Seagate 7200rpm 40GB 60$ shipped read why it's so good

[SimMike2]

I don't recommend Seagate OEM drives as Seagate will not handle the warranty work. They direct you back to the OEM dealer you bought it from. If the OEM dealer is out of business, or just doesn't want to help with the warranty work, guess what? You have an expensive paper-weight! Right now I have a six month old 80GB Barracuda IV which is dead. I am having real trouble getting through to Dell for warranty work. I am probably going to resort to regular US Mail since it is impossible to e-mail Dell without actually owning a Dell computer. Dell phone support also sucks, as you get put on hold forever and unless you actually have a Dell system, they treat you like a second class citizen.

If OEM warranty work is hard to get through Dell, I can't imagine trying to get it through the company listed in this hot deal.

 

[jhp612]

I have a cuda IV and was gonna buy another for RAID when I found out that its not good for raid. The reason why is because the cuda is so fast that it can not buffer the data fast enough therefore having to read data twice , hence the slow raid performance, the single drive is fine and buffer just great, when you do send in the hard drives to seagate i dont know what hapens but i wouldnt be suprised if you get a drive with a slower buffer, not worth it in my opinion, i would justkeep the drives as storage and pick up some maxtor fluid bearing for about 60 bucks each. just my 2 cents

 

[dakata24]

Originally posted by: SimMike2
I don't recommend Seagate OEM drives as Seagate will not handle the warranty work. They direct you back to the OEM dealer you bought it from. If the OEM dealer is out of business, or just doesn't want to help with the warranty work, guess what? You have an expensive paper-weight! Right now I have a six month old 80GB Barracuda IV which is dead. I am having real trouble getting through to Dell for warranty work. I am probably going to resort to regular US Mail since it is impossible to e-mail Dell without actually owning a Dell computer. Dell phone support also sucks, as you get put on hold forever and unless you actually have a Dell system, they treat you like a second class citizen.

If OEM warranty work is hard to get through Dell, I can't imagine trying to get it through the company listed in this hot deal.

really? i didnt know that.. i just had my 80gb seagate barracuda crap out on me.. ~6 months as well.. bought it as a bare drive at fry's for $120 AR.. i will now stay away from bare drives.. this has never happened to me before when purchasing retail boxed ones.. hmm. gotta find out about the warrenty stuff. my receipt says "3 yr seagate warrenty" and it shows up on seagates website when i enter the serial #..

 

[FreebieBoy]

my problem is that segate and maxtor always gives me problem for some reason.

 

[KF]

>I don't recommend Seagate OEM drives as Seagate will not handle the warranty work.
>They direct you back to the OEM dealer you bought it from.

Maybe you have a different idea of what OEM is. If the drive is rebranded as, say, Dell, I don't
think Seagate is going to warrant it. If it is an ordinary "white box" drive, I believe
Seagate warrants it, at least that is what it says in a lot of Internet store blubs.

I haven't bought many "full retail boxed" HDs and have had to return a bare drive once. It was
under 3 year warrantee from WD. No problem whatsoever.

Some big computer manufactures will buy a special spec HD to put in their computers. (They
also do this for video, sound, mobo, etc.) The deal between the computer maker and the HD
maker could be anything, and could exclude a warrantee from the HD maker, in return for a
price break. These drives are likely to have peculiar part numbers and serial numbers.

As far as I can tell Maxtor does not have any connection with Fujitsu at the present time, if
it ever did. Many years ago (like 2G HDs) Maxtor was on the brink and had a poor reputation
due to ever slipping quality. The company was turned around by large sums of money injected by
another company. It seem to me it was Fujitsu. Maxtor came out with a 5.1G drive, which was
way ahead of the IDE competitors for some time. Ever since, Maxtor has been putting out a HD
with a good rep.

The HD business is strange. Some of the important component parts are bought from
otherwise competing companies. IBM supposedly supplies the heads for all big drive manufacturers.
The platters may be contracted out to companies whose names may not be well known.
companies that may make them for other HD brands. The assembly for the mass market
is often done in Singapore, after the bugs are initially worked out in a plant elsewhere, possibly
in Amerca. The reason for this is that you cannot successfully compete unless you obtain the
highest tech parts, and somebody other than you is likely to own the patent.

 

[loudOne]

$65.00 now.

loudOne

 

[Calagar]

$79.00 now. Whats up with that? The price is going in the wrong direction.

 

[MonkeyK]

Originally posted by: uwannawhat
nugaluga is correct. Don't try to RAID a Seagate drive. There are a lot of problems with it.

I had heard this to, so I contacted Seagate before buying a couple of 80GB Cuda IVs from Dell. Here is the response:

Certain RAID controllers perform very well with Barracuda ATA IV drives;
one example is the 3ware 7850 Escalade. The Barracuda ATA IV is designed
for optimal performance in desktop systems. Its performance in random
access reads and writes is among the best in its class. However, the
performance of certain RAID controller products with Barracuda ATA IV
drives, in some RAID 0 applications where long sequential reads are the
norm, is less than ideal. Seagate is investigating a solution that would
improve the performance in RAID 0 on all RAID controllers while
maintaining optimal performance in desktop systems.
The issue can be overcome in some situations, by installing the drives on
separate channels or separate controllers. While this may not be feasible
in all situations, it is one method.

So the problem is only for raid 0 with certian controllers. Since I plan on using the drives in raid 1 with a 3Ware 7500-4, I went ahead and bought the drives ($87 each at the time )