I have this drive for my HTPC in the living room, I use it for HD and Bluray back ups, just one BD can use up to 46 GB of data; so this drive is perfect for storing HD content.

Wasn't Damage complaining that Motherboard reviews get the least amount of attention? Seems like hard drive reviews (except the notable 1TB Desktar) are less noteworthy/practical to people out there.

Oh, and let's not forget the SSD 128GB for the lol-worthy price.

Yawn. Costs too much.

heh, whats the point of the slow raptors nowadays anyways? I was thinking of getting 3 x 250gb Caviars for a raid 0 setup. would have been nice to see something of the sort in the review for comparison.

Good review. If I was in the market for a drive now, 750 gigs is where it's at, and the desktop counterpart of this is what I'd want.

A two year extension of your warranty and a little extra performacne might be worth $70 in the enterprise world, but us desktop users are willing to risk it :-)

I'd like to hear a bit about the physical characteristics of the drive. I've seen some information about things like 'alignment ears' and 'connector latching' for the RE2 series. Does it have some above and beyond physical features that are lacking on other drives? Is this drive specificly designed for hot swap? Is that what the mean when they say: '3-stage electrical mating sequence'.

I've really had my eye on the 500Gig version of this drive with a RAID controller to get large storage fairly cheaply. You can build a nice NAS box/home media server for less than other people's packages solutions, one of the things that can make your home-build better is nice touches like good connections, robust components, and picking good parts.

I've also had enough 'false positive' failures in RAIDs that some of the time limited recovery cycles make good sense. And the 5 year warranty is a great bonus... a nice reward for not feeling the pain of losing your data because you were in a RAID.

edit: duh missed the read more somehow

It seems to me that TR is the new Storage review.

I just got an SE 16 00AKS 750gb, glorious glorious drive, quiet, fast - and well 3 year vs Seagates 5, who cares - the noise benefits are worth it.

Great review, looks like it's definitely not worth it for the average desktop user.

*first*weeeeeeee

Seems like the only interest this could have for an IT consultant is the larger warranty.

btw I was bummed to see my beloved Barracuda not do so well on the filecopy tests.