Which 2 Buy? Samsung HD501LJ or Seagate 7200.11 500GB

SilentShoe · Post by **SilentShoe** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 6:08 pm

Hi,
Im in the market for a new hard drive and am looking for the quiestest hard drive while seeking.
I currently have a Samsung Spinpoint P. It is essentialy inaudible during idle but when seeking i can clearly hit it make sputtering noises.

I heard good things about the HD501LJ but was wondering if anyone with 7200.11 know of their noise levels.

Currently the 7200.11 is the only 500Gb HD with a 32mb cache and its nearly as fast (sometimes faster) than a raptor.

Any other suggestions?

Post by **MikeC** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:22 pm

Definitely not a Seagate; no current 7200rpm 3.5" Seagate is quiet during seek. They've been this way for at least a couple of years.

Hitachi drives are fast and quieter, as you can at least set AAM to minimum.

zVp · Post by **zVp** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:56 pm

For the lower noise, is there a compromise with performance? I'm in the same dilemma with the 7200.11s and other drives...

KenAF · Post by **KenAF** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:59 pm

zVp wrote:For the lower noise, is there a compromise with performance? I'm in the same dilemma with the 7200.11s and other drives...

The 7200.11 is no speed demon. I had one and replaced it with the Samsung. The dropoff with the Samsung is negligible.

If you want the best acoustics, you buy the Samsung 500Gb or the Western Digital 1TB WD10EACS. If you want a compromise between noise and performance, then you buy the 750Gb Western Digital WD7500AAKS. Another alternative to the WD7500AAKS is the Hitachi 1TB with AAM set to 128.

If you want best possible performance with low acoustics, then keep an eye out for the upcoming 640GB Western Digital WD6400AAKS with 320Gb platters.

aztec · Post by **aztec** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 1:32 am

I had the Seagate and switched to the Samsung for 2 reasons.

The Seagate was noisier.

The SATA power connector on the Seagate melted and started burning one day when I booted up. It was connected to a Seasonic HX620 which has never given me problems.

The Spinpoint has been great so far and have not noticed a difference in performance.

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 4:35 am

I would get a Hitachi for its quieter acoustics and faster performance, but WD GP is a good compromise for storing data only. Anyway, I like my Hitachi 7K80, 7K160, and WD 2500JS, 2500KS.

By the way, no Seagate is quiet at idle, because they do seek, verifying its status, all the time. Seagate is just slower, noisier, but comes with 5 years warranty.

JaYp146 · Post by **JaYp146** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 6:53 am

I'd get the Samsung.

Acoustics are superb, and while you're not getting a Seagate 5 year warranty, Samsung's 500GB also tends to run a bit cooler and still has a 3 year warranty.

/shameless plug

zVp · Post by **zVp** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 6:59 am

KenAF wrote:
zVp wrote:For the lower noise, is there a compromise with performance? I'm in the same dilemma with the 7200.11s and other drives...
The 7200.11 is no speed demon. I had one and replaced it with the Samsung. The dropoff with the Samsung is negligible.

If you want the best acoustics, you buy the Samsung 500Gb or the Western Digital 1TB WD10EACS. If you want a compromise between noise and performance, then you buy the 750Gb Western Digital WD7500AAKS. Another alternative to the WD7500AAKS is the Hitachi 1TB with AAM set to 128.

If you want best possible performance with low acoustics, then keep an eye out for the upcoming 640GB Western Digital WD6400AAKS with 320Gb platters.

Wow. now that's a post! Thanks for the info! I think I'm gonna wait for the WD6400AAKS to be released and see how it performs. I think I settle with my little 160 gigger for now.

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:10 am

I'd go against conventional opinion and recommend Seagate. Both are 7200rpm drives, however 501 is a three platter drive, while .11 should be a two platter one. Two platters always beat three in idle noise. So as long as you're not bothered by louder seeks on seagate I would suggest it over Samsung.

