Which Samsung drive is best?

[Tysha]

snip

|||||| 2) SATA or PATA? I saw in one recent review that the Parallel ATA
||||
|||| When you say 'PATA', I must assume you mean ATA133, ATA100, etc.
||
||| PATA is an abbreviation for Parallel ATA (so yes, ATA133 - ATA33)
||| just as SATA is an abbreviation for Serial ATA.
||
|| SATA is a formal name, PATA is an informal one.

Yes, it seems since Serial ATA has come out people seem to think there is a
need to distinguish them. No need, really.

Would have thought that the stated difference in noise output of the
Seagates was a perfect exmple of the need for clear distinction between ATA
types. For what it's worth, both my Abit IC7-G BIOS and Seagates own spec
sheets make reference to the informal abbreviation.

 

[Tysha]

noise.

Extra heads dont make any noise. The extra platters do
increase the idle noise, just because more mass is rotating.

They do if they serve to transfer or amplify existing vibrations. From
Samsung:
"The vibrations are also transmitted to the HDA (Head-Assembly). When HDA
resonance frequencies are similar to the excitation frequencies, vibrations
are furtheramplified, worsening overall HDD noise."

 

[Rudiger Gussett]

Having been recently disgusted by the whine of my 80gb WD JB and even more
disturbingly by the seek noise from my new 80gb 7200.7 SATA Barracuda, I've
finally managed to track down a seller in Australia stocking the newish
Spinpoint drives. And so the questions begin:

1) The spec sheets at Samsung list identical acoustic characteristics for
all their Spinpoint series, which contradicts accepted logic which suggests
bigger sized drives = more platters = more noise. Can anyone confirm or
debunk the theory that the Samsung drives do not get noisier as capacity
increases?

2) SATA or PATA? I saw in one recent review that the Parallel ATA version
performed better than the Serial ATA. The cost as is irrelevant, as is
buffer, as I gather that the 8mb version is decidedly faster. Performance is
important, but silence is paramount. Having been burnt by the increased
noise of the SATA 'cudas, I was wondering if anyone knows if the Samsung
SATA drives are noisier than the PATA version. Surely there's no necessity
for it to work that way.

Any other links or helpful advice anyone can add is greatly appreciated.

 

[Robert de Brus]

X-No-Archive: Yes

In Rudiger Gussett <[email protected]> typed
|| Having been recently disgusted by the whine of my 80gb WD JB and
|| even more disturbingly by the seek noise from my new 80gb 7200.7
|| SATA Barracuda, I've finally managed to track down a seller in
|| Australia stocking the newish Spinpoint drives. And so the questions
|| begin:
||
|| 1) The spec sheets at Samsung list identical acoustic
|| characteristics for all their Spinpoint series, which contradicts
|| accepted logic which suggests bigger sized drives = more platters =
|| more noise. Can anyone confirm or debunk the theory that the Samsung

I've never heard of this 'accepted' logic.

And I can't see how an extra platter would make a drive noisier. It's the
attenuator arm that makes all the noise, as it's constandly changing
direction while moving across the platters.

|| drives do not get noisier as capacity increases?
||
|| 2) SATA or PATA? I saw in one recent review that the Parallel ATA

When you say 'PATA', I must assume you mean ATA133, ATA100, etc.

The difference between the two, apart from the obvious, are the dta transfer
rates. Serial ATA having a rate of 150MBps, as opposed to ATA133 with
133MBps, and ATA100 with 100MBps.

Remember, though, these data transfer rates are purely theoretical and don't
happen in real life.

Also remember that all parallel buses go through parallel to serial
conversion at some stage, creating bottlenecks.

|| version performed better than the Serial ATA. The cost as is
|| irrelevant, as is buffer, as I gather that the 8mb version is
|| decidedly faster. Performance is important, but silence is
|| paramount. Having been burnt by the increased noise of the SATA
|| 'cudas, I was wondering if anyone knows if the Samsung SATA drives
|| are noisier than the PATA version. Surely there's no necessity for
|| it to work that way.
||
|| Any other links or helpful advice anyone can add is greatly
|| appreciated.

