Seagate BarraCuda 6 TB Internal Hard Drive HDD – 3.5
Seagate BarraCuda 6 TB Internal Hard Drive HDD – 3.5 Inch SATA 6 Gb/s 5400 RPM 256 MB Cache for Computer Desktop PC (ST6000DM003)
Reliability and Innovation
All BarraCuda hard drives come equipped with MTC technology for optimised read/write. Users can also gain access to a global team of recovery experts with purchase of BarraCuda drives. *
*Rescue Data Recovery Plans are not available in all countries.
 |  |  | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capacity | Up to 8 TB | Up to 14 TB | Up to 2 TB |
| Performance | Fast | Faster | Fastest |
| Key Feature | Versatility | Maximum capacity | Flash-enhanced |
| Form Factor | 3.5-inch, 2.5-inch | 3.5-inch desktop | 3.5-inch, 2.5-inch |
| Data Recovery Plan | Optional | Included | Optional |
| Weight: | 610 g |
| Dimensions: | 14.7 x 10.19 x 2.61 cm; 610.08 Grams |
| Brand: | Seagate |
| Model: | ST6000DM003 |
| Colour: | Silver |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Manufacture: | Seagate |
| Dimensions: | 14.7 x 10.19 x 2.61 cm; 610.08 Grams |
I’m using this in my NAS server. Had no problems with speed or stability. If using it in a PC it would work fine for game storage but please get an SSD for your operating system. It’ll be the best purchase you ever make.
When I bought it I thought that because it was very large it would take long to open things but nothing wrong has happened and I would recommend it if you play a lot of games on your pc
Bought this to replace the 6TB Western Digital which died after 4 months of random usage. It works well and value for money.
Well packed, new drive, Windows recognised the drive instantly and no issues reported. Read and write speeds are okay.
A nice basic drive that seems to be more then quick enough as the second drive in my HP laptop. Quiet and doesn’t get hot.
Been using for a few weeks without issue, but will update if found to be unreliable.
Very fast and efficient was slightly finicky to install in my pc but believe that was an issue on my end
Bought as an upgrade for the ogxbox, did not disappoint. Would recommend to other Xbox users. Game on!
Item received quickly but was delivered rattling around in a box far too big. Also did not come in manufactures packing just loose in a tatty cardboard box.
As in the title, the HDD is an absolute tank for storage. 2TB at this price is immense and I have gotten good usage out of it. Just don’t store your OS on it, as it tends to lag behind quite drastically. I’d suggest pairing this with a Samsung SSD and keeping the HDD for file storage. It’s quick enough to play off of, but not quick enough to be used solo.
Not all that much to say about a hard drive. I installed it to replace my old 1TB drive, managed to move all my data over (using Macrium Reflect, file explorer is not great for mass transfers I learnt). It is now working great!
The disc didn’t last long and while removing it from the cradle I inadvertently tried to take a screw out of the drive and damaged the head so could not return it.
The only reason it gets 4 stars is its not been im computer all that long but the make has a solid reputation. I have had several and they have have been fine. Please not this not a plug & play item, you have configure the drive to what you require
Have always used Seagate or western digital. Recently had an issue with a Seagate just outside of 5 year warranty, not an issue. (Unlike Western and their unreliable cluster size conversion with their inbuilt PCB boards always breaking down). Seagate swapped it out with an upgrade to larger storage due to time scales. So buy with confidence. Only downside is the 5400rpm – but cant seem to find cost effective 7200rpm for audio/video editing but this works ell for storing large audio files.
You need to Know how to format a drive in Windows 10 because it will not show up as a useable drive.
You need to use Disk Manager to set the drive up for windows 10 to be able to format the new drive. A bit of a learning curve here not helped by the manufacturer.
Failed just outside warranty Seagate replaced also it was not supposed to be for resale I didnt notice when I bought it but they still replaced it.
After looking at other manufacturers warranties I will stick with Seagate their after sales service was/is impressive.
I bought a Toshiba to use to copy the data before I wipe it but that was faulty so I still required a temporary drive so.. I check all the manufacturers warranties and I could not find how to claim under warranty so I bought another Samsung
i use this since buying for external storage placed on my desk with pc wires coming out of the back case. yes “dangerous” but its not if you are not clumsy and place it in a safe spot even touching it is fine if youre not static i guess. of course not recommended to touch it and all but yeh mines outside of the pc placed on cardboard strips to keep it from touching the wood. worked well ever since doing so had no issues dust on it wont do a thing literally just try to keep it clean tho but yeh it works like it would else where
At less than 80 for 4TB this drive performs really well. Brought to replace an ageing Seagate 500GB drive that was still working well after over 10 years of daily use, it was just no longer big enough for 2021.