SilentShoe · Post by **SilentShoe** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:11 am

thanks for the help
i guess i'll be going with the hd501lj then
the cost for a 750gb + is simply too expensive $/gb ratio
otherwise i would look into the Samsung 750GB with 32mb cache.

Anyways it'll still be an upgrade

thanks

KenAF · Post by **KenAF** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 12:48 pm

JazzJackRabbit wrote:I'd go against conventional opinion and recommend Seagate. Both are 7200rpm drives, however 501 is a three platter drive, while .11 should be a two platter one. Two platters always beat three in idle noise. So as long as you're not bothered by louder seeks on seagate I would suggest it over Samsung.

As I alluded to above, I had both of these drives and the noise was not at all comparable.

Subjectively, idle noise on the Seagate 500Gb was more than twice that of the Samsung 500Gb.

Goat_guy · Post by **Goat_guy** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 10:11 pm

I've got two of the Spinpoints - one for 14 months and the other for just over a month. They are both fantastic drives and are both quieter than my VF900 on 6-7V - seek noise is very low even when sitting bare against my 1/4" acrylic case, two feet from my ears.

Brian

Michael Sandstrom · Post by **Michael Sandstrom** » Sat Feb 02, 2008 12:42 am

I love my four quiet Samsung HD501LJ suspended drives.

KnightRT · Post by **KnightRT** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 4:27 pm

I have four of the Samsung 500 GB drives mounted in drive trays in an Antec Solo. At idle, there's a faint broadband air sound. That's all. When I was running a single drive suspended, it was beneath the noise floor of my apartment. I couldn't hear it at all. Performance is plenty enough for file-serving duties, though not as quick as my 74 GB Raptor.

mcoleg · Post by **mcoleg** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 7:39 pm

just wanted to mention - 7200.11 are am improvement over 7200.10 noise-wise. less vibrations and idle and seeks are more muffled. while it won't beat Samsung or Hitachi, obviously, they no longer will drive you to a suicide with all that ruckus

.

there's an interesting seagate drive out there, btw - st3250410as. while it's listed as 7200.10, it's actually from 7200.11 family - it has single 250gb platter. the drive is half-height and not too loud.

SilentShoe · Post by **SilentShoe** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 5:31 pm

i just bought my hd501lj
thank to all that help me so far

anyway i noticed that out of 500GB, i only have ~465GB available.
should there be this massive 35GB difference or does mine have some issue?
i read some ppl complaining about bad sectors etc. how can i check for this?

thanks!

KenAF · Post by **KenAF** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 6:13 pm

SilentShoe wrote:i just bought my hd501lj
thank to all that help me so far
anyway i noticed that out of 500GB, i only have ~465GB available.
should there be this massive 35GB difference or does mine have some issue?

For marketing purposes, drive manufacturers quote capacity based on 1,000,000,000 bytes per gigabyte. But there are not 1,000,000,000 bytes in a gigabyte. There are 1,073,741,824 bytes per gigabyte.

Divide 500,000,000,000 by 1,073,741,824 and you get 465GB.

You can check for bad sectors with chkdsk in Windows. Right-click on the drive in Windows, select properties, and then "Check now.." for errors.

SilentShoe · Post by **SilentShoe** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 8:15 pm

KenAF wrote: For marketing purposes, drive manufacturers quote capacity based on 1,000,000,000 bytes per gigabyte. But there are not 1,000,000,000 bytes in a gigabyte. There are 1,073,741,824 bytes per gigabyte.

Divide 500,000,000,000 by 1,073,741,824 and you get 465GB.

You can check for bad sectors with chkdsk in Windows. Right-click on the drive in Windows, select properties, and then "Check now.." for errors.

ty for the exact calculations, i knew it was something like that but i didnt realize it would be as big as 35gb hit, i was thinking around 10-15gb was too lazy to do the math to make surel.

