Samsung F1 series hard drives w/1TB model

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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DG
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Post by DG » Mon Dec 17, 2007 10:55 am

Are they still vibrating like hell? The 300LJ i have is very bad, from this point of view. I don't like Samsung anymore, i think i will get a WD Green Power instead. :roll:

Jose Hidalgo
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Post by Jose Hidalgo » Tue Dec 18, 2007 6:26 am

Jose Hidalgo wrote:The HD103UJ is available at Newegg, but does someone know something about the HD102UJ ? (1TB, 16MB cache instead of 32, thus cheaper). Why isn't it available yet, and WHEN will it finally be available ? :(

Being cheaper than the already cheap HD103UJ, I believe the HD102UJ will be a real killer in the 1TB market segment.

Thanks. :wink:
andyb wrote:Whats the point, you will save £10 ($20), I was surprised that they even list and make the drive at all.!
What's the point in you asking that ? Let people mind their own business. If Samsung has decided to market this drive it's for a good reason. You can trust them on that one. Lots of people willl buy it, I'll be one of them, and we'll all be happy, period.

Oh BTW, since I have 6 drives to buy, maybe I'm interested in saving $120, which begins to be a decent amount of money (I hope you're not going to ask why I have so much drives to buy... :roll: ).

PASware
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Post by PASware » Tue Dec 18, 2007 6:34 am

Jose Hidalgo wrote: (I hope you're not going to ask why I have so much drives to buy... :roll: ).
Why are you buying so many drives? :lol:

Jose Hidalgo
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Post by Jose Hidalgo » Tue Dec 18, 2007 6:51 am

The answer is easy PASware : because if I don't buy so many drives, I won't be able to save $120 !! :lol:

PASware
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Post by PASware » Tue Dec 18, 2007 7:07 am

Jose Hidalgo wrote:The answer is easy PASware : because if I don't buy so many drives, I won't be able to save $120 !! :lol:
LOLL :lol:

Ontopic:
come on where is the 320 and 640gb versions :cry:

lobuni
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Post by lobuni » Tue Dec 18, 2007 9:53 am

The hdd manufcturers really seem to have big trouble getting the smaller models out. WD5000aacs is also to be found nowhere, although they said, it was shipping. Maybe the profit is not big enough yet with smaller models, lets hope they'll improve their production process soon.

mandoman
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Post by mandoman » Tue Dec 18, 2007 10:29 am

lobuni wrote:The hdd manufcturers really seem to have big trouble getting the smaller models out. WD5000aacs is also to be found nowhere, although they said, it was shipping. Maybe the profit is not big enough yet with smaller models, lets hope they'll improve their production process soon.
I'm guessing they are using the 333gb platters for
the 1tb version until demand levels out, than they will
start making the lower capacity models. As I'm sure
the 1tb models are still in very high demand right now, we might
have to wait a bit longer...

Come on, bring on the 320gb!!!

beoba
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Post by beoba » Tue Dec 18, 2007 8:32 pm

They make more money per platter on the 1TB's, so they probably aren't in much of a hurry to release the lower-margin stuff.

(See for yourself, go on newegg and start calculating capacity/cost, you'll find that the sweet spot is around 500gb)

Schlotkins
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Post by Schlotkins » Thu Dec 27, 2007 5:34 am

Do you think I should go for the 750gig Western Digital or the Samsung? I'd love to get the 1TB model, but I'm putting 2 of these in a RAID 1 and it would be $200 more for only 250gigs...

I would wait for the 640gig model, but that model will have the same STR and less cache. I'm not sure how that would affect the performance. I also don't have any hope of the 640gig model being available soon.

Thanks,
Chris

PASware
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Post by PASware » Thu Dec 27, 2007 3:53 pm

Schlotkins wrote:Do you think I should go for the 750gig Western Digital or the Samsung? I'd love to get the 1TB model, but I'm putting 2 of these in a RAID 1 and it would be $200 more for only 250gigs...

I would wait for the 640gig model, but that model will have the same STR and less cache. I'm not sure how that would affect the performance. I also don't have any hope of the 640gig model being available soon.

Thanks,
Chris
I think the performance difference between 16mb and 32mb cache is small. Smaller then the difference between 8mb and 16mb, I think.

Jose Hidalgo
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Post by Jose Hidalgo » Thu Dec 27, 2007 6:14 pm

Unfortunately the HD102UJ is still not available @newegg. :evil: Samsung does this to force people to buy the 32MB version (HD103UJ) before introducing the 16MB version. And that's what I'm being forced to do right now, just because I can't wait any longer. I hate that kind of attitude from a manufacturer !!

Wibla
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Post by Wibla » Fri Dec 28, 2007 6:36 am

So whats the big downside with having 32MB cache vs. 16MB since its so important for you?

