the most silent samsung is the PL40? more so than the sp80?

dan · Post by **dan** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 5:17 pm

there's been quite a bit of discussion on this forum on the sp80 series, but samsung also has a pl40 line.

according to this link
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 008&depa=0

the P0411N is the most quiet hard drive they've ever used, one said even more so than the barracuda IV! it is a slimline design, but unfortunately it is only 40gb in capacity.

anyone familiar with this product?

Tigr · Post by **Tigr** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 1:00 am

No. However, looking at the reviews, most of them compare the drive with Maxtor and WD. That's hardly a reference. The guy mentioning the Seagate said there was a review comparing Seagate VII and this drive. Any idea where this review is?

BillyBuerger · Post by **BillyBuerger** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 8:47 am

I was just looking at the specs. I wondered why they called it "light and slim". Then I noticed that the height is 0.67" as opposed to the standard 1". So it is slightly smaller in size than your standard HD. Interesting.

dan · Post by **dan** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 11:29 am

i'm not familiar with either the pl40 or the sp80 but reading the newegg reviews i'm impressed.

i hope EDWARD NG or MIKE C reviews the PL40 versus the SP80!

oh i got one detail wrong. barracuda 7200 not IV.

"its actually less audible than a Seagate barracuda 7200.7, one of the quietest drives available."

from newegg
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Jason,4/12/2004 1:38:24 PM
The drive is extremely quiet and thinner than other drives. Get this drive...you won't regret it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trainman,
This is quiet, even when doing for instance a disk defragmentation or scan it is unoticable for a human ear!!!!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
N/A,3/30/2004 2:24:04 PM
The drive is quiet, I've alway bought Western Digital drives (20+, most of them from NewEgg) so when I turned the system on, I had to check if the drive spun-up because I didn't hear the usual spin-up noise I get from WD drives.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
zoebisch01,3/22/2004 7:35:05 AM

Very Quiet, barely audible over the case fan

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LeThe,3/21/2004 1:24:25 PM

Very quiet and fast Hard Drive. Highly recommended product!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason,2/23/2004 8:05:00 PM

This hard drive rocks. Its so quite I have to look at the hard drive light on the front of my case to make sure its working. Not only that, but this thing is fast. I mainly deal with maxtor but decided to try somethig else and Samsung just recieved a customer for life. Dont get me wrong maxtors are great drives but can get a little noisey and are not always the fastest, but are dependable. Kudos to samsung on a great product

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jstucki,2/22/2004 11:46:53 PM

Sometimes people confuse their terms and they think that "quieter than a turbine" is silent, but this Samsung drive really is very near absolute silence. I have worked with all kinds of hard drives and these are by far the quietest I have ever heard.
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quercusalba,2/19/2004 7:44:25 PM

Bought two of these a month ago for two linux boxes. They are amazingly quite!
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semaphore,2/10/2004 8:41:12 PM

The quietest hard drive I've ever used. So quiet that I look at the HD activity light to verify that it's actually working. I bought almost exclusively Maxtor's and IBM's in the past, but will include Samsung drives in the mix now that IBM sold off it's
HD business.
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Raddiux,1/21/2004 3:24:31 PM

I bought this drive in the hopes that it would be a quiet drive. Well, not only is it quiet, but its actually less audible than a Seagate barracuda 7200.7, one of the quietest drives available. The seeks on the Samsung drive are remarkably silent - almost undetectable. And to think, you can further reduce noise by downloading the disk tools on Samsungs website!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
oli,1/15/2004 9:53:13 AM

This drive is fast and quiet. A good buy.

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Sir SiNTeKK,1/9/2004 3:51:16 AM

I have used at least 10 of the various samsung hard drives in systems both of my own and for customers with no probs whatsoever. They run very cool, very quiet, and very fast.

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dasman · Post by **dasman** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 12:17 pm

dan wrote:there's been quite a bit of discussion on this forum on the sp80 series, but samsung also has a pl40 line.

according to this link
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 008&depa=0

the P0411N is the most quiet hard drive they've ever used, one said even more so than the barracuda IV! it is a slimline design, but unfortunately it is only 40gb in capacity.

anyone familiar with this product?

I'm a little confused (don't worry, happens to me all the time

). The link took me to the SP0411N, an sp80 series drive

Dave

dan · Post by **dan** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 12:40 pm

http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/index.htm

the SP0411N / 40.0GB / 7200rpm

is listed as their

"SpinPoint P Series
SP0411N
PL40Series
Light & Slim"

dasman · Post by **dasman** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 12:51 pm

dan wrote:http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/index.htm

the SP0411N / 40.0GB / 7200rpm

is listed as their

"SpinPoint P Series
SP0411N
PL40Series
Light & Slim"

I guess their international and USA website's need to talk then -- I linked to their US website which has it listed as an sp80 series drive and a link to the SP0411N specifically.

Dave

dan · Post by **dan** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 12:53 pm

actually i noticed that after you posted that the two differ.

it would make sense that since the HD that newegg sells is "slim and light" that it would have a different model number. (sp80 vs pl40)

regardless, is this "slim and light sp80/pl40" HD quieter than the "regular" sp80?

dasman · Post by **dasman** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 1:01 pm

What's really weird is that they do appear to be different drives with the same model number. The specs for the drive on the US site are different than those on the Global site.

Different seek times, transfer times, acoustics, power, physical dimensions -- they're all different. The US drive is a little bigger, faster, uses more power and is louder (boy, sounds like our cars too

).

