Newegg Samsung SP1604N W/JVC whines... can I return it?

dimva · Post by **dimva** » Sat Jun 26, 2004 2:36 am

mystic_fm wrote:On a slightly different topic, can someone contrast the noise level of the "loud" 1604 or 1614 drives with the noise produced by the latest Hitachi and/or WD drives in the same 160GB range? I'm trying to determine whether the JVC motors are just loud in comparison to what people expect from the Samsungs and/or quiet PCs, or if they are even as loud or louder when compared to the competition. It's been a little difficult to ascertain this from reading the various Samsung threads here over the last week.

The whine is pretty loud, but the seeks are silent. Not everyone hears the whine since it is very high-pitched. It is also probably very easy to dampen the whine as I have done. Samsungs run cool, even with all my dampening the temps never go above 40C.

Still, if I had to do it over again I probably would have bought Seagates. Don't take this as advice though, I have never owned a seagate.

MoJo-chan · Post by **MoJo-chan** » Sat Jun 26, 2004 1:32 pm

Keitaro wrote:Newegg has an excellent RMA policy. My hard drive was DOA so i shipped it back. This is probably the only bad thing. You pay for shipping to them, they pay for it when it comes back to you. So automatically got approved for RMA online, shipped it back. A week later, theres a fedex box waiting for me. Good stuff

Spotted this one a bit late, but I just thought I'd jump in with a random comment. In the UK, the law requires companies that sell mail order to pay the return postage on goods that are defective. A lot of people don't know that.

Of course, in this case it's irrelevant.

On a more on-topic theme, it seems like pot luck which version of the Spinpoint you get, which would seem to suggest that perhaps a Seagate Barracuda is a safer bet...

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sat Jun 26, 2004 2:00 pm

MoJo-chan wrote:
On a more on-topic theme, it seems like pot luck which version of the Spinpoint you get, which would seem to suggest that perhaps a Seagate Barracuda is a safer bet...

Yes, but unfortunately, the "safe bet" that you'll end up with will definitely have loud seek noise. All the 7200.7's have this "feature".

samwc912 · Post by **samwc912** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 5:57 pm

dimva wrote:
mystic_fm wrote:On a slightly different topic, can someone contrast the noise level of the "loud" 1604 or 1614 drives with the noise produced by the latest Hitachi and/or WD drives in the same 160GB range? I'm trying to determine whether the JVC motors are just loud in comparison to what people expect from the Samsungs and/or quiet PCs, or if they are even as loud or louder when compared to the competition. It's been a little difficult to ascertain this from reading the various Samsung threads here over the last week.
The whine is pretty loud, but the seeks are silent. Not everyone hears the whine since it is very high-pitched. It is also probably very easy to dampen the whine as I have done. Samsungs run cool, even with all my dampening the temps never go above 40C.

Still, if I had to do it over again I probably would have bought Seagates. Don't take this as advice though, I have never owned a seagate.

I've ordered a samsung SP1614N from frontierpc and hopefully I'll get a Nidec (they've been real nice trying to find one for me), but just in case there's no other choice than getting a JVC, I want to know how loud it is compared to other drives. I have a WD right now and it whines a lot. So is a JVC as loud or a bit quieter?

MoJo-chan · Post by **MoJo-chan** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 4:20 am

Ralf Hutter wrote: Yes, but unfortunately, the "safe bet" that you'll end up with will definitely have loud seek noise. All the 7200.7's have this "feature".

You know, I hadn't thought about it until now, but I think I may have found a solution to this problem.

My 7200.7s (4x80GB and 2x40GB) are in RAID 0 arrays and used to make the loud seek noises and periodic "buzzing" when idle. A few months ago I decided to mount the vertically (see http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=13895) and the buzzing and seek noise seems to have stopped!

Admittedly, my machine is not silent yet by a long way, but it is fairly quiet and I used to be able to hear the drives easily.

luminous · Post by **luminous** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 9:46 am

Nah, vertical mounting is no guaranteed cure. My Segate 120Gb 7200.7 has been vertically mounted since I got it. It buzzes and has loud seeks. I'm not saying that it hasn't worked for you, just that its no use to me

The reason that your drives have become silent is that you have suspended them. Drive suspension helps enormously with seek noises. The buzzing that you hear from Segates is due to seek noises also, hence the success that you have had.

