Smooth Sailing With Seagate!
Written: Oct 02 '07 (Updated Oct 02 '07)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Easy installation and setup, quiet, reliable and fast operation.
Cons: One of the included cables could've been a bit longer, but it still worked.
The Bottom Line: I highly recommend this 500GB hard drive for its easy installation, fast speed, and reliability.
|
|
|
| flashfriday's Full Review: Seagate ST3500641NS 500GB SATA/300 7200RPM 16MB Ha... |
I bought a new computer and decided to take the plunge and install a second hard drive. I settled on the Seagate SATA 300/500GB/16MB/7200RPM hard drive after considering the following factors.
First of all, the price of the Seagate hard drive was among the lowest and comparable to a similar Western Digital drive. I found it amazing that I could now purchase a 500GB hard drive for around $100. Second, I have had several friends who have owned Seagate hard drives and all of them told me that there were very reliable. I was a bit skeptical, however, since the Western Digital drives tend to get more positive reviews. Another factor that weighed in my decision was the fact that it had to be easy to install since this would be my first attempt at installing a hard drive. All of the reviews regarding the Seagate seemed to indicate that installation and setup were a breeze. Finally, I made sure that I purchased a 7200RPM drive with a 16MB cache which seems to be the best standard out there right now.
I will now briefly describe my experience with installing and setting up the Seagate 500GB/16MB/7200RPM hard drive. Although I have installed RAM, power supplies, PCI cards, and drives, this was my very first hard drive installation so I made sure to follow the directions to the letter. The instructions that came with the Seagate hard drive were clear and well written. I was able to follow along step by step. First I opened the case, then I easily slipped the Seagate drive into the open drive enclosure. I screwed it in with the included four screws and it felt very secure. I plugged it into the power supply and attached the SATA cable to the motherboard. I closed up the computer and booted up the machine. The Vista platform immediately recognized the Seagate drive and proceeded to set up the drive using the included installation disk. During the setup process, I decided to make this second hard drive a logical drive. I was expecting it to take some time to format, but to my surprise it was all ready to go. The entire installation process from start to finish was around 20 minutes.
From my research, I learned that the newer SATA drives are much easier to install and setup as compared to the older IDE drives. I guess you no longer need to worry about the slave/master settings.
Once installation was complete, it was now time to test out my new hard drive. During boot up, there is a very brief and quiet noise as the new drive spins up. It is very nominal and was expected. After this initial brief spin up, the drive is whisper quiet. The actual storage amount for my new hard drive was 465GB which was about what I expected. I filled up my hard drive with around 300GB of home videos and the drive performed flawlessly. I opened up a 24GB video into Adobe Premiere and I was pleased with the speed with which it loaded from the hard drive. With my older computer, it seemed to take forever for the file to load.
I have now had the Seagate 500GB hard drive installed for around 3 months and it is still running smoothly with no issues to report. I encourage anyone that is contemplating installing a second hard drive to take a close look at the Seagate drives for their ease of installation. Even a novice should be able to install this hard drive.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
flashfriday
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Location: Corona, CA
Reviews written: 94
Trusted by: 125 members
About Me:
Becoming a father has enriched my life to no end.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.