Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 Models Question, Help!

[slim142]

Hi

Well I want to get a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500Gb SATA 3Gb's Retail hard drive. But I see something weird. There are three options in newegg, one is ATA100 so I dont need that one, the other one says Barracuda 7200.10 but is OEM in newegg, but I prefer Retail but the retail one says something like Seagate ES ..... 500gb Sata 3gbs etc.

My question is what are the differences between these hard drives? Here take the links so you will see them better with details

Here are the links

For the 7200.10
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148136

For the ?ES? model
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148151

ZipZoomFly is kinda different, they just only have the drive I want but is OEM

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101451

So could you tell me the differences between the 7200.10 and ES products? and why I cannot find the 7200.10 retail version?

Thanks in advice

 

[SomeJoe7777]

The Barracuda ES is the enterprise series of drives. They're designed for 24x7 operation, and have a lower Annual Failure Rate (0.73%) when operating 24x7 than the standard Barracuda. (Standard Barracuda AFR is 0.34% for 8 hour/day operation).

As to why you can't find the retail version, I'm not sure. I didn't look, but someone should have it available.

 

[slim142]

So that means I shouldnt buy the ES because Im paying for something that im not gonna use, because im not gonna leave my system on for 24x7.

The Zipzoomfly one looks good, but is OEM thought. Do you know where can I find the Retail one from a known retailer? In case not then Ill just have to get the OEM one which doesnt seem bad cuz I see most people buying the OEM.

 

[The_Prophecy]

So that means I shouldnt buy the ES because Im paying for something that im not gonna use, because im not gonna leave my system on for 24x7.

The Zipzoomfly one looks good, but is OEM thought. Do you know where can I find the Retail one from a known retailer? In case not then Ill just have to get the OEM one which doesnt seem bad cuz I see most people buying the OEM.

If you use you computer at least once a day, leave it on 24/7. The hard drive won't die as quickly. I've left all of my computers running 24/7 (the first one being in 2001) and the hard drive hasn't died.

 

[slim142]

Why should I?

I will pay $30 more for an Enterprise HD designed for servers not for gaming.

Leaving my PC on will increase my bill. Not to mention I have two computers in here.

:?

 

[cb62fcni]

Well, if you're set on saving money, why would you pay extra for the retail version? All you get is a box.

 

[drifter_888]

I agree. I would rather pay the extra $30 for the added security and the slightly better quality then have to deal with HD failure. Trust me, unless you back up your system regularly the added quality may be a benefit to you. But there are no guarentee that either drive won't fail. I leave my servers on 24/7. I always turn off my terminals or personal pc's. I don't really feel there is much of a difference between leaving it on or turning it off and I know that question has been asked and debated for over 20 years.

 

[lashrimp]

I don't think Seagate has released the retail version of 7200.10 hard drives. Usually they release the OEM versions first. Then retail versions after a couple of months.
The hard drives have no difference between OEM version and retail version. And they have five-year warranty both. OEM is cheaper because it does not include the SATA data cable and power adapter. New motherboards(support SATA hard drives of course) usually have at least two SATA data cables. And new PSUs do not require the power adapter.Otherwise, you can get these cables around $10 which is a smaller amount compared with the price difference of OEM and retail.

If you really want to get retail version of 7200.10 hard drive, I suggest you get 7200.9 retail drive instead. Because I got two 7200.9 retail box recently and found that seagate packed 7200.10 hard drive inside the box.I think this result from the lower cost of 7200.10. Can not guarantee though. And the warranty has a bit trouble since the model numbers on the box and the hard drive are different.

 

[slim142]

Well that sounds like a good idea (getting an OEM of the ES) because im getting a new ASUS board which I think comes with 2 SATA cables which is enough for me and my PSU is SATA Ready so there is no problem with that.

Well after your explanation I have clarified all my questions.

Just one last one, in this link http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148151
they dont say is a Barracuda 7200.10, they just say Seagate ES.... thats it so my last question would be, is this a Barracuda 7200.10 after all?

 

[lashrimp]

Barracuda ES and Barracuda 7200 are two different product lines of Seagate.
But both ST3500630NS and ST3500630AS use perpendicular recording technology.

If the computer is only for home use, Barracuda 7200's reliability is good enough. I would get a 7200.10 from Zipzoomfly, $50 cheaper than ES.

 

[The_Prophecy]

Why should I?

I will pay $30 more for an Enterprise HD designed for servers not for gaming.

Leaving my PC on will increase my bill. Not to mention I have two computers in here.

:?

I leave all 4 of my computers on 24/7. I would much rather pay a bit more for electricity than have a hard drive fail on me, since then I would get to go through the hastle of trying to recover the data on the drive and hoping I can get all of it.