3.65TB of the stated 4TB is available for storage. Transfer times are also more than acceptable, just remember it isn’t a Samsung SSD :).
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Also not too bad for games. I store my OS and multiplayer games on NVME drives but I use this for single player games where quick load times are not as essential. Performs well on this front too, cant fault it at all. Although my whole steam library isnt fitting on 4TB 🙂
For the price an easy 10/10.
Bought it to install into my laptop as it only had 200GB storage and I knew that wouldn’t be enough for games and school.
It wasn’t that hard to install, but it was my very first time doing so I had to video call my boyfriend for help because honestly I was a little confused.
Overall it’s pretty good! For 2TB i really can’t complain about anything, all my games are installed on it and even big ones take like 5 seconds max to load.
An excellent drive, typical Seagate. Ok, it deffo lacks the speed of an SSD, but an SSD cannot touch the Seagates storage capacity for the price I paid. Now my question was how the new Barracuda stood up against the old Barracuda with regards to read/write speeds. This was quite a surprise. The older model (version prior to using the eye catching green label). The older model was faster in both read and write operation’s by about 20MB/sec. I couldn’t be arsed setting up a raid config but I’m guessing we would still see the new drives being out performed by the older Drives.
The price of the new ‘Cuda’ was for 2 TB a little over 50, or a little under 60, I have seen 4TB for 70 squid which is about the same as a 1TB SSD.
Anyway, back to the Cuda. For the price if blistering speed aint that necessary and you just require quite a bit of storage the Seagate Barracuda will suffice with its lovely slim profile sitting noiselessly below my rather bulky WD Blue Label, The Barracuda serves a purpose and does it well. The thing remaining is reliability, hmmm. WTF, its a Seagate ffs, It’ll prolly outlast me Ha, RECOMMENDED, .
I had a couple of instances were my six and a half year old laptop booted up and the harddisk was not available, so I took this as a sign it should be replaced. As I was also running out of room on the existing disk, I decided to go for a disk with double the capacity. That is the reason I selected this disk. A known make and a reasonable price.
I used a USB to SATA adapter to connect the drive initially to the laptop and the free version of Macrium Reflect to clone the existing disk on to the new one. Once done I shutdown the laptop and removed its’ battery before opening the access hatch and replacing the existing disk. So far everything seems great and no boot failures anymore. I did also alter the disk partitions to make use of the extra space.
Not a lot else to say. It solved two problems I was having and so far no problems. A good solution to anyone in the same position.
Obviously a fantastic drive for the money and great storage cap. Buy this drive absolutely, it’s a fab product!!!!
However the way on which it was shipped is quite frankly unacceptable. Inside a plastic bag (not even ESD safe) and inside a box, no package protection. Simply put, this drive is pre-compromised out of the box, I shall not even risk putting in my rig and will be sending it right back!
AMAZON DO BETTER! HDD Drives are sensitive to mechanical shock! Shipping is horrible for bare drives!
The drives are perfect, not a problem with them. I bought 2x 2TB 3.5″ drives.
The box it came in was left at my front door, not neatly placed, but on its side propped against the door and I’d guess it was not placed down gently, more tossed. The box included air-bag packaging, but only on the top of the drives. THERE WAS NO PROTECTION FOR THE DRIVES BEING KNOCKED ON THE BOTTOM OF THE BOX.
It’s a gamble ordering these drives from Amazon, I’m showing you what score I got.
PMR: Perpendicular Magnetic Recording
This is the technology inside of most hard drives. With PMR data is written to and read from circular tracks on a spinning platter.
SMR: Shingled Magnetic Recording
This type of drive overlaps recording tracks to store data at a lower cost than PMR technology. The downside occurs when data is deleted and that space is reused. If existing data overlaps the space you want to reuse, this can mean delays in writing the new data. These drives are great for archive storage (write once, read many) use cases, but if your files turn over with some regularity, stick with PMR drives.
When I’m buying a spinning rust hard drive, ultimately the only thing I’m looking for is value for money. These days if read/write performance really matters to you, buy an SSD. If reliability really matters to you, just buy more than one spinning rust drive and run a RAID configuration, especially since setting up RAID has been so easy since Windows 8.
