Review on 💾 Seagate BarraCuda 5TB Internal Hard Drive HDD – 2.5 Inch SATA 6 Gb/s 5400 RPM 128MB Cache - Ideal for Computer Desktop PC (ST5000LM000) by Kevin Huot

UPDATE 4/10/2018: I've kept the title of this review as originally posted so that people who have already read it can still find it. MY ORIGINAL REVIEW IS 100% FALSE - BOTH WHEELS I PURCHASED WERE REMOVED FROM SEAGATE OUTER CASES AND SOLD AS NEW WHEELS IN THE OCEANSIDE STORE. Although these discs are technically new (never used), THEY ARE NOT COVERED BY THE SEAGATE WARRANTY. I only found out about this when I got a call from Seagate AFTER they had already informed me that the drives were covered by Seagate's warranty (read my original post below). I asked a Seagate manager to escalate this issue to their management to let me know why one of their employees told me that my drives had a warranty expiration date error and that my drives are now covered under the Seagate warranty. The manager informed me that the Seagate rep who informed me that my drives were covered by the Seagate warranty did not check all the databases that he was supposed to check. If so, I would FIRST learn that the drives are not covered by the Seagate warranty. NETWORK NOTICE - ACTUATORS SOLD BY OCEANSIDE SHOP ARE NOT WARRANTED BY SEAGATE. I actually spoke to the Oceanside Store and they told me they would give a 2 year drive warranty. Seagate has informed me that the Oceanside Store is not an authorized Seagate dealer. So, buyer beware (buyer beware) — you'll need to call whether you want a Seagate warranty or an Oceanside Store warranty. ******SEAGATE HAS AN ISSUE WITH THE WARRANTY RECORDS THAT AFFECT THE WARRANTY EXPIRATION DATE FOR THIS HARD DRIVE. THE PROBLEM IS SEAGATE, NOT AMAZON OR OCEANSIDE STORE. let me explain. I have ordered two (2) Seagate Barracuda ST4000LM024 4TB 2.5" Hard Drives from the Oceanside Store manufactured by Revain. I've read some negative Revain reviews about this drive about how Revain shipped Oceanside Store supplied drives that were supposedly removed from external drive enclosures and sold as new post warranty drives. Based on these reviews, I called Seagate as soon as I received my drives (March 28, 2018) to verify their warranty status. I was told that both drives are out of warranty - same day - December 13th 2017. I thought that was quite a coincidence. So I decided to check a few things just to make sure the problem was with the Oceanside Store and not Seagate before calling the Oceanside Store to complain. First I googled if the disc was available from other online retailers. No, not at B&H Photo - they actually showed it was out of stock. I couldn't find it on Fry either (but maybe I missed it). From that point on, I began to wonder if the drive was the model currently shipped. So I checked the Seagate website and indeed the ST4000LM024 is already on sale. So if this is the current drive, why wasn't it widely available? I never answered this question but thought I'd check the Seagate user manual for the ST4000LM024 to see when the drive was first released. In the change history of the operating instructions, 07/19/2016 is given. So how did my 2 year warranty already expire if the discs were only introduced in July 2016 and it is now March 2018 assuming I have the discs from the first batch released in 2016 which was highly unlikely? Something went wrong. So I called Seagate again. This time I asked them to let me know when the ST4000LM024 was first released. I was held for about 15 minutes, which struck me as odd. When the support guy came back online he told me that the CD was originally released "somewhere between Q3 and Q4 2017". The support guy already figured out that the warranty end date of 12/13/2017 was an incorrect date. The fact that he took 15 minutes to answer my question about the original release date was basically spent exposing the fact that the warranty period on both of my drives was fake! He said that there was a bug in their warranty system that caused the date 12/13/2017 to be entered incorrectly. He immediately updated the warranty on both of my drives to 12/17/2019. I've been in the computer industry for 30 years and have seen miscalculations like this from manufacturers before, particularly Seagate. Don't get me wrong Seagate makes a great product but they have always had issues with customer service (which has improved a lot in the last 3 years!) and record keeping. With that in mind, I would advise anyone buying one of the 2.5-inch 3TB, 4TB, or 5TB hard drives to call Seagate to confirm the warranty expiration date is correct. If you don't call and your drive fails, you may hear that your warranty has already expired. At this point, it's too late to force them to change the warranty expiration date on your drive. Top of the negative reviews. I have not yet installed or used these drives, but based on my past experience with Seagate drives in general I would give these drives a 4 star and 'intermediate' rating.