Customer Ratings & Reviews

HDD working great so far...knock on wood. Did not have the same problems as the other reviewers.

Nice and small, I slapped it into the box, loaded win7 and it was off to the races.

I know just as well as you all should that a hard drive is only as good as those who handle it before you buy it. But at a certain point... with enough returns they should send me out a brand new one that hopefully the UPS guy hasn't punted the length of a warehouse. I bought my first Seagate drive to replace a dead Seagate drive as well as upgrade from 250GB to 500GB back in Feb of 2010. By April of 2010, the 500GB drive was dead. I called about warranty information and found it was under warranty but had to pay for a shipping replacement, no problem. I received the shipped hard drive which was dead on arrival. I ran the Sea Tools and it failed all the tests before I even installed Windows. So I sent it back and they sent me another one. The 3rd 500GB hard drive I got is now giving me trouble a year later.... I'm at the point where I can't keep swapping and reinstalling all my software each and every time this happens. I'm hoping that the new one isn't DOA like what happened last year. Quality has dropped in the past years with Seagate, I'll be moving on to Western Digital even though I'm still getting a replacement. I'll use it as a backup. Do yourself a favor, stay as far away from Seagate as humanly possible. They will blame dead drives on retailers (Best Buy) shippers (UPS) and will state that they don't get many returns. I asked a very nice customer service rep which drives does he get the least amount of calls on. He couldn't even tell me... Apparently they all get equally bad calls.

Was visiting my dad who is in his mid 80s, and doesn't deal well with computer "issues", the original hard drive died just before i arrived from 1500 miles away. BB had the item in stock and it was easily installed. This was great, especially for a sunday, and because i was leaving the next day. Thank you BB.

I purchased this drive in September '08 and it crashed less than two months later. No warning signs--drive just failed. I was shocked because the Seagate name was highly recommended by a friend. Sure, the drive had an extra-long warranty and sure this could happen with any brand, but still a major pain in the ### dealing with the aftermath. Fortunately I had all of my info backed up on an external HD. Less than two months out of this drive is ridiculous, after all, this is not a no-name company. Strangely enough, the drive that failed before this one was a Maxtor (which is also manfactured by Seagate). Seagate's customer service was not very helpful.

Similar to other reviews I've read, this drive died on me as well. It seemed like a great deal at the time, but I never expected that it would only last a year. I bought it in October 2008, and it stopped working a couple months ago. Others have said it's a firmware problem, stating that if the drive you purchased is labeled ST3500641AS on the outside box, and labeled differently (ST3500320AS) on the drive, that the drive was built in a bad "batch". Well, my drive is labeled this way as well. I've tried everything to fix it. Reformatted it.. repartitioned it.. nothing works. You know, the drive manufacturers act like it's no big deal if their drives fail, they offer 5 year warranties and will willingly replace it. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DATA I LOST!? That's irrecoverable. Why can't the bad drive manufacturers just say they make bad, cheap drives (maybe just call them "discount" drives), or at least be forced to disclose failure rates, so I can determine which drive manufacturers make quality drives and buy from them. I don't really care what the price is, after all, how can I put a price on all of the permanently lost files, photos, etc..

Great drive no problems...My grandma can install this!!!

I have 2 in a raid 0 and all is well so I just ordered 2 more.

Seagate Drives fail in less than 3 years on average. I had to set up a FedEx account so I could ship all the drives back when they fail. They have a good 5 year warranty but you have to pay for shipping the drive to them. Then they send you a refurb drive back and sometimes that fails right away. Highly recommend that you get a Western Digital if available or put the Seagate in a RAID 1 or 5 so you don't lose your data.

Installed easily. Woke up right off he bat. Worked great for 4 months then nothing. Absolutely dead. Tried to save a buck and paid the price. Will go back to WD. So just don't go there. Spending all day reloading is not my idea of fun. Gave it a low value and performance because it died. No value in there and certainly no performance either.

If you are not running VISTA and/or do not have a floppy drive do not buy this or any other SATA drive. Because SATA wasnt completed when XP came out you have to load the OEM drivers on via a floppy disk. Considering they dont make floppy drives anymore, its quite the headache. It was easy to install in my computer, but you cannot partition the drive until the drivers are installed. Of course, there is no mention of this anywhere on the box, in the advertising, etc. But Geek Squad will charge $199 to do it for you.

old hard drive was under warranty, Seagate made good on replacement, still scratching my head as to why a hard drive that's less than two years old would die .

This drive was part of a three drive triple boot system I had set up. Unfortunately, this was my main back up in addition to containing an Ubuntu Linux partition. This drive just died overnight. It as far as I know was not even being accessed. I tried to Open Windows 7 back up that was on another drive and it was frozen. Restarted and the drives would not scan. By process of elimination I identified this drive as the one preventing boot. Had to do a Fix MBR to boot off the others. I can not access data if the drive is in the system or connected by usb with a SATA adapter. The drive powers up and spins, but will not show up. Can't do a diagnostic, because I can't even boot to a CD if the drive is in the system. There was not warning at all that this drive was dying. It just abruptly died.

I bought two of these drives at Best Buy. Wow, I was in for a surprise... When I got home and opened the box and inspected the drives (few actually do this final step - yikes) I noticed that the drive advertised on the box is ST3500641AS. However, what is inside the box is the notorious "bad" drive from Seagate, the ST3500320AS. This drive has numerous firmware issues and outright failures (google and fyi yourself). Looks like Seagate is dumping the bad drives on the general public hoiping you won't catch 'em. I've lost all respect for Seagate and will not buy their drives again for the next few generations... Hello Western Digital. I prompty returned both drives for refund and notified Best Buy management.

I had this seagate for about a month and then it died. It was a good drive while it lasted. It would power down when my computer did not need to seek in the drive. then i tried turning my computer on and it would it would find the first one then it would try and find the second one and it would not. i have a Dell XPS 420 Quad Core intel. Think twice before buying this harddrive.

This drive is well known to have problems with the firmware, causing it to fail after just a short time. While there is an update for flashing new firmware available on Seagates site, the fact that they shipped a faulty product means that I will never buy another Seagate product. Seagate used to be known for high quality, this drive has been a big disappointment.

The drive broke after a couple months so I don't recommend it.

The box I purchased was labeled ST3500641AS, but the item inside was actually their ST3500320AS unit. This is important because the 320 unit has been widely reported failing after just a few months. There is a firmware update for the 320 unit that is supposed to help reliability, but it has also been reported as not working. So why buy something new that you would just have to fix? Once I discovered the swap, I returned the item and purchased the Western Digital equivalent 500 G drive. Seems to work fine so far.

I have a pair of these drives in my system - both make extremely loud "chugging" noise when seeking, to the point of being a distraction while working or watching a video. Western Digital drives are dramatically quieter, with no loss of speed, and I'd recommend those.

I don't know if I will keep this or take it back. Just bought it today. Computer bios recognized the drive right away but Windows XP Pro would not recognize until I unhooked other drives and booted with my Windows disk. The drive finally partitioned and is formatting now after several hours of getting nowhere. So far the disk cloning software that came with this drive doesn't work which is the main problem. It wants you to buy cloning software for $30.00. The software that came with this drive doesn't recognize it. I'm disgusted to say the least. I should have spent another $40.00 and got the WD drive. Never have had a problem with them.