I wonder what's up?

Dave

dasman · Post by **dasman** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 1:07 pm

dan wrote:actually i noticed that after you posted that the two differ.

it would make sense that since the HD that newegg sells is "slim and light" that it would have a different model number. (sp80 vs pl40)

regardless, is this "slim and light sp80/pl40" HD quieter than the "regular" sp80?

Your post beat me to the punch

-- they are a different series, but they have the same model number SP0411N. There is no way to know which one Newegg is selling (well, maybe there is -- the 11ms seek is the one on the global site, the US version is 8.9ms).

The specs say that the one on the global site is a little quieter -- 2.6/2.7 bels vs. 2.7/2.8 bels for the US drive. Don't know if that's noticable or not...

Dave

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 1:32 pm

I'm not sure if Mike C is working on it, but I'm not; my main reason for it is that when you are looking at 40GB capacity, a 2.5" drive of the same capacity would be quieter, smaller, draw less power and run cooler (although, admittedly more espensive).

Also keep in mind that all the reviews, comparisons and articles I have done so far, here in the forums, were done out of my own pocket, with my own time and energy. No one has donated any equipment to me for testing (yet...

), and if I'm going to buy another hard drive (which is the very last thing I could possibly need for the time being

), of 80GB or less capacity, it would either be a Raptor, to see just how fast the desktop optimizations make it, and compare it in terms of performance as well as acoustics to my Cheetah 15K.3, or a laptop drive, in terms of all-out acoustics.

I've also mentioned in the past that the 7200.7 of 40GB capacity (ST340014A) that I own is actually very, very good. While it would be interesting to compare SP0411N to my ST340014A, I don't really feel it personally worth it, if only because the current crop of 40GB laptop drives would easily outquiet either one of them, and if my memory serves me correctly, there are quiet 40GB laptop drives with a full 8MB of cache, so it shouldn't be very difficult, in fact, for the 2.5" 7200rpm 40GB 8MB drives to actually match the larger, noisier, hotter 40GB 2MB 3.5" drives in terms of performance in normal usage, even when comparing 5400rpm to 7200rpm (being that, in some cases, the 8MB of cache can make as much as 30% improvement in performance over 2MB). I, for one, have been quite satisfied with the performance of my Fujitsu MHT2080AT, an 8MB cached drive that only spins at 4200rpm! And remember that I'm spoiled by a 15000rpm drive and three-way striped array on one of my other computers (no, it's obviously not as fast, but it's still perfectly satisfactory in performance for doing e-mail, web surfing, listening to music etc.).

And yes, I know I'm not comparing fairly on a $ for $ basis (in terms of capacity), but it's pretty much accepted that when you pay the extra for a laptop drive, you're getting space saved, heat reduced and noise reduced all in one package (and in some cases, with the 8MB of cache, performance improved!), and for many SilentPCReview members, it is probably worth the difference, being that acoustics are our primary focus.

For capacities larger than 80GB, however, the only serious choice in terms of quieter drives are the 120GB and 160GB Samsungs and Seagates and the 200GB Seagate.

-Ed

dan · Post by **dan** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 5:58 pm

do laptop drives fit industry standard ATA-100?

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 6:10 pm

Adapters can be found for as little as $3, although they normally range from $5 to $7.

Most even include brackets to mount the drive in a 3.5" bay.

EDITS: Added links to the following adapters on online retailers...:

...at ZipZoomFly and...

...at Directron.

-Ed

dan · Post by **dan** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 7:03 pm

i see that notebook drives are quite a bit more expensive.

i think i'll go either with the pl40 or the sp80, though i wish the pl40 came in 80gb size as 40gb isn't very much

dan · Post by **dan** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 9:26 pm

xbit labs sees the pl-40 series as distinct from the sp80.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storag ... -pl40.html

"more families, SpinPoint PL and VL were added to existing SpinPoint P (7200rpm) and SpinPoint V (5400rpm). The ?L? in the name stands for ?Low-profile?.

"The robustness and noiselessness of the new Samsung match the latest products from Seagate. "

the conclusion of this review, includes comments on its sound

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storag ... 40_12.html

"Thanks to its liquid bearings and house technologies of noise reduction, SpinPoint PL40 was the most noiseless, much better than an analogous drive from Maxtor. The spindle squeaked no louder than in Barracuda 7200.7, while positioning sound of the Samsung drive was much less perceptible. You can only hear it when the case is open. The buzz of the Seagate drive has more high-frequency components and is more irritating. As for shock-tolerance, SpinPoint PL40 can match the higher-priced Barracuda 7200.7, but beats it in performance!"

" And we have not yet tested the full-size SpinPoint P80, which should be even faster?"

Post by **MikeC** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 10:16 pm

OK, I have to admit I don't know which of the slim-line Samsung 40G models it was, but I did go through 2 of them about 6 months ago. Here's what I remember:

1) They are louder and whinier than the full 1" thick SP 80G, 120G or 160G Samsungs.

2) They are probably quieter than the Maxtors & WDs.

3) No way they were as quiet as a 'cuda IV. Against a 7200.7.... maybe.

I didn't report about them because of the low capacity (no one sells anything smaller than 60G or 80G in 3.5" anyway...) and they are not really that quiet.

the most silent samsung is the PL40? more so than the sp80?

the most silent samsung is the PL40? more so than the sp80?

can edward NG review this drive?

Re: the most silent samsung is the PL40? more so than the sp