Home > Consumer Reviews > Seagate OEM 500GB Barracuda 7200.12 Internal Hard Disk Drive (7200RPM, SATA, 16MB Cache)

Bought this to replace a Samsung Spinpoint SP1604N, which was chosen for its quietness and was mounted in a Silent Drive enclosure inside the PC, from QuietPC. The Seagate is slimmer than the Samsung, so didn't fit the Silent Drive enclosure, but direct mounting it inside the PC resulted in an even quieter drive than before. So I can recommended this type for anyone looking for a quiet drive.

It doesn't compromise the performance either - the Seagate measured 103 MB/s average read rate, compared to 51 MB/s which I had been getting from the Samsung via PATA using HD Tach 3.0.4.0, and burst rate is 116 MB/s compared to 93 MB/s from the Samsung.

The drive doesn't come with any extras at all, so you may well need to buy a SATA data lead and a SATA power lead if your power supply doesn't already have one, or a splitter/converter. You also need to find four mounting screws. The drive is capable of 1.5 GB/s transfer rate, by adding a jumper, which is not included, so defaults to 3 GB/s but my Asus A7N8X motherboard didn't complain when I attached it without adding a jumper.

I used Acronis True Image to copy over all three of my partitions in one go, which took about 40 minutes (160GB copied and 500GB formatted, all in one go) total, so I can also recommend that software.

I was short of space for films etc do I purchased this drive. It is installed in an external case. It was so esy to fit but more of a bind whenI tried to use it. How to format an external hard drive.After pondering a while I tried the internet. Easy once you know how.It took ages to format but it is a 500 gig after all. Its now fired up and works so well. To say I am pleased is an understatement.
If you buy one of these drives take advice from the internet on how to format. So wont regret it.

Trevor.

If you can change a light bulb you can instal a Seagate Internal Hard disk Drive. The removal and installation took just five minutes,then another ten minutes loading the system from my recovery disks. All up and running in less than half an hour. I was also very pleased with the cost of a much improved hard drive than the previous hard drive that I had.Seagate OEM 500GB Barracuda 7200.12 Internal Hard Disk Drive (7200RPM, SATA, 16MB Cache)

This is such good value as it's twice the size i really need as i also use an external 300GB hard drive which is already more than enough; but for the very reasonable price this extra internal HD space doesn't hurt and i have already partitioned it in preparation for a second OS. What really surprised me about it is that it is so quiet. Once i had got my head around the SATA connection, i feel that i can now appreciate it. I find that i have absolute confidence in its stability and quality. The postage and packing was fine; I couldn't have asked for better service!

An excellent hard drive, easy to install and set up thanks to Seagates Disk wizard, which can do all the copying and backing up of system files you require.
Very quiet,plus its built in guarantee - all in all I would recommend this hard drive