Read the 5 pages of support issues on this drive in Seagate's forums or the 30+ pages in Apple's forums (and note: this isn't an issue exclusive to Apple systems)... or read the reviews at Newegg... this drive has MAJOR reliability issues.
Don't believe all these 5 star reviews from people who reviewed the drive the day they installed it. It will run great when you first put it in.
But 15-60 days in you will start hearing clunking noises. Your system will start freezing for a second or two here or there. The drive's load cycle count will start to skyrocket (to the point that even under "normal" use the drive will fail within a year by Seagate's own numbers). If you're really unlucky, the drive will suddenly die.
Don't play russian roulette with your data. Don't fall for this drive's relatively low price or nice specs.
The most important spec in a hard drive is reliability. This one sucks. Seagate Momentus 7200.4 320 GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 16MB Cache 2.5 Inch Internal NB Hard Drive ST9320423AS-Bare Drive(Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging)
I am not going to say there is something wrong with these drives, because at the end of the day I'm only one guy with a bad experience. I'll just offer my review here so that people get a full perspective. I have had two of these fail on me in a row, failing offline SMART tests. When it was working, the drive was very fast and quiet, though, so I can certainly understand the high marks people give these drives when they work.
I think it is fair to say that Seagate is really running these at the ragged edge of what is possible. While the transfer rates can approach 90 Mb/s at the edge of the platter, according to a few quick tests I ran, the transfer rate fluctuates greatly, and the drive shows a pretty constant stream of software-corrected (ECC) errors. In other words, you're not losing data, but the data coming off the drive is on the border of what is readable, such that the drive needs to rely on error correction and/or rereads (hence the fluctuating speeds) to get the data off. I base these conclusions on the fact that tests of data on the inside of the platter (which has much less speed) are much more reliable (albeit slower).
If you do decide to get one of these, do yourself a favor and backup (which you should do anyways, because all hard drives are subject to fail at any time).
This particular drive was housed in my mid-2009 MacBook Pro, purchased directly from Apple and customized (3.06GHz processor, 500GB hard drive). I purchased the system on August 06, 2009.
On February 02, 2010, the hard drive suffered a complete failure. I was not informed what model of drive was in the system at the time of purchase, but when the Apple Store returned the failed drive to me so that I could try to extract data from it, I learned that it was this particular Seagate model. (And they replaced it with the EXACT SAME DRIVE. Meaning that I have to purchase a new drive of my own out of pocket, from a manufacturer of hard drives that hasn't ended up with critical drive failures every single time I have used one. And unfortunately, 7200RPM 500GB drives are not common.)
I cannot stress enough that you DO NOT PURCHASE THIS HARD DRIVE. It has known reliability issues and numerous reports of complete failures, and there is very little chance that any data recovery will be possible -- not even in prohibitively expensive clean room recovery situations. The drive frequently fails within six months of use. I currently have the failed drive in an enclosure and hooked up to a PC running Kernel for Macintosh in the hope of possibly recovering a tiny bit of data, but it's not looking good. If recovery fails absolutely, I will be opening the drive to examine the disk for known, common damage indicators (such as the 'death ring' around the spindle).
Tomorrow, I will be going out and purchasing a new drive to install myself. I will not have this happen again. Do not let positive reviews and excuses about this being a 'rare failure' lure you into purchasing this shoddy piece of equipment, known to be defective but still being distributed! This is one of the most unreliable hard drives I have ever had the displeasure of using. I have had bad luck in general with Seagate drives, even on external disks that are not being taxed by running an OS.
Reliability is key in a hard drive, and this drive does not measure up in the least. If you need a larger hard drive like I do, or at least one that spins at 7200RPM for those of us who run software that requires frequent data access, I recommend purchasing a lower capacity 7200RPM drive from another manufacturer (Hitachi and Western Digital have yet to fail me), plus a second internal drive and a separate enclosure to use as additional portable storage.
We can, of course, wait for Seagate to release a firmware update that fixes the problems with this drive. However, after months of silence on the matter, it's clear that they're as reliable as this hard drive is -- not at all. Do what you have to do to avoid buying this unit, and if you get a new notebook computer, make sure the FIRST thing you do is check what model hard drive you have. If it's this one, scrap it ASAP and buy something that actually works. Notebook hard drives are cheap. Data recovery (with no guarantee of success) is not, and neither is your data itself. Protect it. Back up regularly, and don't buy Seagate.
I bought this drive a few months ago and about a week after installed it started to make a noise that sounds like a bunch of marbles are loose inside my MacMini. It also makes beeping noises here and there...The noises are starting to become more prevalent so I went to Seagates site to have it swapped out...they want to charge me 19.99 in order to send me out one first so that way there isn't any down time...What a crock!...I wouldn't recommend getting this drive or any Seagate product...They obviously know they have problem with their drives because they are charging you 19.99 to have it replaced in a timely fashion..Should have bought a HITACHI!!!! - Laptop - Hard Drive - Sata - 320 Gb'
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