How do the Samsung EcoGreen 1Tb compare with the 1TB WD Green drives in terms of quietness & preformance?
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How do the Samsung EcoGreen 1Tb compare with the 1TB WD Green drives in terms of quietness & preformance?
Perhaps it is worth also checking the silentpcreview forums too.
I've looked and looked and looked about a month or two ago when I had to make a decision, and to my surprise (given how relatively successful the GP series is, and the F1 making a name for Samsung) I found virtually no review of the EcoGreen F2, let alone one that compares with the WD Green Power (things may have changed, but I have also looked/asked in SPCR back then). I only found one screenshot posted by someone in a forum (not sure which anymore), showing the EcoGreen beating the GP in sequential transfers. That doesn't say anything about noise though and having only the F2, I can only to say that it's quieter than the system fans on low in a P182 case. Basically, it's inaudible in a fairly quiet system.
1TB F2 is better than my 1TB WD10EACS. However, the EACS version of the WD10 is a bit crap anyway - it has a big problem with excessive load-unload cycles which are impossible (for me) to prevent, even with scripted 8-second writing, and the non-solder-covered PCB traces on the it look terrible and don't give a good impression of longetivity.
I haven't done any speed tests on my two 1TB F2 drives, but I can if you want. I use them because of their quietness and coolness, not their speed. I run many VMs from them and don't notice any slowdown.
Temperature and sound-wise, the F2 is awesome. 28C right now, with no cooling in a warm 25C room. My 300GB Velociraptor is 36C (underneath the two F2s), and my WD 1TB EACS would normally be about 35.
For me, WD completely lost it with the whole "RPM lucky dip" and load-unload cycles thing.... but I'll still always use their Velociraptors until the price of Intel's SSD goes down.
Would be interested in a speed comparison between the two
You'll need to tell me which speed testing apps you prefer - I think I've only ever used HDTach.
Yeah, I've read about that on SPCR. That, combined to the allegedly faster performance in the only benchmark I've seen (though I am not too bothered, I'll go SSD for my system drive as soon as price falls enough), and lower price were what shifted me towards the Samsung.Quote:
Originally Posted by smargh
To be fair, I've not heard of any failure due to the excessive load-unload cycle, but still not that desirable.
There was a fantastic review pitting these drives and others together. And the results varied from what you wanted from each drive. I'll see if I can dig it out for you.
I did look on SPCR but couldn't find the article you mentioned. If you could give a link I would appreciate it. ThanksQuote:
Originally Posted by Singh400
I'm pretty sure this was it. I'll keep hunting though.Quote:
Originally Posted by greshoff
Thanks, I'll give it a read
So you use the F2s because of their quietness,Quote:
Originally Posted by smargh
but they'd be drowned out by the noisy raptor anyway ?
I might return to samsung - I've been suing samsung for years, and it was the quiet WD gP drives that tempted me away ;)
Same hereQuote:
Originally Posted by mikerr
The WD green drives I own (I have all three, VS,CS,DS) are all excellent. What they offer over the Samsungs is superior vibration, which in the vast majority of systems is what causes a significant part of the noise. Airborne acoustic tests will not pick this up so looking at the dB of the drive alone isn't that useful. Samsung drives are as quiet as they get for seek, but the worst of almost all manufacturers for vibration, so much so that one F1 Samsung is clearly audible over two HD4870X2 graphics cards under load in a case.
I have yet to hear of any WD drive actually fail because of the head loading, and I have seen a large number of Samsung 1TB F1 drives fail (one of my friends bought 5 and all 5 failed within a few weeks) It may not affect the F2, but since the problem was controller based not disk-based, there's every chance it could.
My Velociraptors (WD3000HLFS and GLFS) are both dead quiet. Although they are 10,000RPM, they are virtually silent - probably quieter than the F2s, and only very slightly less quiet with the seeking.Quote:
Originally Posted by mikerr
Unless you removed the Icepacks and then mounted the drives in acoustic dampening enclosures, I can assure you the noise of Velociraptors is average at best. Most HDDs are quieter. They're still much better than the old Raptors, but almost any non-Seagate 7200rpm drive is quieter, let alone 5400rpm.
I have my Velociraptor in a SilentDrive and am very pleased with how inaudable it is. Granted that without the SilentDrive the noise is about the same as a modern hard drive. Until something significantly faster and better comes along it will be on my shopping list but I don't think SSDs are good enough yet.
Back on topic, I'm interested in a 1Tb drive for backup and can't decide between the two. I read the Tom's Hardware review (that was linked earlier) with interest. Both Samsung and WD seem good choices and there is no clear winner. I think I'll go with WD because I have more faith in their reliability but would be interested to hear other readers' comments.
The 5400RPM F2 is not audible over the P182 case fans on low. And I can't imagine those being louder than one 4870, let alone two 4870x2. And to be perfectly honest, I had the F1's predecessor, and they were not that bad either even without suspension (Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 were much worse).Quote:
Originally Posted by sammorris
I have both a 7200.10 and two HD753LJs, the Seagate is worse, but only just. Using a P182 is not justification for a hard disk's vibration as that is one of very few cases on the market that actually cancels hard disk vibration really well. 90% of cases on the market will be more than twice as loud as the 182 for hard disk vibrations.
The P182 was bought for a recent new build. My previous case was a Coolermaster CM201 Black Widow. Nice looking case, not bad to work with for it's age, but being full aluminium, it does not dampen noise/vibration particularly well. But I stand by that the two Samsung T166 I kept in it produced less noise than the Raptor were not audible over the system fans. The Raptor I later added was louder, but the Seagate was louder still.
Righty, the article may is about a week old, so some of you may already have seen it. I am bumping/posting this in case any of you, like myself, do not check SPCR more than once a week: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article951-page4.html
In short, the F2 is quieter (barely) than the GP on idle, louder (barely) than the GP on seek, with less vibration than the GP. Pretty much confirms my suspicion that it is one of the most quiet drive you can get. Not very power hungry either (but what is, when you look at GFX cards).
The only thing to be seen is how reliable they are. There are definitely more people reporting issues about Samsung drives since the F1 (though it's hard to say if it's in part due to the increased of sales Samsung since the the F1), so here's hoping the F2 also improve on reliability.
That's interesting because vibration is where Samsung always scored the lowest for years. The noisier seek is a little disappointing though. Looks like Samsung traded places with WD for the Green drives.
What if the drives were suspended. Wouldn't the vibration not be felt then? Wouldn't this be the same for the velociraptor drives too?
Well, if suspended properly, you shouldn't hear any drive's vibration at all. If doing this, the WD would win for lower seek noise. The Velociraptor's seek noise is much higher than any green drive, so suspending it, while reducing the noise somewhat, wouldn't give you a silent drive. With the 5400rpm drives, it pretty much would.
Thing is, 5400 is slow, isn't it?
Well yes, but thanks to improvements in drive technology they're no slower than the early 7200rpm drives and they're very quiet and use little power. That's their main purpose, but two of my three PCs (my file server and my work PC) both use WD Green drives for their OSes, as they're perfectly fast enough to do the job. I wouldn't want to use one with Vista, as you really need a Velociraptor, next gen SSD or SAS array to load vista quickly, but for XP and Win7 they're alright, not to mention cheap.