My MOBO is about two years old and does not natively support SATA-III, so I purchased a SATA-III card to support the newer drives. The older MOBO does not have the throughput of a newer one with faster bus, etc. So if you have an older PC and want to add some speed, read on!

I ran Crystal Disk Mark 3.01 for these tests, and compared my solid state drive, this drive and a SATA-II attached to the on-board controller.

Sequential read:
ST2000DM001: 200.6
SSD 172.9 MB/s
SATA-II drive: 83.77

Sequential write:
ST2000DM001: 158.7
SSD 99.78 MB/s
SATA-II drive: 81.82

See photos for screen grabs.

This is a blazingly fast drive. Because I'm on an older system I can't utilize it to it's full potential - but it does really increase performance on my older system - it's a great alternative to a SSD! Add a SATA-III card to your computer and this drive, and you'll dramatically speed up read and write speeds.

If you're using a computer with native SATA-III support, you're tests will be even better!

Installation was a snap - Windows 7 disk manager detected and formatted in no time. The SSD I compared it to is a Crucial 64 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT064M4SSD2

I waited several months before reviewing this hard disk. I can certainly say that baring a defected product, this Seagate barracuda 6 GB/s hard drive with 64MB cache performs very well.

Some thoughts:

* While it may not be as fast as my solid state drive, it still is great for storing games, movies, music, and other files. I compared this hard disk to my Intel 320 Series 80 GB SATA 3.0 Gb-s 2.5-Inch Solid-State Drive and my results showed that this Seagate hard disk is comparable with a sequential read of 178 MB/s and 164 MB/s write speed. My Intel 320 SSD had got sequential read of 223 MB/s, but a 93 MB/s write speed. It's nowhere close to a SSD for larger files, but it's a good alternative.

* Very reliable so far. I waited about 3 months to see how well it holds up. No hiccups, crashes, anything so far.

Unfortunately, defects are bound to happen. In my case, mine was not defected and this hard disk has done well for loading games, music, and other files (large and small). With the construction and internal design of this hard disk, it stays very cool and quiet. A good choice, when placed toe to toe with Western Digital. A solid and reliable hard drive so far.

P.S. As a reminder, if you haven't done so already or haven't in a while, make sure your computer case is clean. The excess dust and hence heat that you remove from your case can help maintain a ventilated and clean space for your hard disk.

I am extremely happy with the 2TB drive. I avoided the 3TB drive because there are some reports about special modes used beyond 2TB that aren't as compatible as 2TB. So for me, even though 3TB can be only a little more, I preferred to rest assured with worry free compatibility of 2TB. For a fresh install of Windows, the BIOS (on my Intel DZ68BC motherboard) and Windows 7 64-bit OEM setup disk had no problem detecting, formatting, and using the drive. The drive is very fast being SATA III (6G/s) with a large 64MB cache. Of course it isn't SSD, but for large files like videos, it has been stellar for me. It is quiet enough that I never hear it unless I listen closely, doesn't heat up my case (according to the motherboard that monitors the case and reports via software), doesn't seem to eat up power in how I use it, and very fast. I do a lot of HD video storage, editing, and copying from my HD camcorder and it flies for me.

Now it isn't SSD. It still has moving parts, rotating platters, and is affected by seek times. But it superbly suited for storing and accessing large files like HD video, music, etc, that are contiguous blocks on the disk that it can just start reading fast without seeking. I recommend an SSD (like the Intel 510 Series 120 GB SSD that I love even more than this HDD for operating system files and documents. With SSD, the computer boots fast, opens apps very fast (IE, FireFox, & MS WOrd are nearly instant), and opens documents very fast. But 120 GB is limited. So I use this 2TB HDD as a very fast large file storage for video, pictures, music, and archiving stuff. I think this HDD is a great compliment to my SSD.

The drive is OEM, and it really doesn't come with anything but the drive itself, no cables, no power adapters, no screws, or software. But you really should have everything you need already. Any Sata cable should do (all should be the same). When purchased from and shipped by Amazon, it seems very well protected. I didn't have any worries. I wouldn't worry about the bad Vine review reports about broken drives from shipping which I suspect got shipments from a different facility that didn't know what they were doing with computer parts. I can attest I purchased from Amazon and am happy with the packaging from Amazon.

I bought these hard drives as part of building a Network Attached Storage server from parts. I used them to create a server run by FreeNAS 8.0.4 software. The hard drives make up a ZFS "volume" to store a large amount of data. Under the Zettabyte File System, in a RAIDZ configuration (software RAID), the 3 drives become one "volume" with 3.6 Tb of usable space. They are physically connected to an LSI 9220-8i SAS HBA adapter, not to the motherboard's SATA connectors. The hard drives perform well and I think the cache and NCQ help complete the transfers of very large files quickly. I just ordered more of these drives and will add them to my ZFS pool, again doing the physical connections on the LSI adapter.