Very nice array mind.......now where did I put my credit card

Laurent · Post by **Laurent** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 1:55 pm

mystic_fm wrote:I read in another thread that one could visually check OEM 1604's on the shelf at MicroCenter. So this morning I drove two hours to my nearest MicroCenter outlet and went through several dozen 1604's on their shelves. Alas, every last one of them had a JVC motor. There were a few Samsung 120GB drives with Nidec motors, but I didn't know anything about their 120GB drives (haven't been reading reviews or anything about them), and I didn't feel that would be enough space for my needs anyway.

I actually went to my local MicroCenter (Santa Clara, CA), which happens to be at walking distance from my work. They had a bunch of different Samsungs, indeed in clear boxes. From my little sampling, all 1604s were JVC, all 1614s were Nidec. The biggest SATA drive they had was a 120GB (1213 I think), and there was a bunch of JVCs and a bunch of Nidecs. I didn't look at the lower capacity ones, but they did have PATA 80 and 120GB Samsungs. I can go again to check if anyone wants yo make sure before driving 2 hours

Laurent

MoJo-chan · Post by **MoJo-chan** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 2:47 am

luminous wrote:The reason that your drives have become silent is that you have suspended them. Drive suspension helps enormously with seek noises. The buzzing that you hear from Segates is due to seek noises also, hence the success that you have had.

I should probably have pointed out that I did have the drives suspended before as well, just horizontally rather than vertically, so I don't think it's down to suspension alone.

Apart from the orientation, the only other thing I changed was to connect the drives with metal bars in groups of three so that they could be suspended together. I would have expected that to produce more seek noise but it seems to have had the opposite effect, perhaps because of the increased mass.

I suppose the drives are running cooler now too... actually, wasn't the periodic buzzing supposed to be because the drives were moving their heads around to stop them overheating? Perhaps now they don't get hot enough to trigger it...

luminous · Post by **luminous** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 3:07 am

That’s interesting. I would have thought that horizontal suspension would have been just as good as vertical. Perhaps you right, the increased mass due to the bar has had an effect.

The periodic buzzing is to enhance drive life, so that the heads do not continually move over one area of the drive. I did not think that it was temperature related, I believe that it is only related to drive activity (but I could be wrong there). When this process is activated, the heads are moved across the HDD, just like the way a HDD seeks (imo). I expect if you have inaudible seeks you will also have inaudible drive maintenance, and vice versa.

I'm tempted to try a suspension system with my drives, but I'm going to wait for Seagate's 7200.8 drives to hit the market. With a little luck they may come with acoustic management and resolve HDD noise.

MoJo-chan · Post by **MoJo-chan** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 8:58 am

AIUI, the periodic buzzing was to prevent certain areas of the disk where the head was positioned for some time overheating. I'm not 100% sure though.

I used to be able to hear the buzzing but not the drive seeks. The buzzing is a lot louder and constant.

luminous · Post by **luminous** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 9:24 am

Just shows how different supposedly simialr HDDs can be. The buzzing and seeking on my drive sound about the same. Sometimes the seeking can sound a little deeper, I think it depends where the file is located on the HDD.

I really do like your RAID setup - if only my credit card could take the weight

acaurora · Post by **acaurora** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 5:46 am

Just as a heads up, SiliconAcoustics does not guarantee NIDEC motors. I ordered a 1614N a few months ago, to much to my dismay, and got a JVC motor. I returned it the very next day.

I recently emailed them, asking if they can guarantee me a NIDEC-motor powered 1614N, and am still awaiting their reply. I specified that they can open the box and test the hard drive and MAKE SURE IT IS A NIDEC MOTOR, for all I care I dont really mind what they do to it, as long as it's quiet. If so, then I will order from them

Newegg Samsung SP1604N W/JVC whines... can I return it?

Re: No dice at MicroCenter ... and how loud is "loud&am

Re: No dice at MicroCenter ... and how loud is "loud&am

Re: No dice at MicroCenter ... and how loud is "loud&qu