Jose Hidalgo
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Post by Jose Hidalgo » Fri Dec 28, 2007 9:01 am

There's no downside, it's all about the price. The HD102UJ will be about $20 cheaper. And since I need to buy 6 HDs, that makes $120 just for having 32MB which I don't need. Thank you Mr. Samsung !! :evil:

klankymen
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Post by klankymen » Fri Dec 28, 2007 9:18 am

well, you could say that about everything. like processors with 1.8GHz. you could say, hey, I only need 1.5GHz, I'm paying extra for 300MHz that I don't need. But that's the way it is - it's just progress. Back in the day hard-drives had 8MB cache. but things are changing. if you want less features buy older products - they will also be cheaper.

Schlotkins
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Post by Schlotkins » Fri Dec 28, 2007 9:24 am

I ended up going with the 750gig Samsungs. They'll be here next week and I'll put up some benchmarks.

trxman
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Post by trxman » Fri Dec 28, 2007 9:52 am

klankymen wrote:well, you could say that about everything. like processors with 1.8GHz. you could say, hey, I only need 1.5GHz, I'm paying extra for 300MHz that I don't need. But that's the way it is - it's just progress. Back in the day hard-drives had 8MB cache. but things are changing. if you want less features buy older products - they will also be cheaper.
well, bigger on-disk cache is somewhat useless if you have at least decent caching/buffering algorithms in you OS and a lot more space in RAM to cache/buffer data. good IO scheduler is important, too.

on my home-made server, for example, I have 8GB of RAM and cache/buffers can grow up to 40% of it. it fills up the buffer, reorder IOs and write them sequentialy once the buffer is not altered for 10 minutes (or limit of 40% of RAM is reached).

for price difference of 20$ for every disk you could buy 1GB more RAM. additional 1GB would improve performance a lot more then additional 16MB... ;)

Jose Hidalgo
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Post by Jose Hidalgo » Fri Dec 28, 2007 11:00 am

Yes, and the difference with the processors example is that in Samsung's case, BOTH models (HD102UJ and HD103UJ) are announced and expected to be available at the same time. Why ? Because it's the SAME hard drive in fact, only with 16MB (102) or 32MB (103).

BUT Samsung has decided to make the 32MB models available first (they could have decided to make the 16MB models available first, just by putting less memory inside). The 16MB models will be available in some days / weeks, even though it's, I repeat, the SAME hard drive.

And WHY is that ? Well, we all know :
- because if customers really had the choice, they would buy a lot of 16MB models, and much less 32MB models. Customers aren't dumb, you know. They know that 16MB more won't really make a difference.
- because it's Christmas time, which means lots of gifts, etc.. So if customers don't have the choice, they will be forced to buy the more expensive 32MB model, just because it has to be delivered by Christmas / New Year's eve.

Once Christmas time is over, Samsung will introduce the 16MB model. You will see, it's all about marketing intelligence (funny word... "intelligence"... :roll: ). And I think that it's a shame, because it's not a different product but the SAME product.

So excluse my for being a bit angry at Samsung, but having to pay $120 for a bunch of +16MB that I don't want when the HD102UJ should be already available everywhere is a bit hard to swallow.

SileX
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Post by SileX » Fri Dec 28, 2007 1:07 pm

To know if 16 or 32 MB cache make or not a difference, we need to wait for the comparison tests. My bet is that it will make quite a significant difference. I will never buy the 16 model having a 32 option. It is my data and it i my time. Worth much more than the dollar difference!

Jose Hidalgo
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Post by Jose Hidalgo » Fri Dec 28, 2007 5:00 pm

My bet is that it won't. But I think you are not making the difference between performance and storage. For all your data that require very fast access times (a very little part of your data of course), go get a Raptor, a SSD, or something like that. For all the rest of your data we are in the storage domain, and here performance doesn't matter when we're talking about some percent more or less.

So unless you are a video professional or something like that (but I'm talking as a home user, not as a professional), you just can't need very high performance all over a terabyte. It's not possible.

SileX
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Post by SileX » Sat Dec 29, 2007 9:15 am

Does USB 2 vs FireWire (even FireWire 400) matters for you? For me the difference is huge in favor of FireWire 400, which is much, much, much faster IN REAL WORLD for my work with and without video editing (eg., for moving large files or large amounts of data). It is another world!

I guess the same will happen with the 16 vs 32 MB cache. But, as said, we need the test results.

Jose Hidalgo
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Post by Jose Hidalgo » Sat Dec 29, 2007 10:30 am

The performance difference won't exceed some percent (at the best). But even if it did, you seem to forget that we are still in the storage domain, where performance doesn't matter.

