Hard Drive model st3500320as

G

Gordon.C

Member
Hi,

I have this model of hard drive in my computer (see title)... I am reading a few posts about this hard drive to fail and stop working.

Well as everyone I do not want to loose data and wanna be ready before an actual disc disaster. Would you recommend me to buy a new hard drive and this one use as secondary to prevent possible problems? What is your experience with this drive?

Thank you for answers
 
Hard drives are mechanical devices, they can go out at any time. However, I do prefer Seagate drives to Western Digital. Your drive may work good for the next 5 years or more or it may die next week, next month, next year. If you are concerned about your data then you need to make sure everything is backed up to a second location.
 
As John said..regular backups are a good start!

I am not partial to Seagate or Western Digital..

Both make good products...both make products that fail!! It's the nature of mechanical/electronic devices!

Maybe, try a Western Digital Caviar Black? They are good drives, not fail proof--but no drive is!
 
Laquer Head said:
Maybe, try a Western Digital Caviar Black? They are good drives, not fail proof--but no drive is!
Click to expand...

Your right.. cause I had bought 2 WD Caviar Black 32mb cache drives for a raid 0 build and 1 had to be rma'd back to newegg.
 
johnb35: Yes I am backing up everything I can (small data)

Laquer Head: Thx for hint I will have a look at the drive
 
johnb35 said:
Your right.. cause I had bought 2 WD Caviar Black 32mb cache drives for a raid 0 build and 1 had to be rma'd back to newegg.
Click to expand...

I hear yeh! mine crapped out too..but I've had 1 since that is awesome!

Also, my sony all-in-one has a 640 caviar blue 640 and its running perfectly!

Any of these mass produced drives can crap out at any point.

thank goodness for warranties!
 
If you don't have much just buy a cheap flash drive and stick it into the back of the pc. You can make it copy data every night so you don't loose it. You can get a 2gb one for $10 at walmart and probably cheaper on amazon.
 
the flash drive idea aint bad... I might stick to that, I have read that flash drives are currently the most safe way of data storage, that they get damaged the least times in average compared to any other storage media
 
johnb35 said:
Hard drives are mechanical devices, they can go out at any time. However, I do prefer Seagate drives to Western Digital. Your drive may work good for the next 5 years or more or it may die next week, next month, next year. If you are concerned about your data then you need to make sure everything is backed up to a second location.
Click to expand...
the ST3500320AS is the 7200.11 line of drives, which have a pretty high failure rate(ive experienced this myself, of the two original 7200.11's i had i had four failures(rma's failed) until seagate gave me 7200.12's...mind you this is a personal experience and a small sample size, but overall there seems to be a generally high failure rate). Flash memory is much more durable than mechanical hard disc drives. Personally i prefer western digital for their support, seagate basically requires you to purchase thier RMA kit or an advance RMA unless you want to run the risk of your warranty being voided, while bubblewrap and an antistatic bag is fine for WD drives.
 
Well the .11 drives SUCKED more then the .10 drives did but if your wanting a good cheap 500GB HDD id try this one.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS

I have bought 8 of these drives for my families builds and no problems yet. The reason I think is multiple platters = more chances to fail. .12 = 500GB platters so this drive only has one.
.11 I think was 320GB platters so there are two in it and .10 was 250GB platters. I only bought 1 320GB .10 and a 500GB .11 and both failed within 60 days.
 
Twist86 said:
Single Platter....the 320GB .10s have a high failure rate :P
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7200.11 had 250gb platters. the 7200.10 was like 188gb or something, and the 7200.12 has 500gb platters. The 7200.10's were good drives, and about average failure rate, the 7200.11's on the other hand had an abnormally high failure rate.
 
johnb35 said:
Flash drives are just as easy to get corrupted or damaged as hard drives are.
Click to expand...

Depends on how you use it. I have a feeling those portable hard drives you can buy would be much more likely to corrupt from dropping it then a flash drive (i would assume).

EDIT: If you are THAT worried you could just plug 2 flash drives in the back. The odds of the hdd and both flash drives going are very small, though a lightning strike on your house might do it... (power strips don't actually help with something like that)
 
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