I've learned a lesson - NEVER to buy hard disks from 3rd party sellers on Amazon OR even Amazon unless it comes in a frustration free packaging. Anything else means the hard disks are placed inside large boxes without any protection, allowing them to bounce around and arrive defective. I've had this situation happen to me on several occasions.
This time, it came in frustration free packaging, Ordered 4 of 2 TB hard disks, each one in its box and fully protected. They arrived in working condition and all have passed extensive testing.
Purchased these when they were on special for $59 instead of $65, not bad, not much price difference if any, between 1TB and 2TB, so it's a good value - HOWEVER, be aware here that those inexpensive 2TB drives (with 256MB cache or even 128) are SMR drives, I do not recommend them for a system OS drive - SMR drives overlap tracks (like shingles) once you have used up all the non SMR area and do some deleting files and replacing files, speeds can get extremely slow down to 10MB/s or less. For small files, no problem, the 256MB more than makes up for it, but once the cache is full, the speeds will plummet. This only concerns write speeds. I was fully aware that these drives were SMR. They make excellent backup drives and cold storage, the read speed is unaffected by SMR. I've gotten speeds in the 170-200MB/s for read. Perfect for backing up and cold storage - for a System OS or for applications where you are going to do a lot of file deletion, stick to PMR drives or SSDs if you can afford them.
The non SMR versions of the 2TB are more expensive of course.
| RAM | 256 MB |
|---|---|
| Hard Drive | 8 TB Mechanical Hard Disk |
| Brand | Seagate |
| Series | ST8000DM004 |
| Item model number | ST8000DM004/ST800DMZ04 |
| Hardware Platform | PC |
| Product Dimensions | 14.71 x 10.16 x 2.62 cm; 41 g |
| Item dimensions L x W x H | 14.7 x 10.2 x 2.6 Centimetres |
| Flash memory size | 8 |
| Hard Disk Interface | Serial ATA |
| Hard drive rotational speed | 5400 RPM |
