Review of 160GB: Samsung SATA vs. Seagate 7200.7 SATA

alexb · Post by **alexb** » Fri Oct 01, 2004 12:14 pm

Just a report of Samsung 160GB, SATA 8MB and its comparison to 7200.7

I researched for quite a while on what HDD would be a good replacement for my NOISY WD 80GB. I wanted to get a faster drive as well as quieter, so got stuck between Seagate 7200.7 SATA and Samsung 160GB SATA. I researched for a very long time with no definite answer. I was very weary of Samsung because of its reliability issues as well as being new in the industry. But I finally went with the preference here and got the Samsung… CANNOT BE HAPPIER.

The drive is QUIET… no it’s SILENT… I have NOT EVER heard any other drive as quiet as this one (don’t have any experience with Cuda 4). When u get this drive u don’t really need any other HDD closure or damping, you’re done as far as noise is concerned. I can now hear my fans and my video card fan, which I was not able to hear with the LOUD WD800JB.

I tested the drive AAM with Hitachi tool, and funny enough it was OFF… I thought it was on since I couldn’t hear the drive seeking at all!? Over my Panaflo fans, if you listen VERY hard then you can hear a little bit of seek noise, but not much. So, I left it to be off. It’s so quiet that I am actually thinking the tool many not work properly with this SATA drive, could that be the case?

Performance is also amazing. It is almost 50% faster than the WD800JB that I had (very fast drive) it is 100% faster on file copy test (by x-labs).

After I bought the drive, I heard a friend of mine got the 160GB 7200.7 SATA… so HAD TO compare them. The reviewer here tested the PATA of the two drives but not the SATA. So, we hooked both up and ran tests… It was a tie!!! Samsung was faster in some tests, Seagate SATA in other tests… Seagate had faster access time, Samsung faster transfer rate. Seagate was better in some application benchmarks, Samsung in others… basically you would not see any difference between the two in real life.

My buddy’s rig is NOT QUIET, so it was hard to compare noise. But we both agreed that both are fairly quiet installed in a system, and maybe Samsung a little quieter. Seek noise was NOT a contest, Samsung was MUCH quieter. Outside the box, you could hear seek of Samsung if u listened hard… but with 7200.7 SATA you could hear it even installed in system with not so quiet fans. Seek isn’t that important to me… but it may be to others.

I guess nothing in this report is new, but the fact that 7200.7 SATA perform as fast if not faster than Samsung SATA. They both are quiet in idle and Samsung is much quieter in seek. Seagate has 5 years warranty…. but I hope my Samsung lasts for at least its 3 years warranty period.

So, overall I am happy with my purchase.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Fri Oct 01, 2004 1:39 pm

Which motor is in your Samsung?

acaurora · Post by **acaurora** » Fri Oct 01, 2004 1:58 pm

That is very important. I got a JVC whiny motor after buying a 1614N from Silicon Acoustics. They said they could not ensure which motor I got. Therefore... *RETURN*. I to this very day have not owned a SpinPoint 1614N that was quiet. -.-...

wim · Post by **wim** » Fri Oct 01, 2004 5:49 pm

alexb wrote:When u get this drive u don’t really need any other HDD closure or damping, you’re done as far as noise is concerned. I can now hear my fans and my video card fan, which I was not able to hear with the LOUD WD800JB.

aah... there are a lot of people here who are much more hardcore, and we probably won't ever be done, as far as noise concerned, with any 3.5" hdd served straight up

and i think you will change your mind about the drives once you've shut the fans up

alexb · Post by **alexb** » Fri Oct 01, 2004 7:46 pm

Ralf Hutter wrote:Which motor is in your Samsung?

I have JVC... did not have the option to choose and it's silent. I am NOT HARDCORE, so it's quiet enough for me. I actually turned all fans off, and out my finger on top of the CPU fan and stopped it for a second... drive was silent... you guys must have some sensetive ears to hear this drive

alleycat · Post by **alleycat** » Fri Oct 01, 2004 7:50 pm

From a different perspective... I have only ever owned Seagates and Samsungs. When I heard a friend's WD, I could not believe the amount of noise it was making - it was obscene. I now understand how people who have previously owned noisy drives can call Samsungs "silent", even though in reality they are not. They definitely require some kind of suspension or damping (which still doesn't make them silent; just a bit closer to 'acceptable').

alexb · Post by **alexb** » Fri Oct 01, 2004 10:31 pm

alleycat wrote:From a different perspective... I have only ever owned Seagates and Samsungs. When I heard a friend's WD, I could not believe the amount of noise it was making - it was obscene. I now understand how people who have previously owned noisy drives can call Samsungs "silent", even though in reality they are not. They definitely require some kind of suspension or damping (which still doesn't make them silent; just a bit closer to 'acceptable').

Maybe I made a mistake by calling the drive "silent" since I didn't take into account my audience here has Mozart ears

I just can NOT hear the drive over 2 Panaflo fans at 9 volts, one over my CPU and one for case, or my video card fan. So, call it whatever u want, silent, quiet, loud, noisy, etc...

alleycat · Post by **alleycat** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 4:16 am

Sorry Alex, this wasn't meant to be a criticism of you! It just highlights the different aims and expectations of PC silencers. I made the above comment for the sake of comparison. Trying to silence drives is no easy task...

mg1394 · Post by **mg1394** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 7:20 am

Hello Alex, glad you like your Samsung SATA drive - I'm a fan also.

