Samsung HD501LJ

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soujir0u
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Samsung HD501LJ

Post by soujir0u » Sat Oct 21, 2006 3:24 am

I just saw that a local distributor here has the Samsung HD501LJ for ordering. It's listed as being 500GB and having a 16MB cache. ETA is 1 November.

I tried searching on google but didn't find anything on this drive. Does anyone know more about it? Is it part of the T166 series?

Goldmember
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Post by Goldmember » Sun Oct 22, 2006 2:42 pm

Sweet. Yep, it's probably a T166 with 3 x 166GB PMR platters.

Thanks for the info.

abyssinianson
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Post by abyssinianson » Fri Oct 27, 2006 9:24 am

how good are these drives? anyone read advance reviews, if any?

nick705
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Post by nick705 » Mon Oct 30, 2006 11:42 am

Overclockers UK have will have them in 1-3 days - like the 400GB models, they're cheaper than the immediate competition... :)

Mats
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Post by Mats » Mon Oct 30, 2006 9:07 pm

Just saw them here, starting at €150.

Chocolinx
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Post by Chocolinx » Mon Oct 30, 2006 9:22 pm

Mats wrote:Just saw them here, starting at €150.
Holy crap that's expensive! £150?! That's over $300 CND! 400 GB only usually cost $180 :?

Mats
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Post by Mats » Mon Oct 30, 2006 10:30 pm

Chocolinx wrote:
Mats wrote:Just saw them here, starting at €150.
Holy crap that's expensive! £150?! That's over $300 CND! 400 GB only usually cost $180 :?
LOL! Read again.
€150 = 214 CND = £101 = 190 USD

I expect the prices to drop. It's not in stock anywhere, and yesterday was the first day it was listed.

andyb
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Post by andyb » Thu Nov 09, 2006 2:01 am

Also listed here in the UK.

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductsList.asp? ... at=HDR-SAT

Hopefully MicroDirect will list them soon with an arrival date, MD are the cheapest place I have found for Samsung HDD's, currently the 400LJ is just £70+, the 501LJ at Aria is £108.95+ VAT.

The 500GB is not outragously expensive, it works out at 26p per GB inc VAT, where the 400GB works out at an impresssive 21p per GB.

They look to be good, but when are they going to be available, as the price often drops after just 1 or 2 months of availability.

Here is the spec sheet for Samsungs 2007 range of HDD's with some interesting blurb, and some very specific information abou their new drives. Also an amusing "rounding error", apparently their new range of 3.5" HDD's are actually 4" wide :roll:

http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDis ... ersion.pdf

Good points, the 500GB is not any louder than the dead quiet 400GB, and it uses PMR which means that Samsung are not behind technology wise to the competition. Bad points they dont have the amount of NAND flash listed on their HHDD (Hybrid Hard Disk Drive) MH80S line of drives, Samsung have a huge advantage over all other HDD manufacturers, they make half of the world flash memory, I am expecting that the original line of drives will only have 64MB, 128MB and 256MB of NAND on the drives, however 512MB and 1GB would be superb, but maybe Samsung are holding out on the specs until other manufacturers release their drives, then Samsung could release their drives with more.

Personally IO would love to use a next generation 3.5" drive that has 2-4GB of NAND on it, that would be awesome :D


Andy

Mats
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Post by Mats » Thu Nov 09, 2006 2:56 am

andyb wrote:Also an amusing "rounding error", apparently their new range of 3.5" HDD's are actually 4" wide :roll:
Are you talking about the width of the HD? It's usually 4" for a HD with 3.5" platters, so I don't see your point. Just check out any of your 3.5" HD's if you don't believe me.

nick705
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Post by nick705 » Thu Nov 09, 2006 4:45 am

andyb wrote: The 500GB is not outragously expensive, it works out at 26p per GB inc VAT, where the 400GB works out at an impresssive 21p per GB.
Don't forget the 400LJ only has an 8MB buffer, the 501LJ (and 401LJ) have a 16MB buffer which probably accounts for the difference. Still pretty good value in both cases though... :)

MikeMcr
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Post by MikeMcr » Sat Nov 18, 2006 5:00 am

Well I received 2 of these HD501LJ drives from OCUK and first impressions are bad. Both are faulty - full of sector errors and a loud clicking sound :x

I could not even use Samsung's own diagnostic utilities because they have not been updated to support this range yet :roll:

jb_
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Post by jb_ » Sat Nov 18, 2006 7:36 am

Availability in .au

Still attracts a high premium over the 400gb :(

alfred
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Post by alfred » Sun Nov 19, 2006 6:56 am

I just ordered two HD501LJ from Germany; I'll compare them to HD401LJ, SP2504C, WD3200KS and post my first impressions in two weeks.

Csoszi
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Post by Csoszi » Mon Nov 20, 2006 12:33 am

Excuse me, off topic question!

Alfred! How does your HD401LJ compare to the WD3200KS, concerning resonance, idle and AAM enabled seek noise?

alfred
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Post by alfred » Mon Nov 20, 2006 7:09 am

Csoszi wrote:Excuse me, off topic question!