And this is why I like this drive. It’s performance is fine, though I wouldn’t use it for an application that needs super high speed read/write, and I’ve got a couple of them in my box running together so I’m not concerned if one of them dies.
This is a decent quality, good value drive that you shouldn’t rely on by itself, but if you use it sensibly, it’s very useful for the money.
I purchased this 8TB drive as a backup volume to replace a dying 4TB Seagate drive. It arrived earlier than estimated, well packaged, via Royal Mail, requiring a signature. The drive seems to be a good basic model. Inspection with SeaTools and CrystalDiscInfo found no problems and verified that it was brand new. It came pre-partitioned in NTFS into 2.1 and 5.1 TB sections (7.2TB is all the usable space on any 8TB disc when it is formatted, alas), but it was two minutes work with the freeware version of AOEMI Partion Assistant software to make it one large volume as I wanted (lots of other free software is also available and would presumably have done the same as well).
I wanted this drive to work on an old 32-bit Windows XP operating system, and as many people have discovered, XP can’t see hard drives bigger than 2.1TB. However, in the old days Seagate (and others) got round that by including a cunning little chip in the “bridge” hardware in their external hard drive cases that fooled XP into thinking that 4MB clusters were 512K clusters and, well, short version is it allowed XP systems to see bigger volumes – like my 4TB drive that was failing. So I swapped out the old 4TB drive inside that Seagate case with my new 8TB one, using the same bridge, and… hey, presto, my XP system is happy with its new 8TB (well, 7.2TB) hard drive! I empahsise that this would only be possible using that generation of drive cases pre about 2016 that includes the little wonder chip. I’m hoarding mine like gold dust. This trick with that bit of tech should theoretically let XP see drives up to just under 17TB.
Anyway, so far I’m very satisfied with this purchase, which came promptly and did everything a budget large hard drive is supposed to do.
I did not by new hard disks for quite a while. However, time came to a new upgrade. I needed something reliable with enough capacity to store my MSDN and Steam libraries. After long consideration and good memories from the past I choose Seagate BarraCuda 4Tb. So, there is my positive points about this disk:
1. This is very good value for money, because the next step in capacity is 6Tb which cost is more than my mental barrier – 100UKP.
2. This disk is very small, light and definitely well build.
3. It is very fast. I am not sure how Seagate did it, but having 190 Mb/s writing speed is pretty cool for copying multi gigabyte files.
4. This disk very cool and has low power consumption.
5. Also it is very quite compare to my other HDDs. In addition I put it into a special 5.25 inch “silencer cage” from Amazon, so I cannot hear this disk at all.
Overall I am very pleased with my purchase and I can recommend this disk for your PC builds or upgrades.
The First HDD Cuda Pro 4TB arrived dead (Date of Manufacture: Feb 2017)… when it didnt function as intended after troubleshooting I signed up to a Seagate account, opened an RMA which required a lot of navigating on the actual website, and sent it to Seagate UK for about 8 special delivery (For ASAP delivery and safety)..
The replacement drive although not new (Dated: Aug 2017) (Certified Repaired) arrived to my home within 5 working days from the Netherlands handed in by the UPS guy.
Finally I set up the drive accordingly with AOMIE Partition Assistant… Converted MBR to GPT for the full size amount 3.6TB and split the Drive partitons to 2x 1.8TB each for easier management.
The performance is really good so far, with noise being the only issue for me as my PC is small form factor, and the Barracuda Pro clicks, and spins when reading/writing but is more tame when its in idle.
Formated 14TB drive and got 13.7TB out of the HDD.
Why Your Hard Drive Shows Less Space Than Advertised
If you’ve paid attention to hard drives, USB flash drives, and other storage devices, you may have noticed that they always have less space than promised once they’re formatted. The reason for this difference lies in the way hard drive manufacturers advertise their devices, versus the way Windows computers actually use the storage devices. There’s also some overhead required when Windows formats your drive, for the file system and boot data, though in comparison to today’s large hard drives, it’s not a lot.
To a hard disk manufacturer, one KB is 1000 bytes, one MB is 1000 KB, and one GB is 1000 MB. Essentially, if a hard disk is advertised as 500GB, it contains 500 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 = 500,000,000,000 bytes of space. The hard disk manufacturer thus advertises the disk as a 500 GB hard disk.