Wisebird · Post by **Wisebird** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 11:20 pm

Hi guys,
Yesterday i bought dlink dns-313 and Samsung HD501LJ 500GB 7200rpm.

And the HDD sounds really noisy when it's being accessed, though someone here posted that this hdd is really quite.
could you give me any suggestions what can be done to reduce the noise?
thnx

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 12:20 pm

Hitachi fastEST but a bit noisy seeks. 1TB variant has lots of whoosh as well due to number of platters.

Seagate noisiEST but still the slowEST. See StorageReview's benchmarks on last few generations of Seagate drives and you should get the point. High seek noise doesn't mean good performance.

Samsung and WD are faster than Seagate but slower than Hitachi. They are also quieter than Hitachi and Seagate.

Samsung: lowest idle noise at 7200rpm. Non-obtrusive seeks. Very high vibration. Absolutely requires decoupling.

WD 7200rpm models: non-obtrusive idle and very quiet seeks.

WD 5400rpm models (GreenPower): nearly inaudible idle and very quiet seeks. Slightly slower than most competition, for obvious reasons... but at least it's not slower than Seagate. (Don't believe me? Read this article: http://www.storagereview.com/1000.sr and especially page 3 because there's the relevant single-user tests.)

All HDDs manufactured by Hitachi, Samsung and WD support AAM. That means, seek noise can be changed between noisy/performance & quiet/slightly_slower. Performance hit of enabling AAM depends on use scenario but will probably be in range of 1...10% while having a big effect on seek noise. Only in server environment enabling AAM might reduce performance in the same amount as it increases random access time... outside of server environment, random access time means less, caching algorithms and sequential transfer rate mean more.

Seagate doesn't support AAM, like already mentioned. They can't be configured to quiet seek mode. I don't see any reason to consider these drives for a quiet/silent build... nor for a noisy build that aims at top performance. (Yes, warranty alone is no reason to buy these drives.) These drives just suck today... there was a time when Seagates were something special but that time has long since passed.

_________

mcoleg: "just wanted to mention - 7200.11 are am improvement over 7200.10 noise-wise. less vibrations and idle and seeks are more muffled. while it won't beat Samsung or Hitachi, obviously, they no longer will drive you to a suicide with all that ruckus"

7200.11 may (or may not) be a tad quieter than 7200.10 but
A) that's like saying an unmuffled V8 sounds quieter than space shuttle Atlantis taking off
B) 7200.11 still doesn't have AAM.

"there's an interesting seagate drive out there, btw - st3250410as. while it's listed as 7200.10, it's actually from 7200.11 family - it has single 250gb platter. the drive is half-height and not too loud."

What is "not too loud" is subjective but that drive sure is interesting... not because it's unusually high density (because Samsung and WD has up to 320GB on single platter) and not because it might be quietISH (but probably still far from actually being "quiet") but because it's thin.

And no, it's not "half-height". I have a 42 MB half-height Miniscribe... it is the height of CD-ROM drive. (Full-height was the height of two CD-ROM drives stacked.) Normal HDDs are all "low-profile". What you call "half-height" is actually "ultra-low-profile".

Ultra-low-profile HDDs are quite rare. Seagate still makes them. Hitachi's 7K80 and 7K160 are hybrids in that their casing are of ultra-low-profile size but top cover is bulged outwards so that it requires the same space as regular HDDs. Airflow is improved even, though.

Samsung had PL40. I have one of those around. 80GB/platter technology but only one side used. Actually kinda noisy one for a Samsung... but at least the vibration is like what we'd expect for a Samsung... terrible.

I also have a Medalist of ultra-low-profile. What is weird about it is that it has TWO platters with FOUR heads, all fit into the size of case that typically mounts only one platter (or like PL40, "half" a platter). It's pretty cramped HDD and makes me respect Seagates effort in stuffing the components in it... like I respect Hitachi's achievement with 5-platter monsters in low-profile. And Seagate Barracuda 180 with 12 platter and 24 heads fit into half-height. Now that's a MONSTER like no other... well, there's of course IBM RAMAC and stuff. "Dish washers"... HDDs the size of a washing machine with fifty 24 inch platters inside. GODLIKE.

