Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[jkhademi]

I just purchased two 1.5GB Expansion drives at Office Depot, described as 7200RPM spindle speed, expecting them to be Barracuda 7200.11 or .12 or something like that...

Seagate's own .pdf of the drives (ST15005EXA101-RK) describes them as 7200RPM drives as well:

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?name=st315005exa101-rk-expansion-desktop-usb-1_5tb-hd&vgnextoid=c5df13edb13df110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD&locale=en-US#tTabContentOverview

http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_ext_desktop.pdf 

When I pop the case open, lo-and-behold...they are the low power 5900 RPM, click of death drives model number:

ST31500541AS 

http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_barracuda_lp.pdf

Office Depot tag (which I still have) says 7200.

Seagate website confirms 7200 on the "as packaged" external drive.

Actual drive inside the box is 5900 low power drive. 

So...what gives Seagate?

[Cantbecanit]

Are you sure it's not a case that Office Depot have sent you two incorrect drives?

 I'd be chasing Office Depot up first for the correct spec drives and let them chase Seagate if Seagate have supplied the wrong packaging.

Sounds like you have 541's when they should be 341's, deffo wanna chase it, nothing much in it price wise, the ones you got are about £4 cheaper, but thats not the point, chase it mate, I'm sure it's gonna be a clerical error.

Message Edited by Cantbecanit on 12-27-2009 04:34 AM

[jkhademi]

Thanks for the reply Cantbecanit.

I picked up the drives at Office Depot, and checked that their SKU's matched the SKU's on the packaging.

(I've had this problem before that Office Depot pulled the wrong SKU's).

They match. 

I typed in the part number off the the SEAGATE SUPPLIED PACKAGING, not the office depot packaging.

That is, I typed in the SEAGATE part number off the orignal SEAGATE cardboard box still in shrinkwrap.

That part number directed me to the SEAGATE .pdf I posted describing the drive as 7200 external USB 2.0 drive. 

I'm using these drives internally in a MacPro, so I break apart the SEAGATE plastic enclosure housing the drive, and looked up the actual part number of the physical drive.  That part number is the part number of the 5400 drive.

So...yes...I think it a clerical error...on SEAGATE's part...

Now what? 

[Cantbecanit]

Contact Office Depot first to see if they can help, if not raise it with Seagate C/S, either way neither of them have a legal leg, you ordered one and paid for one, and received what you didn't order, don't let go of it, document it, photograph the drive stickers, and your order form/receipt, mail them to the correct ppl and wait for a response, I doubt this has been done intentionally, it could be a batch of drives that perhaps a new employee put together wrong, if it is Seagate doing it then thats not right, maybe you could ask Office Depot to open another at their end to confirm if it's just yours or a batch, legally you have them both over a barrel.

[HughR]

Getting warranty support is very likely more work than just taking them back to OD and returning them for a refund.  Of course you have a right to get what was advertised but sometimes getting compliance takes a lot of effort.  Of course you could try to get Seagare of OD to fix things and do a return only if that takes too much effort.  I assume that OD would take them back with no restocking fee if you did it promptly.

[AlanM]

Thank you for bringing that mistake to my attention.  I will work to get the files changed on our website and track down the documentation problem.

You may of course follow up with Office Depot and/or the Seagate Warranty department for correction, so I don't mean to say you can't.  Let me just say, however, that a 5900 RPM drive is actually an advantage in a USB drive like this one.  In a USB drive, the speed bottleneck, that is, the part of the drive -> computer interface where everything slows down is the USB cable, not the RPMs of the drive itself, or the computer processor (generally) or the drive read speed or whether the drive is ATA or SATA.  USB 2.0 is, let's face it, a slow interface, but it is of course very convenient and ubiquitous - it's everywhere.

So, all that to say is that you're not losing any performance with a 5900 drive as opposed to a 7200.  And since it turns more slowly, the drive will draw less power, and will produce less heat.  

I'd much prefer a 5900 USB drive to a 7200, personally. 

Now, if we were talking a drive INSIDE a PC, that's totally different because the performance bottleneck would be different, but in this case I'd say you're actually better off in the real world.  

[jkhademi · Accepted solution]

Thanks all.  Office Depot took the drives back.

Of course, one of them was "broken open" so they sent it back to wherever.

The other...still in the shrinkwrap...was placed back out for sale by the assistant manager of Office Depot...

I didn't say anything.  

I wanted to though... 

[AlanM]

Well, there is nothing at all wrong with the drive, and it's perfectly OK for being sold.  I'm not sure why that would be a problem...

[steveteltx]

Wow. How about the fact that it's a misslabeled product being sold as something that it is not. If that does NOT strike someone as a problem, then, I suppose that is PROOF that there is, in fact, a problem.