Yeah, wasn't there supposed to be a roundup of these medium-high capacity drives weeks ago? I've been waiting for it before I buy my new drive, but I don't know how much longer I can wait.
I'm leaning towards the Samsungs (750) right now unless someone can convince me otherwise. It's a lot cheaper, has more space, and is only marginally slower on most test, but is faster on a couple tests (where its 32MB cache shines).
The drive is very good, but we need to pound on it for the next several days under varying conditions along with additional analysis before we can give it our full recommendation...
I can tell you during my networking hardware testing I installed one of these drives with Ubuntu and vsftpd. With tweaked network network settings (not jumbo frames though as I recall) I could transfer large files (linux distro CD) in just over 109MBytes/sec.
Agreed. Better to focus on much higher than 320GB platters for the next gen. Heard rumours about 500GB / platters already from Samsung for instance. Aim high.
I highly doubt it given their past problems with rounding and published storage capacities. They'll just squeeze an extra 13GB or whatever onto each platter.
Any platter density quoted includes spare sectors, to replace those that go bad. By inceasing total drive capacity you'd just have fewer spare sectors.
Just curious if you had any problems with the Samsung F1 and the NV 780i board. There's tons of comments about potential problems with the Samsung and NV chipsets (google or look at Newegg comments), but it might've ended with the 6-series. I'm personally running an F1 750GB but in order to do so I had to turn off NCQ. Otherwise the drive would eventually drop out and lock up the system under heavy load (FRAPs recording etc). Only a complete power down and cold boot would allow the drive to be recognized.
I'd also like to know how you came to the conclusion the 750GB drive is the same as the 1TB drive, not because I don't believe you, just out of curiosity as there seems to be a good bit of confusion and contention about the number/size of platters on the 750GB version.
Multitasking is an area often skipped or dealt with briefly in hard drive comparisons, but for me it's very important. I decode and unRAR multiple large files simultaneously, which causes severe disk drive lags. My old Pentium 4 CPU remains lightly loaded, but the system is bogged down. I don't want to go to RAID in my next machine but I do want to choose drives with the best multitasking.
Don't be a tool. Stop trying to unrar many things at once and let the performance be bound by the CPU. Same situation as with any use, you'd have same problem if you tried to simultaneously copy 3 different folders full of files from one place to another on the same drive.
You don't need to go to raid that would be the wrong solution. You need multiple separate logical volumes for source and destination. You also need to upgrade the P4 CPU and be sure you're using RAR v3.6 or newer if compression/decompression performance matters.
So you're decoding video and unRAR'ing large files on a single hard disk at the same time?
That will definitely shorten the life of a hard drive and possibly lead to corrupted data. You shouldn't read and write multiple giant data files at the same time on a single drive.
You need multiple separate physical hard disks for that. I do similar stuff (gaming/downloading/video encoding) at the same time but I have three hard disks and nearly always read from one and write to the other...it's 5x faster than doing it on one disk.
You sound like the teenage salesperson at fry's spewing FUD to sell multiple HDs to someone.
Just enough truth in your statement to convince someone who doesn't know better, but mostly bs.
Adding an additional HD would be very smart. 3 HD's are not going to be 5 times faster than one, but might approach 3 times faster. The size of files is not going to affect hd life, nor corrupt data.
How many server admins had/have servers with a single hd (sometimes mirrored, sometimes not), with hundreds of users that were reading and writing 'large' files on a single hd at the same time. I remember a novell 3.11 server we had with a single 2.1gig hd that ran for 400+ days without a reboot until we shut it down. We had 250 users on that system and we were a mfg company that ran 3 shifts/ 24/7. HD's have only gotten more reliable since then.
You note that the 750Gig Samsung uses 333Gig/platters, and they are just short stroked.
Everything I have read/seen is that this drive uses a 3x250 design. I have seen various HDtune and HDtach results that show a significant lower STR then the 1 Terabyte Samsung, which would seem to indicate lower density platters.
Did you run HDtune on the WD 640Gig and Samsung? If the Samsung is a 2 platter drive, it should have a similar STR profile (the max STR should be the same), and the STR average should even be higher then the WD is the drive is indeed short-stroked, since the min STR should be higher then the WD.
I own the Samsung HD753LJ, and it benches very much like any other 250 platter drive. Great drive, but I'm pretty sure this is a 3x250 platter design. Information to the contrary might have originated from a poorly worded review at Tom's Hardware.
I was thinking the same thing. The 750GB is a 250GB platter drive I thought, so it's not really an apples to apples to comparison. The 1TB drive would be a much better comparison.
