The RE is an enterprise level hard drive. It has a much higher duty cycle and MTBF. In short, it's far more reliable than the Caviar SE. The Caviar SE is a budget unit. It's cheap...for a reason. I repair an SE about once a day, or every two days. I've lost a huge pile of them over the years and have half a dozen dead SEs at my office ATM.
Data is irreplaceable. You don't send a boy to do a man's job...and you don't use a POS unit to store a computer's most important asset.
I've run into several instances where so-called "techs" have placed SE harddrives into mission critical applications. I just ran into it again two days ago.. In every single instance, the SE crapped out. Sooo... if someone tries to sell you on an SE.. Think three times... Realize they don't know what they're doing... And walk away.
EDIT: I'll let you in on a little "secret". People pitch the SE because it costs us $2.00 less on average to buy one than a Seagate. I don't believe for a second that people like PC eye do anywhere near enough volume to realize this.. I think people like him pitch them because they actually don't know any better and the mom and pop shop they buy them from pitches them for the two dollar savings.
I have over a dozen different suppliers, and you quickly get used to their product lines.. I have two or three low end suppliers that I have to be very picky what I buy off them.. and they pitch the WD SE. I then have three top tier suppliers.. And they pitch RE, Raptor and Seagate. They're also the ones that I buy my Asus, Supermicro, Corsair, etc. from.
However.. When you do significant volume, the savings add up in a hell of a hurry.. In other words.. If someone pitches you on an SE, they're thinking of their bottom line.. not yours.. and that's the last person in the world you want to trust or do business with. It's the person that says "spend the little extra and get a much better unit" or.. "we'll throw the better unit in for the same price".. That's the person you want to trust and do business with.
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