I've always been happy with Quantum drives, but theyve been taken over by
Maxtor. I don't have any Maxtors installed at present so, can't help there.

 

[chrisv]

Having been recently disgusted by the whine of my 80gb WD JB

Anyone else have experience with these that they could share? I was
planning on getting one shortly, but noise is a very important
consideration.

 

[Rudiger Gussett]

Anyone else have experience with these that they could share? I was
planning on getting one shortly, but noise is a very important
consideration.

I've done much research, with most of the best information coming from
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/. My near silent WD JB got increasingly
whiny, with a very noticeable high pitched whistling sound emanating. Turned
out to be a pretty common complaint. On the positive side, seek noise is
near undetectable, though if noise is as important as you say, it's hard to
go past the Spinpoint series from Samsung. Do a google for reviews...

 

[Rod Speed]

Having been recently disgusted by the whine of my 80gb WD JB

Any drive that whines should be given a good thrashing
with the largest stick you can find. Its the only way.

and even more disturbingly by the seek noise
from my new 80gb 7200.7 SATA Barracuda,

Yeah, talk about a massive footshot. The fool responsible
for that should be taken out the back and shot.

I've finally managed to track down a seller in Australia stocking
the newish Spinpoint drives. And so the questions begin:

There's quite a few if you use google and restrict the search to Aust.

Not all are listing the current best model to buy tho. And
it isnt clear if anyone is flogging the 8MB cache versions.
I didnt even bother to ask about those, I dont believe it
matters performance wise with desktop systems.

1) The spec sheets at Samsung list identical acoustic characteristics
for all their Spinpoint series, which contradicts accepted logic
which suggests bigger sized drives = more platters = more noise.

Formal acoustic characteristics are pretty meaningless,
basically because the very irritating seek noises seen
with the 7200.7 SATA Barracuda are trivial sound pressure
level, but very irritating anyway. Same with bearing whine.

Can anyone confirm or debunk the theory that the
Samsung drives do not get noisier as capacity increases?

I've just got the SP1203N 120GB drive and its amazingly
quiet. Its in a very quiet system, very quiet power supply
fan and with a very quiet Celeron which has a cpu fan thats
so quiet that I had to look closely at it when first installed to
check that it was actually spinning up at all. The total system
is completely quiet even with no covers on the case at all, with
the system right next to the armchair I always compute from.

If all other noise sources are turned off, you can sometimes
hear a bit of head activity when the system is aggressively
moving the heads around if you listen carefully, but its more
of a rumble than an irritating noise even when you can hear it.

In fact its so quiet that the test system is irritatingly noisy now |-)

2) SATA or PATA? I saw in one recent review that the
Parallel ATA version performed better than the Serial ATA.

The short story is that the performance is determined
by the drive physical characteristics, sectors per track
and RPM and the interface isnt currently relevant.

SATA does at least in theory have a bit more future
tho. You may want to put that drive into a system
that only has SATA in a few years for example.

The cost as is irrelevant, as is buffer, as I gather that
the 8mb version is decidedly faster. Performance is
important, but silence is paramount.

In that case I'd definitely get a Samsung P80 drive.

3 year warranty on all drives too, unique currently.

Having been burnt by the increased noise of the SATA
'cudas, I was wondering if anyone knows if the Samsung
SATA drives are noisier than the PATA version. Surely there's no necessity
for it to work that way.

Yeah, that's just a Seagate terminal stupidity. Some fool
decided that AAM infringes patents and have disabled that.
Thats why the 7200.7 SATA Barracuda is so much more
noisy than the previous version that has AAM.

