Question Seagate Constellation vs. Barracuda Pro?

CubsWin

Distinguished
Apr 20, 2012
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My nearly 4 year old Seagate Constellation ST3000NM0033 7200 RPM drive just failed, still within its 5 year warranty. I am requesting a warranty replacement, but does anyone have any opinion on the reliability of a refurbished Constellation drive versus a new Barracuda Pro? Would I be better off just buying a new Barracuda Pro and selling the refurbished Constellation that I get back from Seagate? Which of these is a better overall drive? If all things are even, I would obviously just wait for the refurb to arrive and use that, but if I can avoid problems down the road with a new Barracuda Pro, I may prefer to do that.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
My nearly 4 year old Seagate Constellation ST3000NM0033 7200 RPM drive just failed, still within its 5 year warranty. I am requesting a warranty replacement, but does anyone have any opinion on the reliability of a refurbished Constellation drive versus a new Barracuda Pro? Would I be better off just buying a new Barracuda Pro and selling the refurbished Constellation that I get back from Seagate? Which of these is a better overall drive? If all things are even, I would obviously just wait for the refurb to arrive and use that, but if I can avoid problems down the road with a new Barracuda Pro, I may prefer to do that.
If you're getting a warranty replacement, just use that.

While drive reliability may be known in aggregate, that does no good if your drive is the outlier that fails early.
All drives, new, used, refurb, ancient...should be treated as if they are going to die in the next 0.25 second.
All of them. HDD, SSD, NVMe, whatever.

A good backup routine is the One True Way to protect against a drive fail.