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Western Digital WD 750GB GREENPOWER RAID EDITION RE2 16MB SATA-II 750 GB SATA Hard Drive

Western Digital WD 750GB GREENPOWER RAID EDITION RE2 16MB SATA-II 750 GB SATA Hard Drive
Overall Rating: Product Rating: 5.0
Lowest Price: $54.99

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Seagate 750GB Barracuda: Speed and reliability from a reputable manufacturer

Written: Apr 24 '08 (Updated Apr 25 '08)

Product Rating: Product Rating: 5.0
Pros: Fast, quiet and cool

Cons: None

The Bottom Line: If you need a lot of space but don’t want to fork out the big bucks for a terabyte hard drive, this drive is an excellent consideration.
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Gr8ful's Full Review: Western Digital WD 750GB GREENPOWER RAID EDITION R...
What do you do when your computer runs out of storage space? You upgrade! I recently bought two Seagate 750GB Barracuda drives for an external enclosure to increase the capacity of my media storage. Movies take up a lot of space and I have almost every one of my DVD discs backed up on hard drive. That total backup takes approximately 3.2TB of storage space. My desktop computer has only 2.4TB of space so I use the two Seagate drives together in a RAID array for an additional 1.32TB giving me plenty of space to store my movies and music all on one computer.


Seagate 750GB Barracuda

The drive is a standard 3.5” computer hard drive for desktop computers. It can also be used in Digital Recording devices that support large disks. The drive comes in a plastic package with a CD that includes the installation guide and partitioning backup software. Personally, I just use the operating system to partition and format the drive. The drive fits into any standard internal 3.5” drive bay.

Specs
* Capacity: 750 GB
* Memory buffer: 32MB
* Platters: 4
* Platter size: 187GB
* Interface: Serial ATA (SATA 150 and SATA 3G compatible)
* Form factor: 3.5"
* Spindle speed: 7200 RPM
* External data transfer rate: 105 MBps
* Average latency: 4.17 ms


Installation

Standard installation is a breeze. You screw the drive into an empty drive bay and connect the SATA data cable and the SATA power cable to the end of the drive. With SATA drives there are no jumpers to mess with and no chance of plugging the cable in the wrong way. There is only one drive on an SATA cable so there is no need to worry about master, slave and cable select positions. The drives position is determined by which SATA controller it is attached to. The first controller is primary master and the second controller is primary slave. If there are a third and fourth controller, they would be secondary master and slave respectively.

For my installation, I installed two drives into an external housing that converts SATA to USB 2.0. The physical installation is basically the same except I installed them into an external drive bay instead of the internal one in my computer case. The drive bay automatically configures the drive into a JBOD RAID array so I didn’t have to mess with that either. The only downside for me is that the USB 2.0 interface is a little slower than the SATA 3G connection inside my PC.



Personal Use

I have had the drives for a few weeks and they run nice and cool in their housing. Speed hasn’t been an issue either and the USB 2.0 interface is fast enough to play movies and music without a problem. I am even able to rip new movies to the drive as I acquire them. It is also nice to be able to unplug the drive and take it along with my laptop when I travel. I always have a lot of my movies and all of my music at hand where ever I go.

Out of the 1.32TB of storage that I got from the two 750GB drives, I have filled up 1.02TB with movies and MP3 music. I even have several folders of photographs on the drives as well. Now that I am almost out of space with the new drives I have to go back and fill up my two Hitachi 1TB drives.


Conclusion

The Seagate Barracuda 750GB SATA hard drive with 32MB cache is a great drive that performs well. I have had no issues with heat or speed even though I have the drives in a USB 2.0 external drive housing. If you need a lot of space but don’t want to fork out the big bucks for a terabyte hard drive, this drive is an excellent consideration.

I have been using Seagate drives for years and they are definitely one of the best brands you can put your data on. This Barracuda lives up to the reputation.


Thanks for reading,
Gr8ful ;-)


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1-3 of 3 stores Store Rating Price
seagate barracuda 7200.11 st37... (Stock status: N/A)
750GB Capacity, 3.5" x 1/3H, Serial ATA-300, 300 MBps Data Rate Transfer, 7200rpm Spindle Speed, 32 MB Buffer Size More at eCOST.com
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Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3750330AS 750 GB SATA/300 Hard Drive General Features: 750 GB capacity 7200 RPM spindle speed SATA/300 interface 3 Gb/... More at Geeks.com
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760-726-7700
Store Rating: 4.5
Fantastic prices with ease & c... (In stock)
Ships in Certified Frustration-Free Packaging Spindle Speed is 7,200 RPM Delivers 750 GB capacity, 32 MB Cache; interface option is SATA 3 GB/s NCQ Sh... More at Amazon Marketplace
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