"There's no use trying to talk - no human sound can stand up to this. Loud enough to knock you down."

________

KenAF: "But there are not 1,000,000,000 bytes in a gigabyte. There are 1,073,741,824 bytes per gigabyte."

But there really is 1,000,000,000 bytes in a gigabyte (shorted GB). 1,073,741,824 bytes make a gibibyte (shorted GiB) (which is incorrectly referred as "gigabyte" by 90+% of software vendors, incl. Microsoft).

Ofter repeated lie has become a truth?

______

to Wisebird: you should enable AAM feature and set it to quietest available. Download HDDScan if you're using WinXP or related OS. If you're using some other OS, create a bootable floppy disk with Hitachi Feature Tool (FTOOL). It works with non-Hitachi HDDs as well. (Alternatively you can burd an Ultimate Boot CD which includes HDD utilities from all HDD manufacturers. FTOOL is also there.)

KenAF · Post by **KenAF** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 12:40 pm

There's a new king in town.

I got my 320GB Western Digital WD3200AAKS-00B3A0 today and it produces noticeably less noise than my Samsung HD501LJ. It is faster too!

mcoleg · Post by **mcoleg** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 10:47 pm

whiic, you are right.

"half-height" traditionally are the 2x5.25 bays. i'd like to point though, that the term is archaic - no one uses or makes those anymore. all the regular desktop and enterprise-class hard drives right now are 1/4 height according to that; instead we use term "normal height" for some reason... go figure

i've worked with some "ultra-low-profile" some years ago, btw. they were thin but wide and long as a cd-rom drive.

and no, it's not the quietest. it is, however, convenient for certain applications and is much quieter than the 7200.10. much less vibrations as well.

justlnluck · Post by **justlnluck** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 12:00 am

I love my Hitachi 500GB. I own many hard drives: Samsungs, Seagates, WD....this Hitachi is the quiets idle and seeks by far. It also feels the coolest to the touch. I can't remember the model number. It's the new energy efficient one.

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 2:16 am

mcoleg: ""half-height" traditionally are the 2x5.25 bays. i'd like to point though, that the term is archaic - no one uses or makes those anymore."

My Miniscribe is not that archaic. It's 3.5" wide but half-height. Not all half-heights are 5.25" wide. Miniscribe was, I believe, the first "modern" voice-coil actuated, IDE interfaced HDD. It's still mountable in a modern computer without use of any addon controllers (addon controllers would be impossible to mount as motherboards have no ISA ports or other archaic card slots). Sure, a stepped engine HDD would be much more WTF but I guess Miniscribe is WTF enough.

"all the regular desktop and enterprise-class hard drives right now are 1/4 height according to that"

No. "Ultra-low-profile" = quarter height. Regular "low-profile" HDD somewhere in between 1/2 and 1/4 height... and it isn't exactly 1/3 either. It's 1 inch high, so it's not a result of diving original full-height (3.25") drive height with any integer. The logic with "low-profile" has probably been to get out of the full height, half height and quarter height form factors used in 5.25" world and make form factor that was measured in full inches... for 3.5" HDDs. I'm not aware of low-profile 5.25" inchers.. but ultra-low-profile 5.25" do exist.

"i've worked with some "ultra-low-profile" some years ago, btw. they were thin but wide and long as a cd-rom drive."