So either you have only ONE hard drive for ALL your data (which is a mistake IMHO) and in that case I agree, it'd better be fast (but it still would be a mistake :P ), or you can have SEVERAL hard drives and in that case you only need ONE small, fast hard drive for all your critical data (Raptor, SSD, RAID 0, whatever), and one or several BIG hard drives for storage where performance isn't a concern.
Last edited by Jose Hidalgo on Sat Dec 29, 2007 10:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

klankymen
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Post by klankymen » Sat Dec 29, 2007 10:31 am

I agree with you about that point. Why don't you just buy the western digital hard drive?

by the way in germany, the 16MB and 32MB versions are priced the same, so there would be no reason to go with the smaller one.

Jose Hidalgo
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Post by Jose Hidalgo » Sat Dec 29, 2007 10:34 am

klankymen wrote:I agree with you about that point. Why don't you just buy the western digital hard drive?
Because the Samsung F1 is currently the ONLY 1TB drive in the world with only 3 platters, and I like that for obvious reasons. :wink:
klankymen wrote:by the way in germany, the 16MB and 32MB versions are priced the same, so there would be no reason to go with the smaller one.
... and we both agree that it's illogical of course. :wink: I think that's simply because the 16MB version isn't really availble (I don't think any big reseller - e.g. newegg - has already them in stock). Are you sure they are in stock ? I would be surprised. When they become available their price will logically drop a bit below the price of the 32MB version.

klankymen
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Post by klankymen » Sat Dec 29, 2007 10:48 am

no, not in stock, that's correct.
Well, I liked the idea of 3-platters myself also, but in german forums I read MANY reports of the F1 being shipped out with defective sectors, and samsung reps themselves claimed that the F1s in europe/germany right now were "grey-imports" from a different market.

In any case I'm very reluctant to buy one anymore. Any extra noise the wd makes from having 4 platters instead of 3 is probably counteracted by it spinning slower. So noise is the same, price is a little lower, performance maybe a little less (but irrelevant for movies/music), and no reports of bad sectors.

Maybe I will order one of both and do a direct comparison, but that might take until february.

Jose Hidalgo
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Post by Jose Hidalgo » Sat Dec 29, 2007 11:08 am

klankymen wrote:samsung reps themselves claimed that the F1s in europe/germany right now were "grey-imports" from a different market.
I'm buying mines from newegg (HD103UJ... sigh), so I hope they're good.
klankymen wrote:So noise is the same, price is a little lower, performance maybe a little less (but irrelevant for movies/music), and no reports of bad sectors.
Don't forget that less platters means also less heat and less probability of failure. The failure probability of a given hard drive should be IMHO more or less proportional to its number of platters.

SileX
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Post by SileX » Sat Dec 29, 2007 4:01 pm

It seems to me that the 16 MB Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB will never be released. That is why in Germany both models are priced alike. Wait and see...

Jose Hidalgo
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Post by Jose Hidalgo » Sat Dec 29, 2007 4:38 pm

Might be, might be. At least that way I won't have any regrets. Wait and see... :)

JazzJackRabbit
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Post by JazzJackRabbit » Sun Dec 30, 2007 9:30 pm

Jose, you might want to look into WD green series. I'd like to have 6 disk RAID 5 or something like that for storage, but I don't want to fork out over a grand for that. However, if I were to do it I'd seriously consider WD Green Series. I tried WD in the past 3200JD series (I believe), I came away disappointed and haven't purchased a single WD drive since. You're right, for storage stuff quietness, reliability, low power draw and low heat dissipation matter a lot more than ethereal performance gain from 16 to 32MB, which is where Green Series seem like a good choice worthy of consideration. They draw less than 4W idle, they do have 4 platters but 5400RPM speed more than makes up for increased number of platters.

zzombi
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Post by zzombi » Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:07 am

"In the first 3 months of usage drives have ~10% average failure rate if under high average load, according to this study (figure 3, page 5): http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf
Very interesting study, btw, well worth the read."

I guess those 10% during the first 3 months, being annualized, mean only 2.5% of the drives.

The difference between 600K plain and 1M2 MTBF for the raid edition comes to 3.7% drives broken in the unknown pre-sale period, if they used the same component design life for each value. It's possible raids use accelerated (high temperature) tests though, to obtain the effect of a much longer burn-in.

And they also say "Before being put into production, all disk drives go through a short burn-in process, which consists of a combination of read/write stress tests designed to catch many of the most common assembly, conï¬

Raptus
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Post by Raptus » Sat Jan 05, 2008 10:59 am

zzombi wrote:So they found drive temperatures irrelevant
Only for new drives. Figure 5 shows there is a pronounced difference for drives 3 years old and above.
The effect of load on the AFR is also quite interesting, whose only significant influence is on the very new drives (Figure 3).

I got the 750GB, btw. It's not as quiet as I expected it to be (I've seen quieter drives), but still excellent. Accesses are audible but have a "soft" quality. Unfortunately vibration is a bit high and in an external usb case it's warming up to around 43C.

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