Cheap Hitachi 1TB drive from Scan vs Sammy F1

Lo dudes.

I needed a new large HDD for backing up to, and I quite like DeathStars now, as I've not had one fail for along long time.

Scan had a dead cheap deal on Today Only on Monday, so I did it. Very pleased too.

Here's the HD Tachometer results
http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/9781/38714001.th.jpg

(Hint for anyone with HD Tacho in Vista: Install, create shortcut on desktop. Right click on Shortcut, Properties, Compatibility Tab at the top, and tick the top option to run in Compatibility Mode for XP Pro SP2..then it'll run, but when you save your results, it'll throw an error, but it DOES save the result and you can re run the program again immedittely and view or test again)

I checked performance on storage review before buying & indeed the Hitachi did very well overall despite "only" 16Mb cache.

is that the ZK1000.B ones? because the lower capacity ones get about the same results, if not exactly the same in some areas;)

edit:

test run - and zak must be doing something to his drives, his sequentials are faster - maybe its his partition theory, or mine haven't been defragged properly and are 1/2 full, heres my results.

http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/m...ff/hdtacky.jpg

still faster than the samsung F1 though. so the awesomeness of these cheapo drives extebnds through the size range.

The result looks quite like my ecogreen F2, except the access time is way lower of course.
Difference between different drives are minimal when they're not multi-tasking. My 5400RPM F2 lags like hell when I have 8-12 different programs each accessing a couple hundeds of KB/s a second.

Wouldn't touch a Sammy F1, reading to many stories of failures and experienced a 3 week old drive failure myself on a 2.5" F1. :(

Ive had 3 samsung HD\'s fails in 18 months, not cool. Fortunately their RMA service is pretty good, but thats not the point.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Flewis

Ive had 3 samsung HD's fails in 18 months, not cool. Fortunately their RMA service is pretty good, but thats not the point.

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I bought every single brand (about half a dozen) and all of them give me a fail drive or two every year, regardless of it is a desktop or enterprise class drive. Modern >1TB HDDs are just not reliable at all...

My Sammy F1 seems faster than those Hitachi drives (please excuse burst speed - I'm port limited):

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/3949/sammyf1.jpg

But blimey, those figures are nice, who needs a raptor? :p

People who benefits more random access than sequential transfers? Without paying over the odds for SSD. Seriously, I am happy with modern 1TB drives for storage, but for an OS drive, I don't perceive a shift a 50MB/sec shift from 80MB/sec to 130MB sec as much as a random access decrease of 5ms.

I think i'll go for a non Sammy 1tb drive next..i have about 6 250gb drives cluttering up my case and psu.

Although the low price of the Death star is attractive, I'd feel uncomfortable about buying one.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TooNice

People who benefits more random access than sequential transfers? Without paying over the odds for SSD. Seriously, I am happy with modern 1TB drives for storage, but for an OS drive, I don't perceive a shift a 50MB/sec shift from 80MB/sec to 130MB sec as much as a random access decrease of 5ms.

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Access time is also improving though - look at the 1TB access times for both Zak and myself, compared to Stevie Lee - there's that 5ms improvement in access time for you :p

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kalniel

Access time is also improving though - look at the 1TB access times for both Zak and myself, compared to Stevie Lee - there's that 5ms improvement in access time for you :p

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That is probably not very accurate, the value can be worse whether you use it as an OS drive or not.

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/8624/hddmax3073rc.png
That is what you call good access time :P (very old Fujitsu 15k disk)

Just get a fast 15krpm drive (or SSD) for OS and 5400rpm drive for the rest.
Apart from the SAS card being slightly expensive, old 15k drives are fast and is extremely cheap compared to SSD.

I've never had a hard drive die on me. I have 2 Samsung harddrives in my pc that have been running for ages!

Here are my F1 and Hitachi drives.
The Sammy runs about 5-10 degress cooler than the Hitachis.

F1 500gb


http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/391/hdtunesamsungot8.jpg


Hitachi 640gb

http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/4...hitachihj0.jpg

Hitachi 750gb

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/5...hitachi1tb.jpg

Hitachi 1tb

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/5...hitachi1tb.jpg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by arthurleung

Just get a fast 15krpm drive (or SSD) for OS and 5400rpm drive for the rest.
Apart from the SAS card being slightly expensive, old 15k drives are fast and is extremely cheap compared to SSD.

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I am not convinced that it's worth going for those 15k RPM drive these days when I see this: http://www.storagereview.com/php/ben...1=345&devCnt=2

Admittedly, I've not used any 15k RPM drive to compare with a Velociraptor. I have however used a a number of 10k RPM SCSI drive, and for all the lower random access, it did not always translate to better user experience compared to relatively newer 7.2k RPM drives.

I can't see the Velociraptor being significantly behind (if at all) in a single user environment, and I also think that it'll be a hassle to flog those SCSI gear once SSD become financially viable (for the enthusiast mass).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Crusoex

I've never had a hard drive die on me. I have 2 Samsung harddrives in my pc that have been running for ages!

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Yeah my older Sammy 250gb drives are still going strong 3 years down the line, it just seems to be the F1's that are troublesome.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mithrandir

Here are my F1 and Hitachi drives.
The Sammy runs about 5-10 degress cooler than the Hitachis.

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Hi Mithrandir, i think there must be smth wrong with your temps for the samsung drive unless it's installed in a frigde :D , cause my ones run at around 33-34 Celsius in a P182 without a fan blowing over them and a few degrees lower with one at room temperature of around 23

Quote:

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Originally Posted by arthurleung

That is probably not very accurate, the value can be worse whether you use it as an OS drive or not.

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or set it as 'legacyIDE/ACHI' mode in bios then swap it to ACHI later on. :p not defragging them for a while doesn't help either.


might end up doing a complete re-install, something seems wrong on bootup. it shouldn't take 3 minutes :D was around 35 seconds for the first few weeks, then after installing a couple of (i.e.55) games, it then shot up to 3 minutes.

and the drives run between 25 - 30C - according to HDTune and the handy temp probes on the Akasa all in one. room temp is 20.7C

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Muska

Hi Mithrandir, i think there must be smth wrong with your temps for the samsung drive unless it's installed in a frigde :D , cause my ones run at around 33-34 Celsius in a P182 without a fan blowing over them and a few degrees lower with one at room temperature of around 23

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I think that pic was taken at a cooler time (probably around low 20s)
It's 29 degrees in my room at the moment and the temps are below:

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/4905/tempstodayq.jpg

my 2pence F1 are great, would not dream of getting any other type.

Just installed another of these Hitachi 1TB drives, it's now mid Oct '09, and this thread was back in June '09.

The new one is almost identical in speed terms.. I'm well pleased with the last one so I'm moving to this for my Games drive for fractionally faster loading times.