Alfred! How does your HD401LJ compare to the WD3200KS, concerning resonance, idle and AAM enabled seek noise?
My WD3200KS was a disappointment; I bought it after having read the WD5000KS review but it prooved clearly louder in both idle and seek aspects than the 2 HD401LJ I bought the next week. I'm using all these drives in enclosures; the conclusion didn't change when comparing the drives in free air (I usually do that when I buy a new model). Furthermore, I can say that the Samsungs improved somewhat after a few weeks, while the WD didn't. I guess the KS range mixes different designs because I couldn't explain the difference between my drive and the SPCR-reviewed 500GB by sample variance alone. You'll find much more details in my posts' history (July--Sept., 2006).

soujir0u
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Post by soujir0u » Fri Nov 24, 2006 5:08 am

Ok, I've just received mine today and seems to work well so far. The seeks are much quieter than the P120 250GB that I have.

winguy
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Post by winguy » Fri Nov 24, 2006 9:41 am

soujir0u wrote:Ok, I've just received mine today and seems to work well so far. The seeks are much quieter than the P120 250GB that I have.
Show us some benchmarks of this 166GB/platter behemoth please! :)

soujir0u
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Post by soujir0u » Fri Nov 24, 2006 1:25 pm

I ran a HD Tach long test:

Image

Not sure if this is good or not though.

mpjohnst
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Post by mpjohnst » Tue Nov 28, 2006 7:00 am


andyb
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Post by andyb » Tue Nov 28, 2006 11:59 am

soujir0u, thats pretty damned impressive considering Samsung have never aimed at the high performance market.

If its quieter than the P120 then thats just awsome, they keep on getting better, my 400GB is quieter than my 200GB drive, if the 500GB is as good as the 400GB it has to top the reccomendation list.


Andy

crispyfish
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Post by crispyfish » Tue Nov 28, 2006 12:18 pm

As mentioned above, this drive is available at NewEgg. It's also available at ChiefValue. However, in both places there's a 1 drive per person limit. Combined with a significantly higher cost per GB (nearly 50% more expensive for only 20% more space), that was enough to push me toward the 400GB model. By the time I fill up the 400GB, I'm sure drive capacities will be measured in TB. :P

integro
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Post by integro » Tue Nov 28, 2006 12:54 pm

Anyone who owns this drive:
Is it silent?
And more specific: how is it vibration wise?

alfred
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Post by alfred » Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:08 am

Image

I ran a few benchmarks on two HD501LJ, compared to two HD401LJ (some results use 2-drives RAID 0) : http://idlenoise.ifrance.com/HD501LJ/
(AAM was enabled on both HD401LJ but disabled on both HD501LJ drives).

I'll try to make some idle/AAMseek/noAAMseek noise recordings asap, comparing HD501LJ to HD401LJ and SP2504C. So far the HD501LJ seems on-par with HD401LJ noise-wise.

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Post by Goldmember » Wed Dec 06, 2006 4:30 pm

soujir0u wrote:I ran a HD Tach long test...

Not sure if this is good or not though.
Yep, I agree with Andyb that the performance is pretty impressive for a Sammy. Both the transfer and burst rates are competitive with similar Seagate drives.

My only concern would be the seek time which is 12ms. Alfred's drives showed similar results.

But I guess that's partly what makes them so darn quiet. :) Seek time is probably overrated on the desktop anyway. Sorry Raptor users. :P Haha.

Thanks to soujir0u and Alfred for the benchies. Enjoy the T166.

alfred
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Post by alfred » Thu Dec 14, 2006 2:11 am

Just a quick post to say I'm still planning to do the noise recordings I talked about; it's been raining almost 24/7 for the last ten days here in Brussels, Belgium, so I was unable to record anything properly due to the higher-than-usual noise floor level. Both HD501LJ drives still aren't in use, they only ran one hour for the benchmarks.

dnoiz
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Post by dnoiz » Fri Dec 15, 2006 1:11 am

uhm. am confused :D

which is the better drive now from samsung (new series , with 16mb cache). the 320, 400 or 500 gb drive - noise-wise ofcourse ? or are they all similar ?

i currently have a seagate drive (320gb) in my order, but i still can change that.

thx.

ps. as side-note, this disk will be placed in a antec solo case (suspended)

andyb
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Post by andyb » Fri Dec 15, 2006 2:40 am

The new T166 series seems to be about the same noisewise or even slightly better than the T133 previous series.

The T133 series are better than the previous P120 series noise wise, the performance of the new drives is better than the previous generation (this depends on the platter density vs platter count).

Full platters are faster than non-full platters, so a T133 400GB is faster than a T133 300GB drive. A T166 500GB is faster than a T166 400GB drive. The T166 320GB version should be about the same speed as the 500GB model (and faster than the 400GB version) but only so long as it has 2 platters and not 3, I havent checked personally.

In terms of noise I doubt you will be able to tell the difference between a 2 platter and a 3 platter model once the drive is suspended, and the seeks will sound exactly the same.

Which drive you choose to buy depends on your budget and your needs.


Andy

alfred
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Post by alfred » Mon Dec 18, 2006 4:27 am

I finally managed to do noise recordings, comparing Samsung SP2504C (P120), HD401LJ (T133) and HD501LJ (T166).
I used Hitachi's Feature Tool 2.03 under DOS. Hard disk drives were placed free-air on deep foam; high-grade microphone 60cm above the HDD.

Results are available here (be sure to view PNG pictures at 100% zoom level; maybe it's easier to download the RAR archive).

The HD501LJ is a clear winner noise-wise over both SP2504C and HD401LJ. And as previously posted it's a clear winner in the benchmarks too.

flokel
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Post by flokel » Mon Dec 18, 2006 7:46 am

thanks alfred :D

dis
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Post by dis » Tue Dec 19, 2006 9:54 am

In case anyone is interested Komplett.co.uk have got the 320 gig drives in stock, pretty sure they arrived this afternoon cos i didn't spot them this morning.

£65, seems like a nice price. Got one on the way now

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