Just to answer your question/comment on acoustic management. Yes the Hitachi tool does work just fine on the Samsung SATA drive, and if you use the test feature in the tool and run the AM slider up and down, you can hear a difference with AM on and set about 140-160. But the test is with worst case seeks, so I'm not surprised you can't really tell any difference in actual activity. I also ran some performance tests with AM at 140 and off - IOmeter reported essentially no difference in performance.

mshan · Post by **mshan** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 8:07 am

"or my video card fan."

Perhaps this is why Alex can't hear the low level whine of the JVC motor that others have heard?

I'm also interested in eventually purchasing a SP1614C and I have a stock Antec Sonata. Do you guys think that even a JVC motor would be drowned out by the stock Antec power supply fan or by the "whooshing" sound of airflow through this case?

Putz · Post by **Putz** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 9:03 am

mcnallyj · Post by **mcnallyj** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 5:59 pm

How would this samsung compare to a western digital WD740GD? I have two of these in a raid 0 configuration, and the wd's definitely make their presence known. The tradeoff though is the performance is good and they are 10,000 rpm drives, so I'm not sure what kind of performance hit I would take for silence...is it noticeable?

alexb · Post by **alexb** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 12:07 am

mcnallyj wrote:How would this samsung compare to a western digital WD740GD? I have two of these in a raid 0 configuration, and the wd's definitely make their presence known. The tradeoff though is the performance is good and they are 10,000 rpm drives, so I'm not sure what kind of performance hit I would take for silence...is it noticeable?

Do u mean Samsung compared to Raptors? You cannot even compare them!!!

Samsung's are among the top 5 fastest 7200RPM drives. There are even some faster 7200RPM drives but they're not as quiet.

Raptor is 10K RPM and in a TOTALLY different league. If u goto Samsung you will get a HUGE HIT on performance. I have heard that the 74GB Raptos is fluid bearing and therefore a little better than older WDs... I guess if u wanna keep the performance and quietness, u need to look into HDD enclosures, or suspension.

mcnallyj · Post by **mcnallyj** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 9:02 pm

Sounds like I'll need to do some research then. I'm new to this whole silence thing, but is definitely something I want to attain. My problem is I won't sacrifice performance for it, so I'm going to need to do a little research here to see about enclosing the drive, I am thinking that is the largest contributor in my case causing the noise.

Thanks for the help on this!

Talz · Post by **Talz** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 10:32 pm

If you want near silent at idle the raptors are workable. If you want near silent at seek I don't think it's practical at all.

For instance I can't hear my raptor at all right now as I'm typing until it does a seek. And my system is definately quiet even by spcr standards. Zalman Reserator, Antec Phantom, 3x80mm Panaflo L1A @ 5 volts and an acoustipack lined case. But when it starts on reading and/or writing it's plain loud, not like the SCSI drives you'll find in servers but to loud to really silence. You could muffle it with an enclosure, but the ones that do a decent job without heating the drive are expensive, and you're still going to have audible seeks.

Personally I'm an old techie and like hearing my hard drive when it's working and just don't want constant background noise so it works out nicely. But if you want quiet all the time then something has to give, or you have to put your pc on the other side of a wall with serious sound proofing and run the cables through.

alleycat · Post by **alleycat** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 11:26 pm

Talz - is your drive suspended? I found that I can get rid of most of the seek noise with proper isolation from the case. At one stage I had the drive isolated but the power cable was touching the side of the case which was enough to transmit vibrations. I was quite shocked by the insidious nature of hard drive noise.

Talz · Post by **Talz** » Thu Oct 07, 2004 12:36 pm

No I haven't suspended it, mainly because it would be quite awkward to do so with my case without moving at least one drive out of the airflow path. I may play with suspension eventually really the only time the seeks bug me is if I leave the system on and it starts a full virus scan or something at 3 am.

Right now I'm more focused on what kind of video card I'm going to upgrade my 9800 to, and how will I keep it quiet. Though maybe I'll go for a nice LCD panel instead to get rid of that CRT hum.

Tom Brown · Post by **Tom Brown** » Thu Oct 07, 2004 10:46 pm

Guys,

If you want to quiet your seek noise, add a bunch of RAM to your systems. A disk cache will eliminate a lot of seeks once you have your apps up and running.

Rizban · Post by **Rizban** » Sat Oct 09, 2004 8:53 pm

I am still not sure what the best choice is regarding which SATA drive to order. I'd rather not risk ending up with a JVC motor and having to RMA the drive (if possible).
Assuming the Spinpoint comes with the noisier drive motor, which is quieter, the Seagate 7200.7 or the Samsung?

alexb · Post by **alexb** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 3:44 pm

UPDATE - After 6 weeks

The drive is now noticably louder in "seek"... not idle though.

I never used to hear the seek noise before, but not I can barely hear when the drive seeks although it's totally tolerable and yet one of the quietest seek noises I have ever heard, and this is with AAM disabled!

I suspect that this could be the drive filling up and fragmented... but thought it's worth to report it.

hvengel · Post by **hvengel** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 2:28 pm

The WD Raptors also have much faster seeks than most IDE drives. The new 74GB drives have an average seek time around 5ms where as most current IDE drives are 8ms to 9ms. That is why the seek noise from the Raptors is so much loader than other IDE drives as the heads are moving much faster.

By the way this is the real reason that the Raptor drives are so much faster than other IDE drives not 10,000 RPM although the higher rotational speed does have some effect since this reduces average latancy from about 4ms to about 3ms.

Review of 160GB: Samsung SATA vs. Seagate 7200.7 SATA

Review of 160GB: Samsung SATA vs. Seagate 7200.7 SATA

Re: Review of 160GB: Samsung SATA vs. Seagate 7200.7 SATA

Still unsure about whether Samsung or Seagate is quieter.