Samsung Spinpoint F4, any opinions?

mirage

I am about to order a 2TB Samsung Spinpoint F4. They are very new, any experience so far?

Thrax

Samsung has been in the hard disk game since the mid-80s. That has to count for something, right? They're not the most well-known brand, but I'm going to bank the reliability of my HTPC on one of their drives.

ardichoke

It will eat your babies.

fatcat

can't be any worse than Seagate...

mirage

Okay, I ordered one. I have used two Samsung drives in the past and they were fine. This one has the highest density platters I have seen before, three 660GB platters. Its rotation speed is 5400rpm but I thought the transfer speed should still be comparable with 7200rpm disks due to higher density. Thanks for the feedback. I will post the performance tests.

Kwitko

I've used Spinpoints before and never had a problem.

mirage

Here are the HDTune 2.55 benchmarks comparing with two other drives. Temperatures are not consistently measured at the same room temperature.

Samsung F4 2TB 5400rpm HD204UI, 3 667GB platters
Average transfer rate: 101.7 MB/sec
Access time: 13.2 ms
Burst rate: 151.7 MB/sec
Operating temp: 25C

Samsung F3 500GB 7200rpm HD502HJ, single 500GB platter
Average transfer rate: 113.0 MB/sec
Access time: 13.9 ms
Burst rate: 166.1 MB/sec
Operating temp: 30C

WD WD6400AKS 640GB 7200rpm, 2 320GB platters
Average transfer rate: 89.0 MB/sec
Access time: 12 ms
Burst rate: 139.5 MB/sec
Operating temp: 35C

Samsung F3 500GB is the fastest but Samsung Spinpoint F4 is practically as fast as the other drives despite 3 platters and 5400rpm. F4 is also dead quiet and cool.

Update: I ran F4 test several times more and updated the result.

McBain

I'm going to be picking up two the spinpoint f4 t2b's for a raid 1 NAS. Heard too many nasty rumors about the WD caviar blacks + TLER = raid nightmares.

Mirage - are you running this as a single or in a raid?

mirage

It is a single drive and still running fine here.