The WD 320Gig shows (max STR/min STR) 113/58
The 1 Terabyte Samsung was 117/55
The 750Gig Samsung was 96/47
Someone even had a Samsung 320Gig, and it was 114/58
All the 330/333 Gig/platter drives show ~113-117 Max, 55-58 Min which is pretty different from the 96 Max, 47 Min of the 750Gig.
Western Digital? Eeewwww. Aside from the Raptors, every WD drive I've owned has died a premature death. My Seagates, Samsungs and Hitachis, on the other hand, are still humming along.
Yet another tool implying that his vastly limited sample size qualifies him to draw a conclusion on whole brands.
Just for the record, I like my two 3 year old Samsungs still as much as I like the 6400AAKS I bought a couple weeks ago - despite of what all the monkeys say about Samsungs allegedly fubar QC.
I also avoided WD for a while after a few of my roommates together had 4 WD drives die over about a 2 month period. I have used a few recently though without problems.
I purchased 2 Samsung HD501LJ drives based on the good reviews here. I have had to RMA one of them twice as it sprung bad sectors. Samsung service was fine and the third seems OK, but it is not encouraging to have a replacement drive from RMA start clicking immediately upon trying to format.
Same experience here as the other two replies: WD has rarely failed me, while Seagate and Hitachi have been bad for me. I used to use a lot of Maxtors, but at some point alot of them started failing in customer systems, so I switched to WD.
I've had the complete opposite experience. All my WD drives never gave problems but Seagate never seem to last more than a year or give some kind of reading problem down the line.
I've since bought nothing but WD drives and have never regretted it.
There wouldn't BE any platter development without the end markets. It's the sales and marketing that pay the bills back at the lab. Just something to remember before we bash the PR guys - which, as an engineer, I am naturally inclined to do.
Naw, just about everyone ignores the marketing nonsense except for being offended by what they try to spew to sell the product - this not necessarily pertaining to HDD in particular.
This seems like a great middle-ground hard drive for an HTPC. Seems like a great amount of storage at a reasonable price. Just gotta wait for PC Cablecards to come out now.
For instance the WD7500AAKS (750GB 7200rpm) is pretty much just as fast as the Raptor 150 in everything except seek time.
Considering the Raptor 150 costs more than the 750 AAKS, I personally will not be buying Raptors for my next machine. (Note I run 2 74GB Raptors right now in RAID 0, so I am not just a Raptor basher :P )
The sweet spot from what I can tell is to use 3, 4 or 5 Fast Large drives like the 750AAKS, this new 640 or a Samsung F1 and do a RAID5.
On an Intel chipset you can go with 3, 4 or 5 and get good performance. However beware that for some reason on nForce chipsets there is a weird performance hit with Raid5 that is well documented in a few places on the net. Someone figured out that you can get around it by using 3 or 5 drive RAID5 arrays and sthen setting block size to a certain number. I think you also have to use a Vista DVD to create your partitions as it does something special with the partition layout that is part of this speed boost. After the partitions are created however you can go back and install XP and just say "Use Existing Drive" or whatever.
So my original plan was to do 5 x 750 AAKS in R5 which would give me around 2800MB Useable which would be cut into either 800+2000 or 500+300+2000 (Dual Boot).
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Fricardo - Saturday, April 12, 2008 - link
Yeah, wasn't there supposed to be a roundup of these medium-high capacity drives weeks ago? I've been waiting for it before I buy my new drive, but I don't know how much longer I can wait.dr4gon - Tuesday, April 29, 2008 - link
so ANY updates at all to this review at all? I think it's forgotten.... after all the velociraptor just review came out.dr4gon - Sunday, April 13, 2008 - link
I'm leaning towards the Samsungs (750) right now unless someone can convince me otherwise. It's a lot cheaper, has more space, and is only marginally slower on most test, but is faster on a couple tests (where its 32MB cache shines).dr4gon - Tuesday, April 8, 2008 - link
So, any updates anandtech for this review? It's been a couple of weeks.emelius - Saturday, March 29, 2008 - link
The drive is very good, but we need to pound on it for the next several days under varying conditions along with additional analysis before we can give it our full recommendation...dpante1s - Tuesday, March 25, 2008 - link
The Samsung F1 320GB (one platter) is available in Austria yet, got one for myself...And in Germany the Samsung F1 640GB drive is available too... The price is 85 EURO which means approx. 53 $
najames - Monday, March 24, 2008 - link
I can tell you during my networking hardware testing I installed one of these drives with Ubuntu and vsftpd. With tweaked network network settings (not jumbo frames though as I recall) I could transfer large files (linux distro CD) in just over 109MBytes/sec.http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1280399">http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1280399
ikjadoon - Sunday, March 23, 2008 - link
Let's compare apples to apples, eh???~Ibrahim~
comc49 - Saturday, March 22, 2008 - link
please compare this drive with new samsung spinpoint f1 640gb or 320gbvajm1234 - Saturday, March 22, 2008 - link
good review yaar as always but it wud be great if u guys continue the way u did with coolers it gives evry1 a compari. view..1 by 1 try comparin drives from 250gb - ...
