Seagate Momentus 500 GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 16 MB Cache 2.5-Inch Internal Notebook Hard Drive - Retail Kit ST905003N3A1AS-RK

I am not going to say there is something wrong with these drives, because at the end of the day I'm only one guy with a bad experience. I'll just offer my review here so that people get a full perspective. I have had two of these fail on me in a row, failing offline SMART tests. When it was working, the drive was very fast and quiet, though, so I can certainly understand the high marks people give these drives when they work.

I think it is fair to say that Seagate is really running these at the ragged edge of what is possible. While the transfer rates can approach 90 Mb/s at the edge of the platter, according to a few quick tests I ran, the transfer rate fluctuates greatly, and the drive shows a pretty constant stream of software-corrected (ECC) errors. In other words, you're not losing data, but the data coming off the drive is on the border of what is readable, such that the drive needs to rely on error correction and/or rereads (hence the fluctuating speeds) to get the...Read more

I bought two of these new 500gb 2.5" Seagate drives (both with firmware 0002SDM1) to upgrade two of my MacBooks, spec'd out as follows:

MacBook Pro 15": MB134LL/A 15.4" 2.5Ghz Intel T9300 Core 2 Duo Penryn (stock Fuji 250gb 5400rpm SATA)

MacBook 13": MB404LL/A 13.3" 2.4Ghz Intel 8300 Core 2 Duo (upgraded Hitachi 320gb 7200rpm Travelstar)

I used GRC's SpinRite (an *awesome* utility) to pre-test the drives before install. I ran a level-4 test which examine, reads, and writes to each individual sector twice without any OS or drive level error correction. This test took about 28hrs per 500gb drive. Both drives tested 100% with no bad sectors and within spec on ECC error correction utilization. You can bet that on a drive as data-dense as these 2.5" 2-platter 500gb drive that the ECC will be very well utilized over time.

I used Xbench (another great utility) to get the following specs on my pre-upgraded systems (cumulative score of...Read more

My drive started to make a loud "clunk" sound about a week after I installed it. I just spoke with Seagate warranty department and they said that it would cost me $19.95 to have them ship me a new drive under warranty. The warranty rep said that neither he nor his managers have the authority to waive this fee.

It'll cost me nothing to return it to the retailer as defective, so I'll do that today instead.

Edited on 10/14/09 to add:

The replacement drive has already started to rattle and it occasionally makes a clunking sound like the first one that I returned. Based on my limited experience with this product, it seems to have a high defect rate and poor warranty service.