Seagate Barracuda 250GB SATA 8MB 7200RPM Hard Drive Review

Bottom-Line: The most reliable hard drive on the market; I buy no other and I have yet to have a Seagate drive crash. 

I recently purchased a new Dell Dimension E510 tower computer on which I installed Windows 2003 Standard Edition, Microsoft Exchange 2003 Standard Edition, SharePoint Portals Server 2003, and SQL Server 2000 SP3.  The newly minted server act also acts as a Domain Controller.  For all this I needed space, and room to grow.  I ordered the E510 with a 250GB SATA ATA-150 hard drive, but I decided that I needed an additional 250GB hard drive onto which I would store data from SQL server. 

Fortunately for me, hard drive prices continue to drop even as actual capacity expands.  So my new 250GB hard drive would cost me less than $100.00.  I decided on a Seagate drive because I have found them to be quiet, reliable, and inexpensive.  Western Digital may be a little less expensive, but the company has reliability issues.  So, I surfed over to Newegg.com and ordered a Seagate 250GB SATA bare bones hard drive (HHD).  

The Drive

I like Seagate hard drives; they are comparable in price the Maxtor, which Seagate just bought, and the trouble prone Western Digital's, but in my estimation, they represent a far more reliable option then the two other brands and the company has around since the beginning of the PC revolution.  I choose Seagate 250GB SATA solution because of the price point, company reputation for strong customer support, and past experience with Seagate products.    

The Seagate 250GB Internal HHD is a high-capacity, compact, lightweight, flexible, and durable, 7200.8-RPM drive with 8MB cache that meets all of my current-and future-database storage needs.  I bought the drive barebones, which partially account for its price, but it also meant that the drive shipped to me without a power or SATA cable; no worries, the computer had a power cable and the 90 degree SATA cable was easily obtained via the Internet.  Seagate designed the 250GB SATA HHD with built-in self-monitoring technology that continuously checks the hard drive for data safety and drive performance.  This is a bonus for me since I do not routinely do a manual check on my servers, but rely on automated tools to warn me of problems.

The Seagate 250GB Internal SATA HHD can be connected to your computer with a standard SATA data and power cables, and set up via the BIOS. 

My Viewpoint                

As I stated at the outset, I bought this drive to serve as database storage medium for SQL Server installation.  The (very quiet) drive has no other use; I have set it up and now it just runs; I leave it on continuously, though it is set to power down when not in use for an hour.  This can be accomplished via Windows power options setting under the Display applet in control panel.            

Since installing the Seagate 250GB Internal SATA HHD over a year ago, the drive has performed flawlessly.  The drive is a high capacity, flexible, reliable (thus far), piece of equipment that warrants serious consideration if you need a large capacity, reliable internal hard drive. 

Drive Specifications:

• Model #: ST3250823AS
• Capacity: 250GB
• Average Seek Time: 8ms (milliseconds)
• Buffer Size: 8MB
• Rotational Speed: 7,200RPM
• Interface: Serial ATA-150
• Connector: 7-pin Serial ATA
• Average Latency: 4.14ms
• Size/ Type: 3.5" / Internal