Etern205 - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
Excellent review as always.But I do wish WD would add 26GB more to that drive. XD
crimson117 - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
I bet rather than solve the engineering problems, they'll just redefine "1 Terabyte" to mean "960 Gigabytes".strikeback03 - Monday, March 24, 2008 - link
I think they're fools if they put too much effort into stretching it to 1TB. Price the 960 appropriately and call it a day.Kaleid - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
Agreed. Better to focus on much higher than 320GB platters for the next gen. Heard rumours about 500GB / platters already from Samsung for instance. Aim high.960GB is just fine
chizow - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
I highly doubt it given their past problems with rounding and published storage capacities. They'll just squeeze an extra 13GB or whatever onto each platter.mindless1 - Saturday, March 22, 2008 - link
Any platter density quoted includes spare sectors, to replace those that go bad. By inceasing total drive capacity you'd just have fewer spare sectors.chizow - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
Just curious if you had any problems with the Samsung F1 and the NV 780i board. There's tons of comments about potential problems with the Samsung and NV chipsets (google or look at Newegg comments), but it might've ended with the 6-series. I'm personally running an F1 750GB but in order to do so I had to turn off NCQ. Otherwise the drive would eventually drop out and lock up the system under heavy load (FRAPs recording etc). Only a complete power down and cold boot would allow the drive to be recognized.I'd also like to know how you came to the conclusion the 750GB drive is the same as the 1TB drive, not because I don't believe you, just out of curiosity as there seems to be a good bit of confusion and contention about the number/size of platters on the 750GB version.
Arbie - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
Multitasking is an area often skipped or dealt with briefly in hard drive comparisons, but for me it's very important. I decode and unRAR multiple large files simultaneously, which causes severe disk drive lags. My old Pentium 4 CPU remains lightly loaded, but the system is bogged down. I don't want to go to RAID in my next machine but I do want to choose drives with the best multitasking.Thanks
Arbie
mindless1 - Saturday, March 22, 2008 - link
Don't be a tool. Stop trying to unrar many things at once and let the performance be bound by the CPU. Same situation as with any use, you'd have same problem if you tried to simultaneously copy 3 different folders full of files from one place to another on the same drive.You don't need to go to raid that would be the wrong solution. You need multiple separate logical volumes for source and destination. You also need to upgrade the P4 CPU and be sure you're using RAR v3.6 or newer if compression/decompression performance matters.
Johnniewalker - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
@mindlessYour name fits.
Noya - Saturday, March 22, 2008 - link
So you're decoding video and unRAR'ing large files on a single hard disk at the same time?That will definitely shorten the life of a hard drive and possibly lead to corrupted data. You shouldn't read and write multiple giant data files at the same time on a single drive.
You need multiple separate physical hard disks for that. I do similar stuff (gaming/downloading/video encoding) at the same time but I have three hard disks and nearly always read from one and write to the other...it's 5x faster than doing it on one disk.
Johnniewalker - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
lolYou sound like the teenage salesperson at fry's spewing FUD to sell multiple HDs to someone.
Just enough truth in your statement to convince someone who doesn't know better, but mostly bs.
Adding an additional HD would be very smart. 3 HD's are not going to be 5 times faster than one, but might approach 3 times faster. The size of files is not going to affect hd life, nor corrupt data.
How many server admins had/have servers with a single hd (sometimes mirrored, sometimes not), with hundreds of users that were reading and writing 'large' files on a single hd at the same time. I remember a novell 3.11 server we had with a single 2.1gig hd that ran for 400+ days without a reboot until we shut it down. We had 250 users on that system and we were a mfg company that ran 3 shifts/ 24/7. HD's have only gotten more reliable since then.
GarfieldtheCat - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
Gary,You note that the 750Gig Samsung uses 333Gig/platters, and they are just short stroked.
Everything I have read/seen is that this drive uses a 3x250 design. I have seen various HDtune and HDtach results that show a significant lower STR then the 1 Terabyte Samsung, which would seem to indicate lower density platters.
