Seagate Barracuda 3TB Review; 1TB/Platter (Comment Thread)
 

Platter size may not mean much to everyday consumers but storage enthusiasts know that larger platters are usually a ticket to first class performance. Previously, large capacity drives used 750GB disks to achieve their required space but Seagate's new Barracuda 3TB is the first with three 1TB platters. Coupled with a very fast controller, this new drive has what it takes to literally blow the doors off the competition.

Read more here: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...unleashed.html

Would this not also open the door up for 4 and 5 TB drives in the very near future?

Also while this drive has amazing performance it is a little pricey but as you said certainly not out to lunch. Although there is one thing that stops me and that is the stack of Seagates I have that are dead, 3 here at home (2 of which are already replacements) and another 4 at work. They hurt me bad and it seems like whenever I trust them to work they fail me and that combined with the lets face it, lousy warranty, it does have me worried about the reliability of these drives.

In theory yes, it would be very easy to put together a 4 or 5tb drive; however it looks like 3TB will be the biggest offered for now. IIRC there is going to be a 1TB, 1.5 and 2TB iteration. I would LOVE to see a 5TB drive as that would make for one damn impressive drive.

Its a case of YLMV with drives from both seagate AND western digital. There has been MANY users over the years on the forums that i have read have used the same argument " i only buy seagate/wd cause every wd/seagate i have botten has died ", reality is of course every drive can not be made to last its exspected lifetime or longer.

If everyone kept not buyin a brand cause of 1 failed product they would eventualy have no product to pick from ...

Beast drive. I wouldn't mind a single platter 1TB.

Yup, over the past couple decades I have had every brand and model die on me. Seagates, western digitals, maxtor, ibm (later hitachi) even samsung and with the exception of Maxtor's last gasps it truly is all luck of the draw. The majority will have a happy happy, joy joy experience with any of them...BUT if you purchase enough of any brand or model...you will get a dud. Life happens, rma it and move on.

The best advice I can give (which was given to me about 20 years ago by my mentor) is as soon as you buy ANY hdd, run the mfg'ers diagnostics, write down the numbers then do a HARD format on it. Then redo the tests. IF the number of errors, reallocated sectors etc goes up significantly...return it, take the restocking fee hit and get another hdd...its prolly one of the "soon to be" duds. Ive caught many hdd duds this way and it has helped a LOT, with less pain for me and my customers. ;)

YMMV

I like to believe that the warranty reflects the mfgr's faith in the product. Oversimplified for sure, but nowadays I like to use HDDs for long-term storage and the very short warranty worries me.

Performance is stunning for a HDD though.

I think a lot of people still feel the burn from the big fiaso from Seagate years back now.
Everything does fail at some point, its just higher than normal or expected rate tend to sour a lot of people.

This is an awesome Seagate drive that alas is released at a time when HDD prices are all gone to hell. Which might make its launch stumble.

A shame for a drive that is really well engineered.

ST

I'm blown away by the performance. Absolutely fantastic. Pulling duty as a workhorse storage unit, it really can't be beat. Couple it with an SSD and you'll have an unbeatable combo.

What a shame (semi-sarcastic) I just bought another 2TB of storage before this drive was released (and before HDD prices skyrocketed). In a perfect world, this drive would have been released a month ago. Oh Well, c'est la vie.

Oh, and I don't want to join the game of WD is better than Seagate, or whatever. But when it comes to reliability, does Seagate have a bit of a bad reputation???

For what it's worth, I've had my WD 500GB system drive for (about) 6 years now, and it hasn't let me down yet.

Hmm I usually multi-pass "wipe" before running the first manufacturer test on it. I'll try this experiment when I go for another hard drive.

Back on topic with this particular HDD, I'd like to see how a 1-platter version of this drive holds up in testing, given that I only need "performance" storage for about ~250 GB or so of stuff (games + SSD overflow). I'm sure this drive will work wonders if I only use ~8% of its capacity but I'd rather put money into a small HDD and better SSD than a lower tier SSD and not use >2.5TB of my HDD.

If Seagate updates their Momentus XT 2.5" line with this technology I'll pick it up for my lappy the first chance I get.