Seagate Barracuda 4 TB Internal SATA Hard Drive HDD 6Gb/s 256MB Cache 3.5 Inches (8.8 cm) for Computer Desktop PC (ST4000DM004)

After reading a lot of negative reviews I was not confident of buying online. I finally took my chances and bought the 4TB variant. Product was well packed and worked on 1st boot.
Immediately put it on extended 7 Hrs. diagnostic test to check for any bad sectors. Lucky enough to find NONE.
Read speed during tests found to be 100-150 MBPS. Write speed is 60-80 MBPS.
This is decent for a desktop drive considering the amount of storage you getting for price. Good VFM.
This is not for gaming, although you can run games from this drive but loading times will be higher.
Skip this HDD and buy an SSD if gaming is your preference.

Arrived safe and sound, packaged well. No SATA cable but that’s fairly standard (just mentioning it for people). My drive is nice and quiet, can’t hear it over case fans which are very quiet (Noctua fans) so that’s fantastic.

Speeds are good for a mechanical drive. You get a big burst speed writing to it then it will slow down. So really large files definitely take longer than an SSD but for say 5GB transfers it’s fairly negligible due to buffer. On larger files it will slow from burst speeds of 300-400MB/s down to 170MB/s or so. Slower if lots of smaller files. Obviously a huge difference from 550MB/s of a good SSD drive or 1400MB/s of a good NVMe drive but this is after all just a storage drive.

Price is great, solid performance, nice and quiet. No complaints here! If it were for any kind of proper backup drive I’d go for WD reds or similar but just for storing movies, tv shows or as an extra backup for your tablets/laptops etc it does the job nicely.

Recieved damaged and defective product, it doesn’t work, even when and if it show in the system, file can’t pe copied to it and then it vanish again from the system. I have raised a complaint with Amazon customer service, let’s see what happens. In the image attached if you see closely there are 2 small dents, and the drive make vibrations and sound with even my 5-6 year old 2tb baracuda doesn’t make. It’s seems like it’s either damaged or fake.

Vlotte schijf

The product should ideally be very good considering it is Seagate. However! It seems as if they are producing defective lots and dumping them in here, or the sellers and the couriers do not know or simply do not care about how a fragile, electronic item should be packed and handled (Check the packaging screenshots). I guess this happens only in India. The result is that a perfectly good hard disk is bound to fail on arrival, which is what happened to me.

The first drive I ordered was looking fine, but I had my suspicion because of the scanty packaging. Still I wanted to giev the seller a benefit of doubt. So I initialized the HDD and formatted it. Then I used a partition manager to clone my aging drive, but then I started hearing clicks and other weird noises. So I rebooted and the partition manager started up. But it could not recognise the disk. The error was “previous device configuation does not match”, and the disk was still whirring and clicking, as if it was trying to spin up but couldn’t. After a second reboot, the BIOS did not even detect the drive. So I had no choice other than asking for a replacement, which was handled nicely by Amazon.

The replacement arrived, and I did ran the Seatools for Windows on it. The tests showed no problems in the SMART (Self Monitoring and Reporting Technology) and short DST (Drive Self Tests) checks. Still, I started the long DST, and in the morning it showed failure, as seen in the screenshot. So, I have to return this drive. Amazon has initiated a refund, so kudos to them for handling this appropriately. But I have lost faith and ordering any fragile or electronic product online in India is a worthless exercise, to be succinct.

So, my advice is, if you are going to order hard disks, look for obvious signs of damage on the packaging and verify that it is packed properly as soon as the drive is delivered. Next, connect the drive and listen for the ‘spin up’. If you hear odd whirs and clicks, return or refund immediately. If there are no suspicious sounds, download Seatools for Windows from Google and perform all the tests on the drive as well. These tests may take two or three days, but it will save you a lot of trouble down the road.

Furthermore, I urge everyone to find your local retailer and order your PC parts from there, especially if you are a regular customer. There’s no point in ordering online considering how these people handle electronic items. You think 50% off is a good discount? You get 50% chances of receiving a working item. In my case it was 0% for the item and its replacement. So, buyer beware.

Stay away from this product!

This hard disc is good for video editors and graphic designers. Good data transfer speed from external hard drive to this hard drive is somewhere around 70 MBPS to 100 mbps. Average data transfer speed is around 90-95 mbps.