Currently available for around £111.54, this is an unquestionably pricey drive, although not ridiculously so. In fact, in comparison to the Samsung F1 1TB we favour here at bit-tech, it's only fifty percent more expensive, which seems very fair considering you're getting fifty percent more storage into the bargain.

For those with limited storage space running a media centre or small form factor system this certainly seems like the better option, especially when you consider that such setups are usually used for storing large video files, which the Barracuda 1.5TB is perfect for.

Noise wise it's just as quiet as the previous Seagate and the Samsung 1TB drives, although the use of four platters rather than three does make it a little hotter than the Samsung, although not enough to cause any real concern -- the Seagate 1.5TB is rated to run at temperatures up to 60°C, which you'd have to have a pretty poor cooling setup in your case to be approaching.

While an unquestionably good hard disk in its own right, and a big improvement over Seagate's previous quad platter 1TB drive in every respect, the response time and subsequent effect on read/copy tasks involving large numbers of small files in comparison to the Samsung stops the Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB from taking the crown of top desktop mechanical hard drive tested to date. For use as a boot or game storage the Samsung is still the superior disk, but if you're after more storage in a single drive for your media centre or looking to store a ton of larger files, then it's still a superb choice.