I'm after a simple thing that Seagate announced last July time: a 500GB 2.5" drive spinning at 7200RPM.

It appears after a scant 6 months that they are just about shipping. But not in the UK.

So I guess we'll see these in about 6 months then?

Come on Seagate, get it together. With 6 month delays, reduction of warranty on some stuff and the recent firmware debacle, you could be doing a little better.

... does it work? If it's anything like that 1.5TB Barracuda that constantly locked up thanks to the firmware bug (and Seagate not making it easy to fix), I won't be buying or recommending this drive.

Incidentally, the WD drive that replaced that Barracuda has been flawless ...

"Incidentally, the WD drive that replaced that Barracuda has been flawless ..."

One woulf hope so, how long have you had it ....a week ?

Such reliability. I'll definetly be buying WD on the results of this long term study into drive reliabilty with such a large sample population too !

It will fail soon - better make a backup (daily)

YOU HAVE BIN WARNED!

... it lasted a lot longer without problems than the Seagate drives. :D For being the king of capacity and generally having a good rep, the Seagate should have at least worked. Shouldn't have to beg Seagate and convince them I have a problem to get a firmware update for a widely spread problem.

I've never had any problems with WD drives. Been running the original Raptors for over 4 years.

I've had some great Seagate drives, which is why I tried it. But the 1.5TB was crap. Just read up about it online.

Did you also the think the old Deathstar's were great drives too?

YMMV.