Seagate 7200.12 1TB SATA Hard Drive - $35 after MIR

[Ian]

Add the Seagate 7200.12 1TB Serial ATA 3Gb/s Internal Hard Drive to your cart for $69.99

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... No=4691122

Pay via Google Checkout and it drops to $64.99

This $30 mail-in rebate knocks it to $34.99

http://static.highspeedbackbone.net/reb ... 5114%20(US).pdf

Ground shipping is only $4.96.

Thanks to i4u.com for the deal.

[stix]

nice deal. Interesting rebate: for $3 they will expedite the rebate. If you mail in the rebate and the drive fails, can you still return it to TigerDirect ? probably not.

feedback at online sites would suggest fairly high (over 20%) failure rate of these drives among consumers. wonder how the WDs compare. related to this: I have a theory that it is better to buy hard drives locally at a store, rather than to have them sent by various shippers and drop-kicked around in small shipping boxes with sometimes less than wonderful packaging.

I looked at Seagate 1TB drives yesterday at Microcenter, they have a store here. $59.99 on sale. no rebate. also very tempting.

[TheWizard]

Yeah, the OEM/bare drives are not always packed the best from online merchants, regardless of the make and model of the drive. It's safer if you order a retail kit from an online store, at least you know it has the added protection of the retail box.

Also, I concur that these Seagate drives have a high failure rate, I had one that is no more than a year old die on me. What happened to Seagate? Their quality control used to be much better.

I would jump all over the $59.99 at Microcenter! If only I had a Microcenter near me. For the price, especially after the rebate if you buy from TigerDirect, it's hard to pass up this deal. Since the high failure rate makes these drives a risk, just use it as a backup HDD.

[Shaman]

Admittedly my three (3) Serial ATA 3Gb/s Internal Seagate hard drives inside my Mac Pro (early 2008):ST3500320AS;ST3500630AS PST31000528AS are between 2 and 1 years old. And my two external hard drives7200.12 1TB Serial ATA 3Gb/s housed in OWC's Mercury Elite-AL Pro aluminum cases also 2 years old. Not one problem. Oh and my older additional two external Seagate hard drives used for Dell Laptop circa 2003 not one problem. And my Free Agent Go I TB with optional dock that includes USB ports and backup software that backups flawlessly with one click and clones my Win7 Fusion Partition now nearly one year old also performs flawlessly. I am mentioning these drives merely to provide my experience of reliable and flawless operation from Seagate drives with several different models over the years. Of course, I am not discounting other users experiences or to imply that Seagate drives can not fail. My experience with WD with two exceptions (one internal 1998 to 2008 and one external 2003 and still going) has been on the negative side. As for dealing with Internet vendors like OWC or New Egg or Buy.com, I've never had a single problem with shoddy service or packaging. Feel fortunate about that experience as well. Good fortune to everyone.
Best,
Richard

[Shaman]

Update on my last post above. Yesterday, out of the blue, one of my 3 ATA Serial 3Gb/s Internal Seagate hard drives (500 GB) died. No warning. One minute HD3 icon was on the desktop the next minute, the icon disappeared. Swapped Bay 3 with the Seagate in Bay 4 and only HD4 showed. No HD3. My bootcamp partition was on that drive. Though backed up on a Free Agent external USB I was not happy! Bought that drive in early 2009. Though this has been the first Seagate to fail out of 7, I am a bit taken back. Not even 2 years old. Merely posting this outcome because of my last post above. Best, Richard

[stix]

... Update on my last post above. Yesterday, out of the blue, one of my 3 ATA Serial 3Gb/s Internal Seagate hard drives (500 GB) died. No warning. ...

Sorry to hear that. Should be under warranty, right? Would be curious to hear how it goes if you take 'em up on the warranty.

[Dartman]

Well, knock on wood, all my old Seagate 7200.10 drives still work and even a used garage sale Maxtor that I accidentally broke the SATA connector on then glued the thing back in with one broken ground strip. It's a Seagate 7200.10 too.
I usually get about 5 years out of any drive but I did have one of the old Maxtors fail after only being in service for 6 months, another lasted almost 10 years but it was a old school true Maxtor drive.
Now I always turn on the SMART utility in the bios to try to get some advanced warning and back things up with ghost or something, plus keep all my data spread out between 4 drives.
Pretty sure all the new Seagates have 3 years again, they had 5 back when the .10 drives were out.