Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 V.S. WD Caviar Black

I would recommend the WD. Seagate has been having many issues with their hard drives lately.

Don't think you need the cooler package if you have a case with good ventilation.

Newegg packs merchandise very securely; never had a problem with any merchandise being damaged.

Yeah, definitely WD. It's one of the fastest and most reliable HD on the market.
Seagate's firmware is all messed up, until it's fixed, it is to worth paying less for a product that might not even work :\

I believe that the firmware issue only affected the seagate 7200.11 not the .12, and I think that they have fixed that issue already, correct?

seagate has been fixed it was the 7200.11 series with problems

the 7200.12 is fine and faster overall throughput than WD black series.

WD Black--334GB platters

Seagate = 500GB platters


you will be happy with either drive.

I have 2 WD-black in a raid 0

and 3 seagate 7200 in a raid 0

the seagate drives are also smaller (physically). and use less power

Both are nice - the WD has the speed advantage in random access, the Seagate has the speed advantage in sequential transfers. I'd go with whichever is the better deal, to be honest. Whichever you can get the cheapest is the one to get, IMHO. I have a Caviar Black 1TB as my storage drive, but the Seagate wasn't available when I got it. I'm quite happy with it though - no complaints at all.

I was considering this same question myself recently, and finally decided to go with the Seagate because of the performance/watt compared to the WD drives (Black or Green). It should arrive on Monday.

jtt283, Did you get the 500 gig version?? I'm holding off until Newegg gets the 750 Gig version in stock.

I personally felt Seagate handled the firmware issue terribly and put me off anything coming from them until the bad feeling goes away. There are so many choices out there that don't have much difference in performance. I've bought mostly Seagates for the past few years, and I'm not a great fan of WD's customer support, but these are times when if a company doesn't shoot straight when the have a problem to solve it's all I need to start looking into someone else's drive.

Well after changing my mind back and forth at least three times between the caviar black and the Barracuda...

I just ordered the Barracuda from Buy.com.

I was a little nervous to order from Buy.com because of all the weird credit card scam complaints floating around. BUT I ordered the HD with ebillme-- a program that allows you to pay for the item with your online banking (like how you pay normal bills)-- as in NO exchange of credit card or any sensitive financial info. I also looked up Buy.com on the Better Business Bureau site-- they have a very good rating of a B+ and they are accredited by the BBB. AND I saw a commercial for Buy.com on tv last night featuring a celebrity, I don't remember who--but as silly as it sounds, the celebrity appearance made me think that Buy.com is trustworthy. Finally, I found the Buy.com phone number and spoke to a live human being prior to making my order. As for how delicately they package and ship the item-- I am taking a gamble. The lady at Buy.com was not able to tell me how it would be packaged or from what warehouse it would be shipped. That is why I opted for 2 day shipping--I figured that the HD would encounter less jostling on a shorter trip.

And as a first time user of ebillme, I can redeem an online rebate for $25 (they will send the check via mail)
And as a first time user of Buy.com I was given an additional instant $5 off of my purchase. SO:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 3Gb/s 32MB Internal Hard Drive Model Number: ST31000528AS : $103.99 (after $5 off)

Shipping: $12.98 (Upgrade to 2 day shipping)
Tax: $10.23
Total: $127.20

Not a bad price at all for a 1TB HD. Assuming that my rebate will work-- that's $102.20. LOL


And as for why I went with the seagate... I don't have a very good reason actually. I just went by the two posters who said that I would be happy either way. Both HDs cost about the same. I have a seagate HD running in my old computer (and I've had no problems w/ it) and an external HD Seagate (that never was able to connect to my old computer, but it is my computer's fault.) I had an extremely good experience with seagate support when I attempted to correct this issue. I like seagate, and because of their firmware issues with the 7200.11, I believe that they will be even more careful and vigilant to problems like that in the future. And there is a poll on Tom's that ranked the seagate as being the best overall HD.





Well, I will comment back when I receive and install my HD to let everyone knows how it went.

Sorry for the long post.