Any other links or helpful advice anyone can add is greatly appreciated.

http://www.razorprices.com/hardware...earchword=samsung&hardware=Hard_Drive&x=6&y=7

 

[Rod Speed]

Rudiger Gussett <[email protected]> typed

|| Having been recently disgusted by the whine of my 80gb WD JB and
|| even more disturbingly by the seek noise from my new 80gb 7200.7
|| SATA Barracuda, I've finally managed to track down a seller in
|| Australia stocking the newish Spinpoint drives. And so the questions
|| begin:
||
|| 1) The spec sheets at Samsung list identical acoustic
|| characteristics for all their Spinpoint series, which contradicts
|| accepted logic which suggests bigger sized drives = more platters =
|| more noise. Can anyone confirm or debunk the theory that the Samsung

I've never heard of this 'accepted' logic.

And I can't see how an extra platter would make a drive
noisier. It's the attenuator arm that makes all the noise,

Nope, not with idle noise it aint.

as it's constandly changing direction
while moving across the platters.

Different noise.

|| drives do not get noisier as capacity increases?
||
|| 2) SATA or PATA? I saw in one recent review that the Parallel ATA

When you say 'PATA', I must assume you mean ATA133, ATA100, etc.
Yep.

The difference between the two, apart from the obvious, are
the dta transfer rates. Serial ATA having a rate of 150MBps, as
opposed to ATA133 with 133MBps, and ATA100 with 100MBps.

Remember, though, these data transfer rates
are purely theoretical and don't happen in real life.

Also remember that all parallel buses go through parallel
to serial conversion at some stage, creating bottlenecks.

What's the real bottleneck with a hard drive
is the physical characteristics, the RPM and
sectors per track, not that conversion.

|| version performed better than the Serial ATA. The cost as is
|| irrelevant, as is buffer, as I gather that the 8mb version is
|| decidedly faster. Performance is important, but silence is
|| paramount. Having been burnt by the increased noise of the SATA
|| 'cudas, I was wondering if anyone knows if the Samsung SATA drives
|| are noisier than the PATA version. Surely there's no necessity for
|| it to work that way.
||
|| Any other links or helpful advice anyone can add is greatly
|| appreciated.

I've always been happy with Quantum drives,

Plenty with Fireballs are very far from happy.

 

[Markeau]

Get a drive with fluid bearings. I've returned at least 5 ball bearing
drives for bearing whine, so far my 3 200GB Maxtor DiamondMax +9 fluid
bearing drives have no whine.

 

[Rudiger Gussett]

X-No-Archive: Yes

In Rudiger Gussett <[email protected]> typed
|| Having been recently disgusted by the whine of my 80gb WD JB and
|| even more disturbingly by the seek noise from my new 80gb 7200.7
|| SATA Barracuda, I've finally managed to track down a seller in
|| Australia stocking the newish Spinpoint drives. And so the questions
|| begin:
||
|| 1) The spec sheets at Samsung list identical acoustic
|| characteristics for all their Spinpoint series, which contradicts
|| accepted logic which suggests bigger sized drives = more platters =
|| more noise. Can anyone confirm or debunk the theory that the Samsung

I've never heard of this 'accepted' logic.

And I can't see how an extra platter would make a drive noisier. It's the
attenuator arm that makes all the noise, as it's constandly changing
direction while moving across the platters.

Check out the spec sheets at Seagate or the silent pc forums listed earlier
in this thread. Extra platters and hence, extra heads equals extra noise.

|| drives do not get noisier as capacity increases?
||
|| 2) SATA or PATA? I saw in one recent review that the Parallel ATA

When you say 'PATA', I must assume you mean ATA133, ATA100, etc.

PATA is an abbreviation for Parallel ATA (so yes, ATA133 - ATA33) just as
SATA is an abbreviation for Serial ATA.

The difference between the two, apart from the obvious, are the dta transfer
rates. Serial ATA having a rate of 150MBps, as opposed to ATA133 with
133MBps, and ATA100 with 100MBps.

