Seagate Barracuda models and stuff confuses me.

[kazawuna]

Hi. Im new to buying hard drives.

I just bought a Samsung 840 pro 256gb SSD.

To go with it I wanted a fast hard drive with decent space for a good price. Most of the review sites including Tom's Hardware show the 7200.14 Seagate Barracuda's to be very good buys.

The problem is I have no idea what im even saying when I say 7200.14. So many websites list the ST2000DM001 which i thought was the 7200.14 generation but then somewhere on the site it also mentions 7200.12. When I look on the review sites the 7200.12 is always a lot slower in performance.

Also on Amazon the top review upvoted 100 times or something mentions that there are a lot of issues with Seagate selling different hard drives under the same model number depending on where the hard drive was manufactured.

Apparently under the same model number for the 2TB there some with 2 platters and some with 3 platters.

I am confused.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Kaza

 

[RealBeast]

Take a look HERE for a comprehensive list with model numbers and then buy from somewhere like Newegg that has a reliable and detailed product description.

 

[fzabkar]

The first 3 characters of the serial number provide the clue to the number of platters.

For example, S1E, W1E, and Z1E are 2-platter drives. S1F, W1F, and Z1F are 3-platter versions.

The 2-platter drives also have a deeper depression in the cover.

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Desktop-HDD-Desktop-SSHD/2TB-ST2000DM001-Barracuda-from-Seagate-seriously-cripled-through/m-p/161924

 

[kazawuna]

Thanks for your responses.

Can you explain why half of the sites im looking at purchasing the hdd from list it as ST2000DM001 7200.12 and the rest list it as ST2000DM001 7200.14. Is there a difference? I cant actually find this hdd with the 7200.12 on Seagates website.

 

[RealBeast]

Thanks for your responses.

Can you explain why half of the sites im looking at purchasing the hdd from list it as ST2000DM001 7200.12 and the rest list it as ST2000DM001 7200.14. Is there a difference? I cant actually find this hdd with the 7200.12 on Seagates website.

They are stupid or lazy or both. All the currently shipping 7200.12 drives are on the page that I linked -- for the middle table you have to scroll it to the right as it is too large to fit the page. They are at the bottom of the final table of that linked page along with their model number. I can only surmise that they are no longer shipping 7200.12 models over 1TB (the 1TB model is ST31000524AS). The 2TB model was ST32000641AS.