Seagate ST3500641A-RK Barracuda 500 GB Ultra ATA/100 3.5-Inch Internal Hard Drive

Amazon Customer Reviews

(3 out of 5)

Drive is really ST3500630A.

My plan was to buy a large drive to backup up my computers and store it in a safety deposit box. After reviewing the unhappy user reports of the newer perpendicular technology disks, I decided to go with the older tried and true technology. The Seagate website lists the current three generations of this size disk: 7200.9, 7200.10 and 7200.11. Generations 10 and 11 are the new perpendicular storage technology.

The particular part number I ordered, ST3500641A, is listed on the Seagate website as the 500GB 7200.9 generation. The part number on the retail box that I received is the same. However, the disk inside lists its part number as ST3500630A. When installed, the disk itself reports its part number as ST3500630A. The Seagate website indicates that this is the 7200.10 generation disk which has different specifications than the 7200.9.

Sadly, what I got is the least desired disk of the three. If I had no other choice but the perpendicular storage generations, it would be better to get the second generation of the perpendicular storage technology: the 7200.11 disk.

(5 out of 5)

Seagate Barracuda 500 GB

Product is quiet, fast and a great deal. I would highly recommend it.

(2 out of 5)

Great disappointment, inferior product and lousy customer support

I bought thru amazon this Seagate ST3500641A-RK 500Gb drive, but less than a week after I installed it in my winXp pro system, it crashed the system during a simple drive to drive copy procedure. Concerned, I ran a disk utility program, HDDlifePro-2.9.105, and the health and performance were rated at 47%. Speedfan, another HD health check program, confirmed these readings via an online evaluation. While the drive is still reported as healthy, it is not yet a month old, and I have many other disks several years old at 90% or over health and performance ratings. Health later rose to 51% but how can a BRAND NEW DRIVE fall to HALF its health nearly out of the box?

I contacted Seagate support, and a reply took weeks, asking me to run again their mediocre utitility scan, which merely reports it as healthy without percentile numbers, and they labeled the issue as SOLVED. Great for them.

I had copied 350gb of data to this disk, so I am loath to return it, specially since they may say that 51% is still healthy and I should accept it at that. But really, this is the second Seagate drive that has given me problems, while drives for Western Digital and other brands always performed fine. So Seagate may have the hype but not the delivery. I will never buy from the again.

J. Rapalo

(5 out of 5)

Smart choice for NAS Drive

A perfect mate for the ADS NAS drive.

The 750 GB version exceeds the limit of the NAS Drive, though Seagate kindly advises that the ADS NAS drive could probably take a 600 GB or maybe even a 640 GB HDD, but not a 750.

Mine works very well.

(5 out of 5)

Not used for traditional purposes

I purchased this with the hopes that I could use it with USBExtreme to rip all my PS2 games to a HD to help 'clean up' my "man's room" so that they're not 60 PS2 game boxes out in the open. It first didn't work after spending many many hours ripping all the PS2 games to the HD. I took a week off and re-read the instructions and realized I needed to format it twice (once using the mgmnt tools in XP, the second time w/a file from USBExtreme). After I did this it WORKED! Mind you, since it didn't work the first time that doesn't mean anything was wrong with the drive - it was 'user error'. So as far as using it IN a computer for backing-up data etc - I have no comment - but for ripping PS2 games on a drive this size using USBExtreme - it works.