Seagate 500GB Serial ATA/300 16MB Buffer ST3500641AS-RK - Retail Hard Drive Kit

[Buckshot]

Link

 

[xtremeskier97]

The WD5000AAKS at newegg is the same price.

 

[Rumpltzer]

Originally posted by: xtremeskier97
The WD5000AAKS at newegg is the same price.

Yeah, I was looking at that last night. ZZF and Newegg both have the WD500AAKS for $110 and free shipping. They're both bare drives (not the retail kit). After experiencing the noise of the Seagate with Vista's constant indexing of the drive for two months, I think I'm going to try out the Western Digital.

In fact, I'm going to buy two and set up RAID1. My Seagate 7200.10 died after only two months, and losing the data without a backup hurt a lot.


BTW, the Seagate 7200.9 bare drive is on sale at Newegg for $100 with free shipping if anyone is looking for the older model and doesn't need the retail kit.

 

[srock77]

Fry's has retail kit for $110 with all the trimmings and 5 yr warranty is certainly reassuring- I think WD is 3 yr - Losing a drive is horrible, but getting a new drive (usually a better replacement) is some consolation. I don't find drive noise much of a problem - With the case fans and the graphic card fans and the cpu fan - the drive noise is hardly a problem.

Link

Got a Maxtor 500 3 weeks ago, but with a one yr warranty, and didn't want to make it my boot drive for a new system (even though I've had good luck with Maxtor previously). In fact I've had good luck with seagate, and WD too.

Steve

 

[xtremeskier97]

OEM FTW! No need for retail.

 

[bgc99]

I think I would pay a few dollars extra for a retail kit just for the better packaging. Getting a drive shipped in the antistatic bag tossed in with a few styrofoam peanuts doesn't engender confidence.

When you look at the user comments for hard drives at most of the online vendors, you see many DOA reports. It would not surprise me if most of the DOA drives are that way because of the way bare drives are shipped, and wouldn't be that way if they were retail kits.

I've read that the WD warranty is 1yr for retail and 3yr for oem. To me this seems backward due to the shipping theory above.

BGC

 

[Buckshot]

I would take a retail box plus a 5 year warranty any day.

 

[i1135t]

I bought one of these drive from TigerDirect, the 16MB buffer, and am having problems with it. I installed it to my Sata connection and running it as my secondary 465GB HD through my NF7-S v2 board. I am running Windows XP Pro BTW. When I copy files to it from my main HD, a WSD raptor 76GB, the files come out with CRC and MD5 checksum errors. I think I may have gotten a bad HD, but I think I will be going with WD in the future if/when I get my refund.