Remember, though, these data transfer rates are purely theoretical and don't
happen in real life.

Also remember that all parallel buses go through parallel to serial
conversion at some stage, creating bottlenecks.

|| version performed better than the Serial ATA. The cost as is
|| irrelevant, as is buffer, as I gather that the 8mb version is
|| decidedly faster. Performance is important, but silence is
|| paramount. Having been burnt by the increased noise of the SATA
|| 'cudas, I was wondering if anyone knows if the Samsung SATA drives
|| are noisier than the PATA version. Surely there's no necessity for
|| it to work that way.
||
|| Any other links or helpful advice anyone can add is greatly
|| appreciated.

I've always been happy with Quantum drives, but theyve been taken over by
Maxtor. I don't have any Maxtors installed at present so, can't help

there.

I've got a couple of GL Fireballs which sound like airplanes taking off.
Performance wise, both Quantum and later Maxtor have had their moments, but
neither has ever rated highly on the noise scale.

 

[Rod Speed]

Check out the spec sheets at Seagate or the silent pc forums listed earlier
in this thread. Extra platters and hence, extra heads equals extra noise.

Extra heads dont make any noise. The extra platters do
increase the idle noise, just because more mass is rotating.

The head assembly is heavier so you do get more
noise from the motor that moves it when its actively
seeking when you dont have AAM turned on.

PATA is an abbreviation for Parallel ATA (so yes, ATA133 - ATA33)
just as SATA is an abbreviation for Serial ATA.

SATA is a formal name, PATA is an informal one.

 

[Robert de Brus]

X-No-Archive: Yes

In Rod Speed <[email protected]> typed
||
snip

|||||| 2) SATA or PATA? I saw in one recent review that the Parallel ATA
||||
|||| When you say 'PATA', I must assume you mean ATA133, ATA100, etc.
||
||| PATA is an abbreviation for Parallel ATA (so yes, ATA133 - ATA33)
||| just as SATA is an abbreviation for Serial ATA.
||
|| SATA is a formal name, PATA is an informal one.

Yes, it seems since Serial ATA has come out people seem to think there is a
need to distinguish them. No need, really.

 

[Robert de Brus]

X-No-Archive: Yes

In Tysha <[email protected]> typed
|| ||| snip
|||
||||||||| 2) SATA or PATA? I saw in one recent review that the Parallel
||||||||| ATA
|||||||
||||||| When you say 'PATA', I must assume you mean ATA133, ATA100, etc.
|||||
|||||| PATA is an abbreviation for Parallel ATA (so yes, ATA133 - ATA33)
|||||| just as SATA is an abbreviation for Serial ATA.
|||||
||||| SATA is a formal name, PATA is an informal one.
|||
||| Yes, it seems since Serial ATA has come out people seem to think
||| there is
|| a
||| need to distinguish them. No need, really.
||
|| Would have thought that the stated difference in noise output of the
|| Seagates was a perfect exmple of the need for clear distinction
|| between ATA types. For what it's worth, both my Abit IC7-G BIOS and
|| Seagates own spec sheets make reference to the informal abbreviation.

But ATA is ATA, and has been for years. SATA is new and is, of course,
different. ATA, SATA... It doesn't confuse me, I can see a clear difference.

 

[Rod Speed]

They do if they serve to transfer or amplify existing vibrations.
Bullshit.

From Samsung:
"The vibrations are also transmitted to the HDA (Head-Assembly).
When HDA resonance frequencies are similar to the excitation
frequencies, vibrations are further amplified, worsening overall HDD noise."

Doesnt say a damned thing about that being seen with higher number of heads.

And thats going to be a rare situation anyway, that the resonance
freqs are similar. Not normal use, let alone idle noise.

 

[Metaphoid]

Extra heads dont make any noise. The extra platters do

Bullshit.

No it isn't. Just because you didn't know it, or understand it, doesn't make
it bullshit. Quiet PC enthusiasts have known for years that extra platters
and head assemblies normally translated into higher noise output.

noise."

