SeagateBarracuda ST1000DM003, 1TB SATA 3.5" Internal Hard Disk Drive - (6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 64MB Cache)

These mechanical drives are on the way out it appears. You can inject it with SATA-III technology but mechanical drives are an old technology. However they still work well enough and are pretty reliable.I'll confess that I don't know a great deal about hard drives.. but I did manage to learn a thing or two while researching the reality of SATA-III performance of mechanical drives. See, I was running my win7 computer with a Fujitsu 2.5 notebook hard drive (SATA-II 7200rpm 320GB about 3 years old) connected to my computer using an external SATA enclosure which was powered from a usb port. USB 2.0 / eSATA HDD Enclosure For 2.5" SATA Hard Drive With "One Touch Button" Instant Backup In Gold Believe it or not, it worked flawlessly and as far as I know it's the only way to run win7 from an external drive. The windows index was a 5.8. Now you'd think with all the hype of SATA-III and it's claims of 6GB data transfer rates that this Seagate would at least peform greater than a 2.5" SATA-II notebook drive that was made 3 yeasr ago. Not so. The windows index rated it as 5.9 which I hear is the fastest index rate you can get from a mechanical drive. I don't see any performance increase at all. I just have more space than the 2.5" drive. Plus the drive got returned to the netbook I took it from.Oh well.. Not a big deal. It looks to me as though mechanical hard drive technology peaked about 4 years ago or maybe even longer. They keep re-inventing SATA technology and selling it in new drives as an improvement. It's not though. In the next couple of years they will vanish entirely from the face of the earth. The good new is, the price of 128GB SSD drives is dropping daily. I see them listed now for about £80. When the time comes, I'll simply turn this into a storage drive. I do think this Seagate is still a great value and I highly recommend it. If you've built yourself an amazing killer gaming system it's going to be your bottleneck. For most people though, it will perform as expected.

I have had this item for around a week now but only managed to get access to the full 3TB today.I bought this hard drive to put in a USB enclosure for data backup and I met some issues which I though I should share. On first connecting this hard drive via USB, my Windows 7 was only recognizing ~746GB. At first I was concerned the drive was faulty but being a PC techy I suspected it could be down to software/firmware of the caddy (Icy Box) as I have owned this for the last 6 years now. So I started searching the net.It seems that the limitation in storage can be the result of 2 things:1) In case the hard drive is connected via USB - The caddy is a bit old and with the current firmware, the USB-SATA bridge can only access storage of hard disks with ~2.2TB or less.2) In case the hard drive is connected directly in a PC - The Intel's Rapid Storage Technology Driver needs to upgraded 10.1 or newer. Following this link to see how - [...]Not knowing the above 2 scenarios I first updated the driver (as shown in number 2) thinking it would solve my problem. It didn't. Then I found it was due to the fact that I was connecting via USB and not SATA (as shown in number 1). I scoured the internet to find a firmware or driver update to solve my problem but could not find one.When I thought my only option was to buy a newer caddy which would recognize the full 3TB, I noticed my ICY BOX has also a SATA output at the rear together with the USB. So I thought, what would happen if I had to bypass the USB-SATA bridge and connect via SATA directly? So I ordered a SATA to e-SATA cable from amazon so I could connect my caddy via SATA as I was blessed that my laptop has an e-SATA input.I got the cable today and hey presto! As soon as I connected the cable I could access the full 3TB! I was delighted as I did not need to send the hard drive back!Please note that for this option, one would also need to upgrade the Intel's Rapid Storage Technology Driver since now the laptop is recognizing the drive as being connected via SATA and not USB!Unfortunately, if you have tried to connect the drive via an old USB enclosure, met this limitation and could not find a firmware update for your caddy nor have a SATA output from your caddy, then you would need to buy a new enclosure.Sorry for the lengthy review but tried to go in as much detail as possible. Hope this helps someone ease some headaches I went through!With regards to packaging, it was very well wrapped in bubble wrap and 2 carton boxes and was safe crossing the continent to another country. In the meantime I am really happy with my Seagate (my 3rd one now) on the first day and would say it is extremely silent and fast! Hope it stays that way!

Decent hard drive for the price and capacity. Have this running as a secondary hard drive in PC for multimedia and games storage. Had this running for over a month now and no issues, would recommend testing on arrival for a few days though (copy random files, run SMART self tests, zero fill / wipe drive) before storing any important information.Like:Speed - Transfer speeds are pretty decent, maxes out at around 110-115MB/s.Noise - I was fairly surprised at how quiet this drive is, occasionally hear it spin up every now and then but other than that whisper quiet! (PC sits on desk about 2 feet away)Dislike:Nothing so far! - I know some people dislike using Seagate HDD but I can honestly say I've never had any problem with them, have used several WD's, Toshiba, Seagate failure rate has been around the same between them all. Will update should it fail within the next 12 months.Would recommend overall