Would you recommend Samsung or Seagate?

Scorched · Post by **Scorched** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 6:03 pm

I've been reading through the threads about Samsung vs Seagate, and I"m still undeciced about which to get. Obviously, I want as much silence as possible, and the 160gb Spinpoint seems to be quieter than the 7200s, but I"ve seen the reports about annoying whining, which scares me some.

I'm also looking for reliability. Seagate seems to be the winner on this one.

Also, if I do go with Samsung (or Seagate), should I go SATA or ide?

Thanks.

RLiu818 · Post by **RLiu818** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 6:11 pm

i would like to know as well.

prof99 · Post by **prof99** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 7:36 pm

From what I understand, the Samsung SP80's are the fastest and quietest of the two drives. As for reliability, both are very good. Everyone has to remember not to assume all of a sudden that a certain product is "bad" or "unreliable" after only one user's unfortunate story, because chances are, that isn't the usual case.

RaNDoMMAI · Post by **RaNDoMMAI** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 7:39 pm

I have 3 samsung 160 gigs and they are fantastic

make sure you suspend them or decouple them somehow. otherwise they casue alot of vibartion.

This acually applies to all drive IMO

~RaNDoM

Scorched · Post by **Scorched** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 8:40 pm

I've realized I'm not very good at building computers. That's why I'm just going to have ARM Systems build me one.

greeef · Post by **greeef** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 10:26 am

i have a seagate, and i wish i'd bought a samsung.

Garfield3d · Post by **Garfield3d** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 7:58 pm

Eh, I have the 160GB S-ATA version (ST...023AS) of the 7200.7 and so far it seems to be doing fine. It has been quiet and, contrary to some of the Seagates I hear in the nearby library, they don't make a sound while accessing. There is no whine and... well, I think it has been a good, quiet drive for me so far.

wim · Post by **wim** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 3:29 am

go seagate, and go sata

Silentseeker · Post by **Silentseeker** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 9:13 am

greeef wrote:i have a seagate, and i wish i'd bought a samsung.

I have both of them Seagate 7200.7 120GB and Samsung P80 160GB.
I wish i'd bought a seagate twice, because it's not whiny like my Samsung.

shathal · Post by **shathal** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 2:03 pm

I'd personally recommend S-ATA - it tends to make the whole cable-gami / rounded cable issue moot I find

.

jedikid · Post by **jedikid** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 2:44 pm

I bought 3 of the seagates (120gb) and most recently, the 160gb samsung. my samsung has a slight but noticeable whine. one of my seagates has an even fainter whine, the others are as quiet as can be. so they're not all the same after all (but the seagates are much quieter during drive read/write)

yermolovd · Post by **yermolovd** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 3:15 pm

Ok, not to threadjack, but I have the same dillema right now.

Well, I at last found a guy who wants to buy my 80GbWD7200rmp drive, which is whiny, and at the moment is the loudest component of my system (also Z700AlCu fan needs to be replaced). What I wanted to do, is buy a 120Gb or 160Gb Samsung, but after researching this sectioon of the forum, the conclusion is that there are no drives in Canada. Well, there are, from quite a few stores in BC, but then they don't have a Canadian warranty, which would be prety much a big issue, if something goes wrong with it (hopefully not). So I'm stuck with only 1 choice, that is Seagate 120gb. From what've I read here, most people say that Seagate is a bit louder than Samsungs, but by how much? I mean, I'm quite sure that in comparison to my WD80 drive, even Seagate would be prety quiet. My main concern with the hard drive is its whiny sound, not the vibrations. I can hear my WD making this annoying sound from 2m from my computer. Also this whole issue with Samsungs failing, which hasn't been proven, but the impression is that Samsungs die more than Seagates on average lol. So is it a good idea to go for Seagate in my situation?

Again, sorry for taking over, I can post it as a separate thread, but I just think we should keep it all together in one.