Doesnt say a damned thing about that being seen with higher number of

heads.

They're probably relying on common sense to dictate such. No surprise that
such a simple flew right over your self-inflated head...

And thats going to be a rare situation anyway, that the resonance
freqs are similar. Not normal use, let alone idle noise.

You'd be surprised. Try comparing single platter drives to two or three
platter varieties of the same series. Invariably the drive with multiple
platters/heads will be noisier. Sorry if this is a bit off the track from
your resonance and bullshit debate, but I think it is a more relevant answer
to the posters original question.

 

[Tod]

My Western Digital 80GB 8MB cache drive is very quiet.
I even leave the covers off my case, which site on top of my desk,
for the past 3 months

 

[Rod Speed]

No it isn't.

Corse it is.

Just because you didn't know it, or understand it, doesn't make it bullshit.

Bullshit remains bullshit no matter how much you bullshit.

Quiet PC enthusiasts have known for years that extra platters
and head assemblies normally translated into higher noise output.

Never said that platters didnt, ****wit. In fact I clearly said they do.

I JUST said that that 'explanation' is just plain
wrong, most obviously with the idle noise, ****wit.

They're probably relying on common sense to dictate such.

Even you should be able to bullshit your way out of
your predicament better than that pathetic effort, child.

No surprise that such a simple flew right over your self-inflated head...

Even you should be able to bullshit your way out of
your predicament better than that pathetic effort, child.

You'd be surprised.

Wrong. As always.

Try comparing single platter drives to two
or three platter varieties of the same series.

Never said they werent noiser, ****wit. In fact I said they usually are.

I JUST commented on that terminally silly resonance
claim there, PARTICULARLY with IDLE noise, ****wit.

Invariably the drive with multiple platters/heads will be noisier.

Have fun explaining the Samsung P80s, ****wit.

Sorry if this is a bit off the track from your resonance
and bullshit debate, but I think it is a more relevant
answer to the posters original question.

Pity I already said that more platters usually do mean more noise, ****wit.

 

[Mark M]

Having been recently disgusted by the whine of my 80gb WD JB and
even more disturbingly by the seek noise from my new 80gb 7200.7
SATA Barracuda, I've finally managed to track down a seller in
Australia stocking the newish Spinpoint drives. And so the
questions begin:

1) The spec sheets at Samsung list identical acoustic
characteristics for all their Spinpoint series, which
contradicts accepted logic which suggests bigger sized drives =
more platters = more noise. Can anyone confirm or debunk the
theory that the Samsung drives do not get noisier as capacity
increases?

I wouldn't trust the spec sheets too much. many give just a single
figure for heat and noise a range of drives but there will be
noticeable variation depending on the number of platters for example.

 

[Mark M]

I've done much research, with most of the best information
coming from http://forums.silentpcreview.com/.

They sure like the Samsungs there and not without some good cause.

Also check out http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silent-pc/

My near silent WD
JB got increasingly whiny, with a very noticeable high pitched
whistling sound emanating. Turned out to be a pretty common
complaint. On the positive side, seek noise is near
undetectable, though if noise is as important as you say, it's
hard to go past the Spinpoint series from Samsung. Do a google
for reviews...

I think you have had a bad experience with your Seagate you mentioned
in your OP. I have the very similar Barracuda V (with the ability to
change the acoustic setting which the 7200.7 does not have). The
actuator noise is not really all that noisy to me on any setting.

I would go for one of the Samsung 7200 range with fluid bearings.

BTW have you seen this site.
http://www.storagereview.com/comparison.html

The problem I have here in the UK is that Samsung's pricing is not at
any real discount to the major brands. Sure they run cool and quiet
(and have poorer preformance) but it is still as expensive as, say, a
Maxtor DiamondPlus 9 which looks like a nice combination of
heat/noise/performance.