Did you run HDtune on the WD 640Gig and Samsung? If the Samsung is a 2 platter drive, it should have a similar STR profile (the max STR should be the same), and the STR average should even be higher then the WD is the drive is indeed short-stroked, since the min STR should be higher then the WD.
bradley - Saturday, March 22, 2008 - link
I own the Samsung HD753LJ, and it benches very much like any other 250 platter drive. Great drive, but I'm pretty sure this is a 3x250 platter design. Information to the contrary might have originated from a poorly worded review at Tom's Hardware.blaster5k - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
I was thinking the same thing. The 750GB is a 250GB platter drive I thought, so it's not really an apples to apples to comparison. The 1TB drive would be a much better comparison.GarfieldtheCat - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
GAry,I found one of the threads that shows STR rates.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...">http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...
The WD 320Gig shows (max STR/min STR) 113/58
The 1 Terabyte Samsung was 117/55
The 750Gig Samsung was 96/47
Someone even had a Samsung 320Gig, and it was 114/58
All the 330/333 Gig/platter drives show ~113-117 Max, 55-58 Min which is pretty different from the 96 Max, 47 Min of the 750Gig.
tayhimself - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
This is great info, thanks for sharing.DigitalFreak - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
Western Digital? Eeewwww. Aside from the Raptors, every WD drive I've owned has died a premature death. My Seagates, Samsungs and Hitachis, on the other hand, are still humming along.Griswold - Tuesday, March 25, 2008 - link
Yet another tool implying that his vastly limited sample size qualifies him to draw a conclusion on whole brands.Just for the record, I like my two 3 year old Samsungs still as much as I like the 6400AAKS I bought a couple weeks ago - despite of what all the monkeys say about Samsungs allegedly fubar QC.
strikeback03 - Monday, March 24, 2008 - link
I also avoided WD for a while after a few of my roommates together had 4 WD drives die over about a 2 month period. I have used a few recently though without problems.I purchased 2 Samsung HD501LJ drives based on the good reviews here. I have had to RMA one of them twice as it sprung bad sectors. Samsung service was fine and the third seems OK, but it is not encouraging to have a replacement drive from RMA start clicking immediately upon trying to format.
johnsonx - Sunday, March 23, 2008 - link
Same experience here as the other two replies: WD has rarely failed me, while Seagate and Hitachi have been bad for me. I used to use a lot of Maxtors, but at some point alot of them started failing in customer systems, so I switched to WD.just4U - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
I swear by my western digital drives. They have always been good to me. I would feel safer tho if more of them cam with the 5 year warranty.Simon128D - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
That's odd, I guess you've just had bad luck.I've had the complete opposite experience. All my WD drives never gave problems but Seagate never seem to last more than a year or give some kind of reading problem down the line.
I've since bought nothing but WD drives and have never regretted it.
Xpl1c1t - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
Beautifully written article, funny how marketing can destroy the beauty of engineering....i just wonder how dense a platter could be today if storage needs of end-markets didn't drive the funding of development.
Arbie - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
There wouldn't BE any platter development without the end markets. It's the sales and marketing that pay the bills back at the lab. Just something to remember before we bash the PR guys - which, as an engineer, I am naturally inclined to do.mindless1 - Saturday, March 22, 2008 - link
Naw, just about everyone ignores the marketing nonsense except for being offended by what they try to spew to sell the product - this not necessarily pertaining to HDD in particular.Inkjammer - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
This seems like a great middle-ground hard drive for an HTPC. Seems like a great amount of storage at a reasonable price. Just gotta wait for PC Cablecards to come out now.silentbob17 - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
When do we see a new raptor from WD? Im still inlove with my old raptor from 2006....am I a n00b and not seeing that these new HDD's are better?Casper42 - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
They are almost as fast.For instance the WD7500AAKS (750GB 7200rpm) is pretty much just as fast as the Raptor 150 in everything except seek time.
Considering the Raptor 150 costs more than the 750 AAKS, I personally will not be buying Raptors for my next machine. (Note I run 2 74GB Raptors right now in RAID 0, so I am not just a Raptor basher :P )
The sweet spot from what I can tell is to use 3, 4 or 5 Fast Large drives like the 750AAKS, this new 640 or a Samsung F1 and do a RAID5.
On an Intel chipset you can go with 3, 4 or 5 and get good performance. However beware that for some reason on nForce chipsets there is a weird performance hit with Raid5 that is well documented in a few places on the net. Someone figured out that you can get around it by using 3 or 5 drive RAID5 arrays and sthen setting block size to a certain number. I think you also have to use a Vista DVD to create your partitions as it does something special with the partition layout that is part of this speed boost. After the partitions are created however you can go back and install XP and just say "Use Existing Drive" or whatever.
So my original plan was to do 5 x 750 AAKS in R5 which would give me around 2800MB Useable which would be cut into either 800+2000 or 500+300+2000 (Dual Boot).
iwodo - Friday, March 21, 2008 - link
I think the 139 is too expensive. I hope the 640Gb will replace 500Gb version soon.