SpeedStepSeagate DESKTOP 3.5 inch Drives are Very Very Very Very Very bad now.
Click Click Click Data Gone DEAD.
They claim a firmware fix solved this.
Thats a Lie.
Try buying a Western Digital Caviar Blue.
About how I feel about Western Digital drives. Used to love them before the recent failures (especially with new drives ... DOA or lasting a week or so). Still have a bunch of older WD installed though ... I like Black 7200's (most Blacks have dual-core controllers). They have a new Red series that looks nice also.
I'm doing this now to avoid problems:
1. Buy only drives in retail packaging (some non-retail or OEM bare drive packaging is really bad and I'm sure it's damaging drives).
2. Buy local if possible (no UPS destruction trip).
3. Buy 2tb drives (or smaller) if possible (less platters).
4. Avoid old implementations of Advanced Format tech. All manufacturers seemed to have growing pains with this tech.
Recently got a couple of new 2tb Seagate Barracuda Greens (for Storage) ... working really nice, cool temp, and cheap too (finally again ... after the shortage).
ST2000DL003-9VT166 Adv.Format, Green 5900rpm, 64mb, 6Gps, 4ms, 5yrs. warranty