Thank you.

wim · Post by **wim** » Sat Jun 05, 2004 3:52 am

yermolovd..here's a plug. i've bought about 10 seagate drives in my lifetime and never had one fail. i'm using 4 of them at the moment (40, 80, 80, 160). the other (older, smaller) drives have only been retired because i bought bigger drives - they are still chugging away somewhere, just been passed down when building computers for brothers, sisters, etc

back in my rookie days i ran a couple too hot to touch for a year (before i heard it could cause troubles) .. but those drives are still going no problems!

in one unfortunate incident a pair of my hard drives were accidentally dropped on concrete. same height, they were both dropped at the same time in the same spot. one was totally dead when i plugged it in and one seemingly didn't feel a thing. the survivor was my seagate 40 gig, and yes i said i've never had a seagate fail - the other was an IBM 20 gig. fortunately the 20 was the master with just the OS and some games on it and the 40 had most of my data!

although it is true that i have not much experience with other brands (maxtor, samsung, wd..?) this is just because the seagates do everything i could expect. haven't tried another brand cause i couldn't really ask for anything more

so that's all for reliability, what about noise. my 4 hd are soft mounted, it's quiet enough for me (can't hear the drives at all over the buzz of my CRT). ymmv.

yermolovd · Post by **yermolovd** » Sat Jun 05, 2004 7:44 am

OK, you convinced me

.

samwc912 · Post by **samwc912** » Sat Jun 05, 2004 8:09 am

yermolovd.

http://www.frontierpc.com offers the samsung drives 80,120,160 in 2 and 8 mb cache. I've asked them about the 3 years warranty issue in Canada, and they say they fully cover it.

Project · Post by **Project** » Sat Jun 05, 2004 9:46 am

for me, i want more drive reliability than silence, so id choose the seagate, even if its more noisier. I can drop it and itll still work

RLiu818 · Post by **RLiu818** » Sat Jun 05, 2004 1:26 pm

so which one is quieter? samsung or seagate? (current models)

and which one whines more?

yermolovd · Post by **yermolovd** » Sat Jun 05, 2004 2:28 pm

From reading the reviews, right here on SPCR, Seagate is louder than Samsung.
But I'll have to go for Seagate.

yermolovd · Post by **yermolovd** » Sat Jun 05, 2004 2:35 pm

Oh yeah, whats the point for me of going with a SATA drive, if I have ATA on my mobo, I'd have to buy a bunch of adapters, which would be extra $48 CAD.

Am I right?

wim · Post by **wim** » Sun Jun 06, 2004 12:16 am

you're right, if you only have parallel ata on your mobo. most new mobo come with sata though.. sure it's not there? (the plugs are pretty small)

the worst thing you could do is get a cheap ATA/SATA adapter and buy sata drives. sata drives are more expensive and the cheap adapters do not give you any speed benefit - they are just a converter.

however, if you have a good sata chipset on the motherboard (i like the silicon image sata chipset on my a7n8x) you will get the speed advantage and it is worth it. i have noticed on my system that when copying a divx movie (700 meg) between ata drives (and yes they're set on ultra DMA mode) it takes about 5 minutes but on the sata drives it takes about 2 minutes

parallel ata is still okay, the hard drive speed is not really something you will notice as a bottleneck in day to day use

starsky · Post by **starsky** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 2:45 pm

I have 3 Seagates currently Installed in my box (I also have 2 IBM's a WD and a Samsung).

The Seagates:

ST 380023A (V)
ST 3120026A (7200.7)
ST 3120026AS (7200.7)

My experiences at first were that the 7200.7 drives were quieter than the V. Now that I have all three in the case, the colletive noise is annoying.

Seeks "seem" to be louder on the SATA 7200.7 than the PATA 7200.7 but they should have identical internals right?

Another interesting note is that I don't seem to be able to get SMART working on the SATA 7200.7, but It does work on the PATA 7200.7

Still, when mounted in my Sonata they are still completely inaudible except for seeks on the 7200.7's under VERY heavy load (eg Multi GB Copies). Under normal usage I have found them sensational.

Anodyne · Post by **Anodyne** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 3:48 am

New SPCR member!
I'm in the same quandry. Due to my motherboard recently going up in smoke in my main computer (never buying iWill again), I'm looking to rebuild with a quieter HD than my current WD 120Gb. I recently discovered SPCR for advice, but my head has been spinning over all the opinions on quiet HD's. I was all set to get a new 200Gb PATA Seagate from NewEgg until I saw all the Samsung posts, so now I'm considering the Samsung 160Gb SATA. Everyone seems so polaraized on the quietness issue, but reliability is very important to me as well. Also, compared to my current WD, aren't EITHER of these drives going to be a vast improvement? ASSUMING that I would receive a Samsung with the 'dreaded' JVC motor, does that make it less desireable than the Seagate? Also I have yet to find many threads with feedback on the Seagate PATA 200GB - most seem to comment on the 80Gb platter models.
Thanks, and glad to be here!

