for gaming or not. I expect probably not the best as they are, I think, about 5000 rpm rather than 7200. But plenty good for watching videos. At the time I bought these, they were by far the most cost efficient size.

I own two of these drives. First drive was- relatively- difficult to install for me. Ive owned or worked on a number of drives that are larger than 3tb and in Windows 10 at least, never ran in to the issue I had; drives can format in GPT or MBR and for some reason, both of mine decided they would detect as MBR instead of GPT (again, Windows has always known to use GPT in the past) which had me scratching my head until I learned that if you have a drive larger than 3tb, the system has to be told to use MBR instead of GPT. Again this was never anything I had to deal with before despite using drives larger than 3tb in the past. I suspect that Amazon and Seagate have probably had to deal with returns over this Im not sure what mechanism my other drives have used to prevent this but both my 6tb drives required that tweak. With that out of the way- even though the listing says NEW and my invoice/order details said new, I did end up getting a drive that was opened on my second order... and Amazon did the fulfilment too! Fortunately Amazon very quickly accepted a return and got me a new drive that had never been opened. The drives are pretty quiet, but that sort of comes at a price- they are pretty slow. I do not think youll be able to beat the price though, the value is there, the quietness is there, I can live with the slow speed. I will try and update my review later, if I have any issues. Update: Even though its only been a day since I wrote this review... this drive is SLOW. I maintain my position that this is still a 4 star product given the absurd per dollar storage, but, speed might be a consideration for you. As I had stated before, I have two of these drives purchased within a few weeks of each other. One was used to create a backup of all my older drives, and one is being used to replace all my older drives, then the first would be wiped and then used as a backup for the second. This means that I ended up having to do a few 4 tb (the sum of the data in my previous drives) writes. It took about 18 hours each time. Last night I did a virus scan- and system scans typically took about 4 hours with my previous drives. Last night- 7 hours. The total sum of the data that had to be read remained functionally the same- probably within 10 gb. I want to note too that- I shut down my computer for a few hours using start menu -> shut down, and when I booted this morning the newer of the two drives had an error that Windows had to fix during booting. I ended up spending about an hour on the computer doing normal tasks and then decided to see if the issue could be replicated. On a second boot, I did not get the error again. Cant imagine what I could have done to cause it though. The virus scan didnt claim it found anything so I do not believe it altered any files and it came from a cold boot after about 3 hours so I do not think heat was an issue- heat also probably not an issue because I have a mesh front case (Corsair 450D) with a pair of 140mm fans that push fresh air across drives in a room that is about 72 degrees. I hope that this information helps you make your decision. Again, I still maintain that this is an adequate value for the $140 spent on each drive- though I am certain you could get a better drive I doubt you could get one at this price point.

I got it DOA. The second power went to it, it sounded like a dying animal and the OS could not see it. Called the seller and they sent a new one that arrived the next day. So whats funny? They didnt want the dead one back! I could have been a scammer but we talked on the phone. They heard the scream of death and laughed. (Serial number matched a bad batch) If you need a sexy doorstop, let me know but the replacement is a monster

3.6GB