However, manufacturers of RAM don’t sell it in even groups of 1000 — they use groups of 1024. When you’re buying memory, a KB is 1024 bytes, a MB is 1024 KB, and a GB is 1024 MB. To work back from the 500,000,000,000 bytes above:
500,000,000,000 / (1024*1024*1024) = 465.66 GB
Keep in mind that the hard drive manufacturers are using the accurate description of the terms–the prefix giga, for instance, means a power of 1000, whereas the correct term for powers of 1024 is gibibyte, though it isn’t often used. Unfortunately, Windows has always calculated hard drives as powers of 1024 while hard drive manufacturers use powers of 1000.
That’s a difference of nearly 35 GB over what the average buyer would be led to believe a hard drive contains. If hard disks were advertised in terms of the amount of space they actually contained when you connected them to your Windows computer, a 1 TB hard drive would be labeled a 931 GB hard drive instead.
Alternatively, Windows could update their UI to use the correct definition of gigabyte–other operating systems, like OS X, have already changed their representation to correctly state the right amount of space.
I am running the OS from an EVO PRO m.2 drive, so loading into Windows is almost instant, but running with a large capacity HDD compliments the rest of the storage requirements brilliantly.
With a lot of games these days needing 50GB plus, this drive is the perfect answer for large Steam libraries if you are sick of juggling game installations on small SSDs.
I would recommend the Barracuda PRO version over the standard one if you can afford it. It has a faster spin speed than the standard but it is still very quiet in that I cannot even hear it spinning’ I actually like the clicking sound it makes and it does not do it constantly as it did in the past where Windows was constantly indexing, or moving swap files. Storage issues have definately been solved in modern computers!
You also get a 5 yr warranty which in my mind reflects on the superior components used over non pro drives. As for the price….well I have probably spent around the same amount of money on a hard drive or SSD in about a dozen computer builds since 1996, and the only thing that has went up is the capacity and the quality. My first build had a 1.6 GB ( yes thats GB not TB) drive and I remember how painful it was to manage the setup and space in these ‘bad old days’ of computing.
It amazes me how the HDD technology has matured and even evolved to have a different purpose than it did in the past, and I do not see this technology dying any time soon. Unless SSD technology gets anywhere close to 6TB plus.
Yet again time for another replacement drive for my laptop, 3rd time lucky! Previous drives have been both Seagate and Western Digital with all having a full working day put on them, from early hours to late at night, so a failure here and there is going to occur given the length daily up time and the intensive processes or programs I use and the length of ownership each time (2 to 3 years)
The drive itself installed and loaded with Windows 10 just fine and so far has been working as it should. Not sure if a pending fault or just a little over active actuator but every now and then a slight metallic ping occurs which is timed around when writes are occuring. Time will tell what this is as I haven’t come across it on any of my previous drives, thankfully Amazon are top notch when it comes to faulty products so I am covered more or less.
Performance is adequate with no problems in read or write time etc. Due to the mishaps of failed drives in the past a backup plan is now a dead cert. Thankfully Windows 10 has the ability to have documents auto sync’d to my One Drive with each of the other cloud services taking care of some of the items depending on topic and file size etc.
From now on the adopted backup strategy for me to overcome any loss of valuable data is the 3-2-1 method. 3 copies of data, 2 on laptop and home server, 1 on 1 each, and of course 1 copy on the cloud / online services (One Drive, Dropbox, Googledrive). Hopefully, my data will now be able to be restored to their original state should another drive go down on me.
When I fitted it into the computer, only 1.67Tb was found. I tried Seagate’s support department who were very good and very helpful, but nothing worked. In the end they decided that the motherboard in my computer just wasn’t able to handle the larger drive. No mention of that possibility when I was buying it.
Fortunately, once I bought a PCI SATA Controller card and installed that, then plugged the drive into it, everything worked perfectly. Have had no problems since.
It works fine, as far as I’m concerned it’s fast and quiet. But bear in mind if you have an older computer you might need to spend another few pounds on a card.
I do wish HDD manufacturers would advertise their drives with the actual size you get. I know all the reasons why they don’t, why a 4TB drive is only actually something like 3.8Tb, but we wouldn’t accept that from any other type of company. If you bought a pint of milk and it only had 3/4 pint in it, you’d expect a refund. If you bought a 2L car and it was only actually 1.6L, you’d complain. But we all accept companies advertising HDDs at a size we never actually get.
