Reviews for Seagate Momentus 5400.3 ST980815A 80 GB Plug-in Module Hard Drive

Excellent Bang for the Buck

Strengths: high performance + low price = high value

Weakness: only 80GB

I bought this drive as an upgrade to my now 1-year-old Compaq R4000, which had a 4200rpm 60GB. The performance went from 19MB/s to 35.5MB/s. Add reduced latency inherent in a faster spinning drive and the performance was about doubled. I've had this for about 3 months now and according to S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics everything is A-OK. I paid $107US (after tax+shipping) and even then it was a great deal because of the performance over other drives.

Performance is nearly that of a non-perpendicular recording 7200rpm 2.5" drive. In my opinion 5400rpm are the sweet spot for laptops: not too slow, but not too power-hungry and hot. Performance is as follows:

-average read: 35.5MB/s
-maximum read: 46.2MB/s
-minimum read: 23.0MB/s
-average write: 35.5MB/s

For a full listing on 2.5" drive performance go to: www23.tomshardware.com...

...ST980815a is not listed, however, ST980811as is. This is the same drive but with different interfaces (ATA vs SATA), so the performance will be the same.

NOTE: Pricegrabber shows this as a serial ATA, it is not.

100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

New technology rocks ...

Strengths: Faster than 4200rpm ones; New Perpendicular Recording technology; very quiet; 5 year warranty.

Weakness: None to date.

My iBook G4 came with a Fujitsu 4200rpm 40GB HD in it. I made a decision to replace it with this Seagate new drive this Christmas. It has every feature I need: higher (80G) capacity; high speed 5400rpm; high 8MB cache; new perpendicular recording technology; FIVE years warranty and after all, affordable low price! I can say, this one is the best choice for an 80GB IDE notebook hard drive replacement.

Now I have been using it for one month. It boost the performance of my iBook so much, especially hard drive reading/writing intensive works, such as booting, file transferring, application loading, and it's always very quiet.

As to the heat it generated, I can not really feel it, although it is still cold winter now.

100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

very thin, nice drive

Strengths: Very thin for an 80 GB portable drive.

Weakness: not a weakness of the product but more of Seagate is that their vaunted 5 yr warranty replaces everything with refurbed items which half the time still don't work.

Very nice drive with a high spin rate and a very thin form factor. Great replacement drive to upgrade HD based MP3 / Media players. I have a beef with Seagates RMA policy of replacing everything with a refurbed item. Not the best policy at times.

0% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Solid Device...Solid Warranty...Solid Purchase

Strengths: Ease of installation, 5-year warranty, Excellent performance

Weakness: None to date

I am amazed at the stability our Dell laptop (Inspiron 8500) now has since installing this hard drive. With our 4 year old laptop, it was becoming more and more clear that our original hard drive was beginning to fail. XP functions were beginning to not work, and Dell messages were appearing stating that errors were being found on the hard drive.

With the Seagate, we simply plugged in the new drive where the old one resided, retightened the screw, and reloaded Window XP and other software (all this after backing up needed files, of course). Everything worked as expected from the start. Easy for the doityourselfer. With the ease of installation, high functionality, and 5-year Seagate warranty, we highly recommend this hard drive for anyone looking to upgrade to additional storage space or to replace an older, failing drive.

Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

ReviewGist for Seagate Momentus 5400.3 (ST980815A) 80 GB ATA-100 Hard Drive

Performance is Average according to 2 Hard Drive experts. -- "maximum speed SATA drive"-geek.com -- "Nearly 50 percent more performance than systems with 4200-RPM drives"-silentpcreview.com Read more to find expert opinions on more features like Technology, Noise, etc.

Read Full Review