SPCR

I decided to take a chance and buy one of these HD321KJs, and either I got a great sample, or Samsung is now the silence dominator....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822152054

....seeks are barely audible, no vibration or bearing noise. It's so quiet I had to disconnect my Seagate 7200.7 ST380013A to hear it. It's mounted in the bottom of a P180 on the gromets and now the Scythe S-Flex 21Es are all I can hear beyond a faint occasional seek. Great drive performance for a Sammy on an Abit AT8 32X (ULi SATA), Average read is 65.3 MB/s and Random Access of 14.6 according to HDTach. The drive heads do park loud, but they only park during reset or shut down of the system. Whether or not this will lead to an increase in head noise, remains to be seen (or actually heard I guess).

I have a SAMSUNG T Series myself and it is very, very quiet. Really a great harddrive.

I can only conclude the same. I have 2 of them (HD321KJ) in mixed RAID 0 & 1 setup thanks to Intel Matrix technology and for me those two are very very silent.

They are placed in an Antec SOLO case.

The loudest part of my case are the CPU fan (Artic Cooling Freezer Pro 7 @ 1000rpm with Speedfan) and the exhaust fan (Antec TriCool @ Low) which makes them very quite.

R.

I've recently got the 500GB T-series and it's definitely the quietest drive I've ever had - and that's before the run-in period. And the perfromance is quite impressive too, even with AAM at max.

Good to hear as I've got one coming to my front door today to use as a linux drive.

I'll also do a subjective comparison to the WD 2500KS in my mom's computer and to the 40GB SATA WD Scorpio (which was disappointing compared to its PATA brother).

Denorios wrote:I've recently got the 500GB T-series and it's definitely the quietest drive I've ever had - and that's before the run-in period. And the perfromance is quite impressive too, even with AAM at max.

Can you give me some more info on that AAM and how to configure it ?

Thx.

dnoiz wrote:

Denorios wrote:I've recently got the 500GB T-series and it's definitely the quietest drive I've ever had - and that's before the run-in period. And the perfromance is quite impressive too, even with AAM at max.

Can you give me some more info on that AAM and how to configure it ?

Thx.

Well, I'm not an expert, but Automated Accoustic Management reduces the drives seek noise at the cost of some performance. It can be set at a variety of positions - 128 is the quietest, 256 the loudest. You need to run Hitachi Feature Tool from floppy, select the relevant drive when it opens, then go into the tools menu and select accoustic management.

dnoiz wrote:Can you give me some more info on that AAM and how to configure it ?

whiic wrote:There's also HDDScan which is a single file Windows executable. Requires no installation, no bootdisks, no reboots. Hitachi FTool is quite capable tool and does have a wider support for certain PCI addon controllers. If you use a motherboard controller HDDScan is likely the easier way.

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/ ... 2-HDDScan/

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

If you want to make a bootable utility, why not make it a Ultimate Boot CD, which has more than 100 utilities (including Hitachi FTool and diagnostics for all manufacturers (including Samsung)).

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

All are freeware.

Wow! This 321KJ is so quiet that I can hear my 5V'd Yate Loon 120mm over it. If I pay attention to the seeks, I can hear them, but they're certainly not obtrusive and I can probably make them go away with AAM. The drive temp is idling slightly under 40C.

Comparisons
The WD2500KS: This drive is now a disappointment with noticeably louder idle noise and louder seeks. My brother's sample seemed somewhat better, but the Samsung still beats it.

40GB WD Scorpio SATA 2.5" drive: As I said, this drive initially disappointed me because it was much louder than its PATA brother. It sounds a bit louder and a good bit rougher than the 321KJ, so I'll take the Samsung over this too.

40GB WD Scorpio PATA: Best drive I've ever had in terms of noise. Can't hear it unless you put your ear to it. Samsung is a bit louder with idle noise and somewhat louder with seeks.

For the record, I have/had these drives resting on foam in an Antec SLK3000B.

In my Shuttle SN25P I've got 3 Samsung: 2x T166 320gb and 1x T166 500gb.

These drives are very quiet. But generate lot of vibrations.

So I understand HD321KJ is a two platter drive, is this correct? (seems like it would be a nice successor to 2504C)

JazzJackRabbit wrote:So I understand HD321KJ is a two platter drive, is this correct? (seems like it would be a nice successor to 2504C)

Yeah, it's a Spinpoint T166, as in 166GB per platter.

I was going to get the 400GB version at the egg for $109 (great price!) but my laptop HD gave out and I ended up getting a SAMSUNG Spinpoint M Series HM120JC 120GB notebook HD for $82. I'm quite happy with it; it is definitely quieter than my previous Hitachi 30GB, and no constant head setting! Maybe later this year I’ll be happily installing a new 400-500GB Samsung HD in my family/fileserver PC

Is it me, or are Samsung drives far more competitively priced now? Quieter AND cheaper!? I’m all for that…

maybe i'm stupid right now, but could someone explain to me how to set AAM using hddscan? i can't find it anywhere.

It's under the "IDE Features" tab. If there's no such tab, you have the drive mounted to a non-supported controller. In such a case, I suggest Hitachi DFT boot diskette or Ultimate Boot CD (and boot to Hitachi DFT boot diskette image from there).

I have the T series HD300LJ model and is noisy, imo...Lots of vibrations and loud seeks. Is HD321KJ different?

My HD321KJ is great. See my reply in this thread.

I bought several Samsung Spinpoint drives a few years ago (SP1614C) and I am extremely happy with them. I never hear them. If I decided to upgrade, I would almost automatically buy another SP.