It is so nice to not have to remove and reinstall games anymore, not to mention saves a lot of bandwidth and time with the ever increasing file size of games these days. Sure there are a few games which still benefit significantly from being on an SSD due to loading times (GTA 5 or Battlefield 1 for example), but the vast majority will be just fine on an HDD and I have plenty of space on my SSD now to store the odd game that I play regularly which would benefit from this.
No complaints speed, noise or read/write wise (if you’re about to spend 300 on this you’ve no doubt already done your research like me and know this is one of the best around in all 3 of those areas anyway).
As long as this lasts me at least 10 years like my previous HDD has (and is still doing), I will be a very happy man.
*Just a side note – get this over the IronWolf Pro if you’re a home user – the BarraCuda Pro is designed for home desktop use and both were the same price last time I checked, so no price advantage for either.
Firstly, it’s a Seagate Barracuda so I know what to expect – it is the first and fastest choice for a gaming computer. I am an amateur who was needing more storage and the computer pundits and web sites all tell you how easy it is with Windows 10 to connect the new one to the USB port with a SATA cable, initialise it, format it using the GPT system and then clone your smaller hard drive and then swap drives over – a cinch! WRONG!
If you “clone” a hard drive, then the MBR format system will also be cloned and you will end up with a hard drive with exactly the same useable space as the old one (you did ask for a clone, right?).
So, you have a choice of either laboriously copying everything across, purchasing the better versions of disk cloning software that allow you to mess about with partitioning on the fly (not cheap), or using Google to show you how to convert your new disk back to a GPT system using a free download of GPTGEN and a free download of AOMEI Partition Assistant. I spent about two hours on the project last night and it worked. I rather suspect the manufacturers of over 2Tb disks have had many disks returned as “faulty” due to the idiosyncracies of making the computer behave the way we want it to!
I am now over the moon with my big, fast, quiet hard disk and the head-scratching, poring over Geeky pages on the wonderweb, rejected commands from GPTGEN (it is accessed from a Higher Command Prompt and does need an exactly typed DOS command line to work its magic) and lots of computer resets I feel it was all worthwhile!
I would comment though, that to get your computer to recognise the full 4TB might be a bit of a challenge. Simply plopping this thing into a USB 3.0 caddy, I could get my computer to recognise just 2TB of the 4TB (3.6 actually) capacity.
Initially I thought I’d bought a dud, but did a little digging around; apparently the drive needs to be setup as a GPT disk, rather than the more traditional MBR disk before the full 4TB is accessible – this applies to all disks larger than 2TB.
It also means that if you have an older motherboard, you may not be able to use such a size disk as your boot device, as GPT disks aren’t bootable under older motherboards/OSs.
Anyway, search engines are your friend here, and if you’re buying one of these, I’m going to assume you are savvy enough to overcome the issues.
HTH
The next best alternative to an SSD or SSHD(SSHD drives are not really my thing). If you plan on using the drive to just store small files get the 5400rpm drive. Otherwise, if you’re planning on installing and running any applications get the 7200rpm drive (assuming you’ve no SSD). It really makes a difference.
I own both a 5400 drive and a 7200 drive. I notice a major bottleneck with the 5400 rpm drive when running applications. This is a rare occurrence with the 7200 drive. Most CPUs are so fast these days the bottlenecks will tend to appear during the read and writes from the drive when working with a file. While bottlenecks do occur with this drive they are very minimalistic.
I am running a AMD FX8350, 8gb RAM, GTX 770, Windows 10 Pro. The password screen appears in under 8 seconds(avg 5) and the machine is fully booted and able to run any application in around 20 – 25 seconds.
A small note though is if you’re using a nvidia graphics card with this drive. You should really opt for an SSD as nvidias Geforce Experience uses quite a lot of Read and Write time and you may find a bottleneck when running that program. This is the only application that I use that I would need an SSD.
I should also state that I don’t have a SSD in my machine and to be honest I don’t really miss it. This drive far exceeded my expectations. It is also fairly quiet. Far quieter then my other branded 5400 rpm drive.
Tip for users of older computers: my computer’s BIOS can only see 1.46 TB of the disks 6 TB capacity, and initially this was a problem, but I found a workaround. I’ve put the Barracuda into a USB 3 external enclosure and formatted it that way (Windows 10 reported all 6 TB). After that I transferred it back inside into my desktop computer, and despite the BIOS still reporting only 1.46 TB, Windows can actually see (and use – I hope!) the whole 6 TB (5.45 after formatting). I seem not to have any problems, except when trying to see this disk in BIOS setup – it can freeze.