This is one of the select few 3TB drives approved by Synology for use in a variety of their NAS devices, so I put 4 of these in a DS411 in SHR with one disk redundancy (basically RAID 5). While anyone will tell you enterprise hard drives are better in RAID 5 or 6 configurations - and they are right, for the most part - it's hard to deny the big price difference in going enterprise: 3TB enterprise drives are well over $550 right now due to the recent Thailand flood and it may be some time before that price drops significantly. While these drives weren't as cheap as the 3TB WD Caviar Green varieties, I will NEVER put Caviar Greens in a RAID 5 again, so the ST3000DM001 quickly rose to the top of my admittedly short list.

I think it's important to point out that IntelliPower (WD) and CoolSpin (Hitachi) technologies are not really ideal for any kind of RAID array using parity. WD Caviar Green drives, especially, are known to sometimes not power up when needed, ultimately resulting in them getting dropped from the RAID array. A good NAS like the DS411 will put the drives into hibernation after 10 minutes of no activity, so you don't really need the benefit of "eco-friendly" drives in this kind of RAID anyways. Plus, with 7200RPM you will get speed improvements, so it's a no brainer to pick a drive like this over those.

That said, of course these do not have TLER, RAFF and other advantages of enterprise-class drives. So you run the risk of more errors, RAID rebuilds and potential failures by choosing a consumer drive like this. But even though the risk is greater, it's not really worth the extra money to go to 3TB enterprise-class, so I feel this is a good compromise of risk vs. value.

VERY IMPORTANT: On Windows 7, 64 bit OS, be sure to download the newest version of Intel's Rapid Storage Technology (Intel RST) drivers from Intel's site. 10.1 or higher. You need to do this before formatting drives. [...] Also if this is a second storage HDD you'll most likely need to purchase a SATA power cable. Have always had excellent results with seagate drives!

Bought 2 of these for the Synology DS212j+ (also an outstanding product)Synology DiskStation 2-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS212j (White), after one week still running strong. Formatted quickly to 2.92Tb. Ran SMART tests on both drives and all checks out. The disks are very quiet also, with no audible clicking noises as they work spinning.

I did a lot of research on which drives to pair with the DS212j and many reported good results with Seagate in general, and I also read Seagate's quality is better now than Western Digital. I have been working in the IT industry since the early 1990's and remember having so many problems with Seagate SCSI drives back then in Mac Computers and servers. But it looks like after 20 or so years they have done a much better on on the engineering and quality of drives. Barring both drives don't blow up in three months they've won (back) a new customer.

I also gave these a try because of too many problems on my own with WD drives in the last 8 years (caviar, raptor, failures after 3-6 months, etc.). I bought a first gen WD raptor (120gb) and it burned itself out in a few months, so I got a 160 gb Raptor, same problem. So I got a caviar drive, and again... The WD 7200-10000rpm drives also tend to be very loud.

Bought a pair of these 7200 RPM Sata III hard disks based on Synology's 'compatible drive list' for the Synology DS212+ dual hard disk Network Attached Storage Device (Diskless) which I also bought on Amazon. I trust Seagate - they are as reliable as any other major brand - and their customer service after-sale is comparable to Western Digital. No hard disk maker builds flawless drives - they all fail sooner or later - but I have had good luck with Seagate as well as Western Digital. If I had to choose one over the other, I think I would lean Seagate - that's what drove me to buy these drives this time, and I'm satisfied. Fast, quiet, cool.