DG wrote:I have the T series HD300LJ model and is noisy, imo...Lots of vibrations and loud seeks. Is HD321KJ different?

You got T133 series hd. The newer T166 series could be quite different in terms of performance or noise. Not to mention your model uses 3 platters, whereas the HD321KJ has only 2 (which itself will automatically make it louder).

mczak: "You got T133 series hd. The newer T166 series could be quite different in terms of performance or noise. Not to mention your model uses 3 platters, whereas the HD321KJ has only 2 (which itself will automatically make it louder)."

Maybe... or maybe not. There's an alternate possibility to what kind of drive HD321KJ may really be...

888 (http://forums.storagereview.net/index.p ... opic=23424):
"Samsung T166 320GB (16MB, SATA300, NCQ) is also available now, several distributors have it already in their listings.

But one thing is weird...

Its model code is HD321KJ where according to Samsung's scheme the meaning of "K" is 5-heads. So is it really a 3-platter drive? Why? Although it is also claimed to use 167GB platters...

L = 6 heads
K = 5 heads
J = 4 heads
I = 3 heads
H = 2 heads
G = 1 head

May-be just an outlet for partially failed 500GB models?"

whiic wrote:Its model code is HD321KJ where according to Samsung's scheme the meaning of "K" is 5-heads. So is it really a 3-platter drive? Why? Although it is also claimed to use 167GB platters...

Interesting. I couldn't find the model numbering scheme samsung uses, but it could well be true. It would mean samsung does not use the full capacity of the platters (wouldn't that be an interesting firmware hack...), only about 130GB. That might be visible with STR benchmarks (compared to the 500GB model).
Someone wants to open his drive to see how many platters (and heads - might even be 6 with one disabled) it really has .
Still, characteristics might well be different to T133 drives, the quoted power draw is lower, and shock / vibration absorbance limits are better with the T166. T166 was also said to feature PMR, though it seems recently there is a great deal of confusion if it actually does. If it doesn't, it will use TMR though, and the older T133 still use GMR (well the 400GB T133 uses TMR but not the 300GB and smaller - I've no idea about the 320GB T133 actually). It's impossible to figure out, model numbers don't really seem to be any indicator...

I just received my hd321kj and the seek noise is much quieter than my 300gb 7200.9 seagate.

Is the AAM enabled by default for HD321kj?

slimwallet wrote:I just received my hd321kj and the seek noise is much quieter than my 300gb 7200.9 seagate.

Is the AAM enabled by default for HD321kj?

AAM is disabled by default as it is with the WD drives. However, Samsung recommends against using AAM whereas WD recommends using it.

I have several 501LJs and 321KJs and I run them all with AAM disabled. The Hitachi feature tool let's you test what the noise difference is and I couldn't tell a significant difference. Certainly not enough to justify even the slightest performance hit. All in all, these are incredibly quiet -- and cool -- drives.

I do have a 160GB drive from the Spinpoint T series and that drive is a bit of a disappointment. It's definitely louder, both idling and with seeks, than the other drives I have. I'm surprised, because I figured a single platter should be quieter. But perhaps there are some other manufacturing differences?

Yeah I was going to mention, I have a T166 160GB, and while a quiet drive, it doesn't seem like anything special. I haven't messed around with the AAM yet, though.

dfrost wrote:My HD321KJ is great. See my reply in this thread.

Are others finding the T166 series, when suspended, to be fine for idle hum and vibration noise? I'm much more sensitive to noise on the low end.

I'm considering the 500gb model (in an Antec Solo) though so acoustics could be quiet different than the 320.

It appears this drive has been discontinued? Any idea what a viable replacement would be? I don't need 500GB

jedster wrote: I have several 501LJs and 321KJs and I run them all with AAM disabled.

Do the 501LJ and the 321KJ differ in speed, latency, or loudness?

I'm currently building a new desktop system, and I have to choose a harddisk for it. At the moment, I consider the following possibilities:

* 1 x Samsung Spinpoint T166 501LJ (500 GB)
* 2 x Samsung Spinpoint T166 321KJ (2 x 320 GB) as RAID0
* 2 x Westerm Digital Caviar SE WD2000JS (2 x 200 GB) as RAID0.

Which would be your choice, considering speed and noise?

Murdock wrote:

jedster wrote: I have several 501LJs and 321KJs and I run them all with AAM disabled.

Do the 501LJ and the 321KJ differ in speed, latency, or loudness?

I'm currently building a new desktop system, and I have to choose a harddisk for it. At the moment, I consider the following possibilities:

* 1 x Samsung Spinpoint T166 501LJ (500 GB)
* 2 x Samsung Spinpoint T166 321KJ (2 x 320 GB) as RAID0
* 2 x Westerm Digital Caviar SE WD2000JS (2 x 200 GB) as RAID0.

Which would be your choice, considering speed and noise?

* 2 x Samsung Spinpoint T166 321KJ (2 x 320 GB) as RAID0

Let me know how you plan to make that happen. See post above.

Had one of those too (the 250Go version) ... Was very quiet indeed.
And then went ultimately quiet (aka DEAD) after 3 weeks and a mere 15 hours working.
It was full but thankfully on a RAID.

By lack of better solution (part exchange) I got a 400Go version and its very quiet too. Just lit a candle to santa Raid ...

exit2studios wrote: Let me know how you plan to make that happen. See post above.

Here in Germany, dozens of shops still offer that HDD...