Don't buy oem hard drives online (2008-11-20)
Big and quiet. Five year warranty.
Much faster than my drives from just 3 years ago (though this is true with most new model Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi, and Samsung drives).

I buy most of my computer parts, CDs, DVDs, books, etc online.
But I never buy OEM harddrives online. Every site with reviews has customers complaining about drives being DOA or, far worse, going dead two months later. And the reviews mention shoddy packaging.

Hard drives are delicate, the retail boxes are specially designed to absorb shock.

If you have a 1000 gig hard drive full of data, would you rather

a) have it been bought in a specially designed retail box that was delivered to a store as part of a large palette?

or

b) had it wrapped in bubble wrap, placed in a small individual box, and thrown around in several shipping warehouses before you got it.

dead after 3 weeks (2008-11-07)
Just a little over 3 weeks old and it died. Seagate's poor overseas tech support, of no help, they offer to send a `refurbished' drive (a used one) to replace what I purchased NEW. Called Seagate Corporate, no help, selecting numbers to more automated script recorded voices. No option to get to a real person or a operator. Good bye Seagate, poor service, poor drive. Save you money. Run from this company.

terrible packaging (2008-10-30)
While I believe this hard drive is an excellent product, the shipping practices are terrible. The drive was loose in the inner box, the fragile circuitry exposed to every bump. The drive did not work as a result, and I sent it back for a refund. I have since bought the same drive from a competitor for more, but it arrived safely, secured in the plastic bookends, and works quietly and quickly in my Mac Pro.

works as expected. (2008-10-27)
I installed two 1TB barracuda disks into it. Formatted them, and was able to copy over files in just about 30 minutes from opening it from the box.

1 Bad, 1 Good (2008-10-25)
I purchased two of these for use in a Drobo. One went bad in a week and now, a month later, I am still awaiting replacement from the vendor. I choose Seagate after a recent round of Western Digital failures, and the fact that Seagate has a major R&D center in my hometown. Sort of a support the "local" guy mentality. I hope I did not make a bad decision.