Seagate Barracuda ST3160813AS 160GB - 7200, 8MB, SATA-300, NCQ, OEM

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I had mine for over 10 months now with no problems. This is just an average drive as far as noise and speed. IMPORTANT - Download Seatools from Seagate's web site and use it to see if your drive is working correctly. Check the firmware version because some of the 7200.11 series drives had a firmware bug which will lockout the firmware and then your computer BIOS won't be able to see the drive anymore. I had to upgrade my firmware after checking my version to the bad ones listed on Seagate's web site -look in the Knowledge Base section and click on the 'Firmware updates for Seagate Products' link.

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I am using two of these drives in RAID 0 and am getting an average read speed of 224MB per sec. Have been running for about a year for about 12 hours a day. Haven't had any issues with this or any other seagate drives!

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I just built my new system so the drives aren't nearly full yet, but that's one thing to worry about with small drives, along with the price per GB and small cache (though I think cache only matters for files not much bigger than the cache size). I have 4 in a RAID 5, not a lot of noise or heat, and should be more reliable than big drives. A lot of drives arrive DOA - I recommend upgraded shipping, which has much higher standards for handling packages. Take off the jumpers (tiny, lost one in the case) to get 300Gb/s mode. No complaints so far.