I forgot to mention that I have one of those too. 2.5 GB Quantum Bigfoot. 5.25" inches wide and 0.8 inches tall, it's lower than regular HDD yet much wider and longer. Looks pretty grotesque. It's cast aluminum alloy both pieces (no steel top cover) but according to Total Hardware 99 it has 4 heads (thus 2 platters) fit inside. considering the thickness of cast aluminum versus HDDs with steel top covers, these ultra-low-profile Bigfoots have to be even more cramped inside... with 5.25" platters and more massive actuator arms than what are present in 3.5" form factor.

mcoleg: "and no, it's not the quietest. it is, however, convenient for certain applications and is much quieter than the 7200.10. much less vibrations as well."

Being much quieter isn't always quiet enough. But if you can make comparisons to non-Seagate drives like P80 (Nidec), T133/T166, F1, WD GP, etc. Those are all tough competition and any of them are hard to beat (unless you have a bad sample of them and a good sample of that Seagate) but comparing that Seagate to any other drives is pretty much pointless. You shouldn't compare it to Hitachi drives because Seagate and Hitachi are on the other ends of the spectrum. Hitachi drives are top-notch single user performers (productivity, gaming, etc.) where as Seagate drives are optimized for server workloads (which is kinda dumb idea to optimize 7200rpm HDDs). And ultra-low-profile HDDs typically sacrifice some of the performance when compared to low-profile counterparts with same data density and number of platters. Such a small form factor requires miniaturization of magnets that allow actuator arm to move when current is supplied to the coil. If coil current isn't increased, having inferior magnets leads to inferior seek performance.

"Convenience" is a good argument. Ultra-low-profile can give some extra value in either fitting more into same space or fitting same number of HDDs without significantly reducing airflow through the stack, thus both keeping overall case temperature lower and keeping HDD run cooler. Fitting more HDDs into the same space isn't likely though because most computer cases have no slots designed to mount ultra-low-profile HDDs - thus they end up mounted in slots for regular height HDDs.

As for noise (in general, not this new Seagate model as I have not heard that one), ultra-low-profile HDDs don't necessarily mean they are quieter. My PL40 produces more idle noise and more vibration than my P80. It also runs quite warm for a single platter, single head drive.

pingu666 · Post by **pingu666** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 1:55 pm

samsung are a safe, and cheap

bet

bendit · Post by **bendit** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 3:56 pm

mcoleg wrote: there's an interesting seagate drive out there, btw - st3250410as. while it's listed as 7200.10, it's actually from 7200.11 family - it has single 250gb platter. the drive is half-height and not too loud.

I bought one and returned it. Seek noise was really loud! I now have two WD.

mcoleg · Post by **mcoleg** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 7:06 pm

whiic, you sure do write a lot. my original point was -

while it won't beat Samsung or Hitachi, obviously, they no longer will drive you to a suicide.

nrm · Post by **nrm** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 12:08 pm

Samsung -> High vibration/frequency of vibration will easily resonate.

I got all popular brands and to Samsung F1 vibration is of such that I had to use 2 layers of Sorbothane feet, the vibration just goes through the first feet, unlike other drives I've tested the same feets on.

So if you don't have good isolation Samsung definitely the loudest (resonates whatever it's attached to), but since this is SPCR one presume everyone has good isolation.

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 5:55 pm

Hello,

If low seek noise is what you want, the Western Digital SE16 and Green Power drives should be on your short list.

mcv · Post by **mcv** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 1:06 am

whiic wrote:All HDDs manufactured by Hitachi, Samsung and WD support AAM. That means, seek noise can be changed between noisy/performance & quiet/slightly_slower.

I didn't know this yet. Thanks.

But there really is 1,000,000,000 bytes in a gigabyte (shorted GB). 1,073,741,824 bytes make a gibibyte (shorted GiB) (which is incorrectly referred as "gigabyte" by 90+% of software vendors, incl. Microsoft).

Heh. Gibibyte. I hadn't heard that term yet. The smaller-than-advertised sizes of harddisks have often confused me in the past, but it's not actually the harddisk manufacturers that are to blame (although the powers of 2 continue to make sense for memory manufacturers, so the confusion will remain for a long time).