 

[joke]

If you are trying to save money, believe it or not, CDW kicks-butt on this particular drive (I have 4 set up as a Raid 5 array) and they are great!

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=998263

good luck,
Joe

 

[Talon]

You probably want the OEM regular version unless you just want to pay for the "extra piece of mind" ES.

As for the OEM vs Retail. Theres nothing wrong with the OEM imo. I bought my last seagate OEM and the couple extra bucks I saved only meant I had to DL the seagate SATA wizard off their website for the install. It was worth the 2mins of my time I suppose.

I guess I'm trying to say there is no real advantage to the retail over oem. Buy whichever is cheaper I'd say.

 

[Paperdoc]

On the OEM vs Retail: I bought 2 OEM 320GB Seagates for inside my build, plus a 500GB Seagate for an external case. The big one I bought on eBay because the price was better, and I bought Retail. I figured there would be a use for the "extras" that came. Those are a SATA data cable, a Molex-to-SATA power adapter (don't need either of them - mobo handles all that) and the Seagate CD. On the CD is a good Disk Wizard and a bunch of other utilities. I guess I could have downloaded all those free and burned to a CD. But for a few bucks extra I got it all included.

By the way, the Disk Wizard solved an interesting Catch-22 kind of problem. Win XP Pro could not deal with blank drives to start the install. The Disk Wizard will take care of that, and it warns you that basic WIN cannot deal with drives over 137GB, so it will only partition that for you before any OS is installed. (Win XP with SP2 installed has no problem, but when you first start out the PS2 part is NOT installed!) So then WIN went in OK, but I wanted the C: drive to be the whole 320 GB in one partition. But WIN and the Disk Wizard would not do that. M$ website app notes say you cannot expand any drive that is already a boot drive! Auuggghh!

Ran Disk Wizard again and in the section that covers partitioning and formatting a new drive (I'm looking now at my second 320GB unit) one option is to do the Parition, Format, AND copy all files from the current boot drive to the new one to make it the NEW boot drive. I took that choice, and Whammo! I had a 320 GB new boot drive with WIN installed on it! I just swapped cables around, then ran Disk Wizard a third time to clear off what had been my original boot drive, then repartition it to a single 320GB volume. Now I'm where I wanted to be, and WIN would never have done that.

 

[The_Prophecy]

By the way, the Disk Wizard solved an interesting Catch-22 kind of problem. Win XP Pro could not deal with blank drives to start the install. The Disk Wizard will take care of that, and it warns you that basic WIN cannot deal with drives over 137GB, so it will only partition that for you before any OS is installed. (Win XP with SP2 installed has no problem, but when you first start out the PS2 part is NOT installed!) So then WIN went in OK, but I wanted the C: drive to be the whole 320 GB in one partition. But WIN and the Disk Wizard would not do that. M$ website app notes say you cannot expand any drive that is already a boot drive! Auuggghh!

Ran Disk Wizard again and in the section that covers partitioning and formatting a new drive (I'm looking now at my second 320GB unit) one option is to do the Parition, Format, AND copy all files from the current boot drive to the new one to make it the NEW boot drive. I took that choice, and Whammo! I had a 320 GB new boot drive with WIN installed on it! I just swapped cables around, then ran Disk Wizard a third time to clear off what had been my original boot drive, then repartition it to a single 320GB volume. Now I'm where I wanted to be, and WIN would never have done that.

And you could avoid all of this by taking no more than 10 minutes to slipstream SP2 into your Windows XP disk with nLite...

 

[Paperdoc]

Thanks for the interesting suggestion, Prophesy. Acutally, my XP Pro install disk HAS SP2 already. My problem may have started with another thing.

Before installing I did a few BIOS adjustments, and one of them was to set the SATA controlled to use AHCI mode, not emulated PATA. I figured, why not? it's the latest and greatest, may as well start there. Well, Windows install kept saying there was no drive to work with, and that's why I ended up using Disk Wizard to partition and format. By the way, it was Disk Wizard at this point (with no Windows installed) that insisted it would only make a 137GB partition on the ASSUMPTION that Windows could not handle anything bigger.

Anyway, somewhere later in the sequence (I don't remember when) I decided the AHCI thing might be a problem and changed it to PATA emulation. No problems after that. So just MAYBE if I had done that first, Windows never would have objected? I can't say for sure now.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

If your XP Pro CD already has SP2, then it should be able to format without the 137GB restriction.

If you choose AHCI in your BIOS rather than Legacy IDE, you will need to have a driver disk floppy ready during Windows installation, and tell Windows when it first boots off the CD that you need to supply a manufacturer driver diskette by pressing F6.