Set up RAID with 2 of these drives and I have seen a good performance boost compared to my old drive. The drives also seem quieter than my previous ones.

Bought this to replace a failing drive in a Raid configuration. Drive is fast and to date, problem free. Data access is fast and no problems streaming videos. Seagate has come along way to develop and produce a quality product.

This hard drive works like a champ with my setup. NO glitches. It's a BARE drive so no manual, no screws for install and no software. Really, all you need are screws or a screwless bay. So save the money and get a bare drive and download whatever drivers or Seagate software you need before installing. This starts up anyway using Win 7 drivers. To Partition and Format the drive: Use Windows 7 Control Panel > Administration > Computer Management > Disk Management Utility to Partition and Format as you want. Instructions for partitioning/formatting are all over the web, but I use the ones from Windows Knowledge base on the Microsoft Website. Very clear. Also -- using the cache for performance settings.

At the recommendation of others, I did a full format (vs quick format) after partitioning - no errors / bad sectors on any of the drives. This takes a LOT longer with 1TB and 2TB drives than the quick format option, but it thoroughly checks the drives so you know what you've got (or not got) up front. Figure a couple hours for 2TB drives or thereabouts.

Before purchasing any of the Hard Drives for my new build, I thoroughly read all the reviews. This is the third of 3 Seagate 3.5" Bare Drives I've installed in my HAF X case. The Other Two are Seagate Barracuda "XT's" -- 2TB. All work great. While I "wanted" solid state drives, they are not practical from a cost standpoint for me because I do Video Editing and need so much hard drive space. Even 3TB isn't near enough yet. I decided to stick with one vendor -- and it was Seagate vs Western Digital for the internal hard drives for performance and reliability reasons, and because of the warranty periods. I've had both types of internal drives in the past. Only the Western Digital gave out, but that was also after a long time and heavy use. Not intended as a slam. Both brands are probably fine. Still the Barracuda XT's especially outperform the WD Caviar Blacks for the type of programs I run.

I have installed and briefly read through all the Seagate software, but have taken it (and all other bloatware & unnecessary starup files) out of my startup sequence, which makes for very fast POST and Windows bootup of ~ 8 seconds on my Asus P8Z68-VPRO/Gen 3 motherboard/I72600K CPU. (That boot time is off the Seagate 2TB Barracuda XT boot drive with 64MB cache with NO overclocking.) Still, may use re-enable Seagate Tools software for backups vs Win7 and some of the other features that software offers. Very pleased so far with performance, speed, temps of these drives, and they are NOT noisy at all. In fact, very quiet.

Last -- this 1TB drive is for a 6.0Gb/s SATA port, but just FYI -- it's backwards compatible with 3.0 Gb/s SATA ports and cables. I installed this drive on a 3.0 Gb/s SATA port using a 6.0Gb/s cable (only kind of SATA data cable I purchased) and it works just fine. That 3.0 Gb/s SATA "port speed" is really faster anyway than what any spinning hard drive can accomplish anyway and I've already used my two Z68 6.0 Gb/s SATA ports for the 2TB Barracuda XT's. Avoided using the Marvel 6.0 Gb/s controller SATA ports on the Mobo. Using the Z68 SATA ports instead -- too many people having problems with using both controllers at the same time, especially if they have a RAID setup (I don't). 3.0Gb/s connection is fast enough for now but by purchasing the 6.0Gb/s drives, may have some future capability compatibility at a minimum markup now.

Found this 1TB drive during the Black Friday deals for eighty three dollars! I had been looking for a while and couldn't believe the low price. The egg has the same drive for one forty nine. It's quiet and fast with plenty of storage space.