Tigr · Post by **Tigr** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 9:35 am

Welcome to SPCR!!!

Anodyne wrote: Also, compared to my current WD, aren't EITHER of these drives going to be a vast improvement?

Yes, that would most definitely be the case. Either HDD will be a vast improvement over the WD. So, don't worry about it too much.

I personally use Seagate, have Barracuda IV, Barracuda V, 7200.7 and I am quite happy with all of them.

My understanding is that Samsung is quieter during the seeks and the Seagate is quieter during the idle. I never had a Samsung, they are hard to find here but this is what I gathered from the various posts.

cmcquistion · Post by **cmcquistion** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 9:39 am

I've used several of the Seagate and Samsung drives. I prefer the Samsung drives, hands-down. In my experience, their seek noise is noticably lower and the idle noise is about the same, maybe a tad lower.

Also, the Samsung drives come with 3 year warranties, as opposed to the 1 year warranty almost all manufacturers are putting on IDE drives (including the Seagates.)

Jalum · Post by **Jalum** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 10:09 am

I have 4 Samsung SATA 160MB drives and 1 Seagate 200MB SATA drive.

3 of the Samsung drives are very quiet but the 4th one makes a high pitch noise which is quite annoying.

1 Seagate I have is pretty noisy, quite a bit noisier than the Samsung. Also, Seagate drive seems to run quite a bit hotter than Samsung... but that might be due to the difference in case.

I'd go with Samsung drive if you want quiet operation. Just cross your fingers that you won't get the one whines...

akaidiot · Post by **akaidiot** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 4:00 am

I've got 2x 120GB PATA Seagate 7200.7's in SATA RAID0 with 2 Pata -> Sata converters and they(porhaps just one, not sure..) make quite a bit of idle sound. But not whine more of a "whoosing" noise, porhaps that IS the whine.. I haven't really experienced the whine from HDs.. Well I wish I'd gotten Samsungs, porhaps I will do that and sell these off, but then I'll loose 240GB of data!(Most importantly my giant porn collection!

)

Also, one of the HDs is a replacement, the first started making an high pitched whine when seeking which the store guy said was a really unusual fault. First of that kind he had experienced..

EDIT: A little theory I just made.. Porhaps the Pata -> Sata converters can affect the idle noise?

sneaker · Post by **sneaker** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 1:05 pm

Scorched wrote:Obviously, I want as much silence as possible, and the 160gb Spinpoint seems to be quieter than the 7200s, but I"ve seen the reports about annoying whining, which scares me some.

As you are aware, there is a black cloud hanging over a significant number of Samsungs, and what this means is virtually everything written about their quietness no longer applies in general. If you choose a Samsung, you need to be ready to either source one with a NIDEC motor, or return the drive if you get a whiny one.

As for reliability, pay attention to the warranty and, most importantly, your redundancy/backup schemes. By comparison, focusing on the anecdotal evidence on brand reliability is a waste of time.

scruzbeachbum · Post by **scruzbeachbum** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 9:57 pm

nifti wrote:EDIT: A little theory I just made.. Porhaps the Pata -> Sata converters can affect the idle noise?

highly unlikely. It's just a mux/demux scheme at the heart of it. Nothing that would affect idle noise (given the same buffer memory size and similar data transfer rates - not like your motherboard is really supporting/making use of the s-ata 150Mb/s rate)....

Elixer · Post by **Elixer** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 11:46 pm

At work we setup 26 computers with Seagate drives, and a server with 4 in a raid 0 + 1. Not one hard drive was bad (only things that we had to RMA were two Asus motherboards and the raid card). They all seemed to be pretty quiet. Not as quiet as my 120gb Samsung in my home computer though. I don't know what kind of drives the Seagates were though except that they were 80gb drives. Basically either way you will make a good choice.

Would you recommend Samsung or Seagate?

Would you recommend Samsung or Seagate?

Re: Would you recommend Samsung or Seagate?