Review: Seagate 3.5" Barracuda 500GB Hard Drive

In more recent years I have always opted to have an internal backup hard drive in my computer, some place to backup and store important data, files and photos should the main hard drive fail. And fail, they do. There is nothing more frustrating or aggravating than having your computer's hard drive crash or become corrupted. Some means of keeping backup data, whether it be internal or external, is essential. After a while, you have so much "stuff" that your hard drive is no longer big enough. Such was my case with the most resent computer glitch. My old backup hard drive just was not big enough to hold all my "stuff" while I reformatted and reloaded the primary hard drive.

Installing a secondary hard drive was usually a fairly easy task, and much easier with the newer computers and the more user-friendly operating systems with "Plug and Play" such as Microsoft's Windows XP, Vista or Windows &. On all my previous hard drive installations, it was necessary to move a jumper to set the second hard drive to operate as the slave drive. I was a bit puzzled when I discovered that the new Barracuda 500GB hard drive had no such option. How was this going to work? Undaunted, I installed the new hard drive.

The Barracuda 500GB hard drive, part number 9DB648-552, comes with the new SATA cabling. SATA cabling is a lot different than the cabling used on older hard drives and computers. No longer is the data transferred via a big ribbon cable. If your computer does not support the new SATA data cabling, this hard drive is not for you. The Barracuda hard drive does come with a SATA data cable and an adaptor cable for the DC power to the hard drive.

Once the new hard drive was physically installed, I powered up the computer. I expected the "Plug and Play" to recognize the new hard ware, but it did not. Being a typical male, I had not bother to read the directions. Without the software in the utility disk, the computer was not going to recognize the new Barracuda hard drive. Once the software on the utility disk was installed, the computer recognized the new hard drive and the DiscWizard guided me through the setup.

The DiscWizard is a great software package. You do not have to be a computer guru. You have the option of setting up partitions during the setup and even transferring all the data from your old master drive and making the new Barracuda hard drive the master drive. The well-designed installation software recognizes potential mistakes during the setup and gives you the opportunity to make corrections. I was pleased with how easy it was to setup.

The Seagate 3.5" 500MB Barracuda hard drive is designed for Windows 2000 Pro, XP, Vista or Windows 7 operating systems, and it also supports Power Mac G5 and newer running Mac OSX operating systems. The Barracuda hard drive runs at 7200 RPM with a 3Gb/s data rate and offers a 5-year manufacturer's warranty.