Samsung 640GB Impressions

[chp5592]

Just replaced by WD500GB Blue to the Samsung 640GB hard drive. $99 at Newegg with $1 delivery. It is the 2 platter design with 9.5 mm height. Given the super high density of each platter, the performance is expected to be somewhat higher....

Installed it last night after SuperDuper copy. It is clearly much snappier than the WD model I had. The bouncing balls seems to have decreased at launch by at least 30-50%. Another thing, it is super quiet. I cannot hear it at all!! No head seek/park click sounds I had with the Blue. Highly recommended.

 

[CalMin]

Just replaced by WD500GB Blue to the Samsung 640GB hard drive. $99 at Newegg with $1 delivery. It is the 2 platter design with 9.5 mm height. Given the super high density of each platter, the performance is expected to be somewhat higher....

Installed it last night after SuperDuper copy. It is clearly much snappier than the WD model I had. The bouncing balls seems to have decreased at launch by at least 30-50%. Another thing, it is super quiet. I cannot hear it at all!! No head seek/park click sounds I had with the Blue. Highly recommended.

What about noise? I'm looking for a quiet replacement drive.

 

[Dozerrox]

Thanks, I expect I'll upgrade to this lovely at some point

 

[Dwalls90]

What are the read/write speeds? I have the WD blue 500gb and it's pretty fast and quiet. Just wo seeing if it's worth the upgrade. Mind posting the benches please?

 

[m85476585]

It looks promising. I have a couple recent Samsung 3.5" drives, and they are great. I'll wait for Tom's Hardware to test this one, though, since they test power consumption and make it easy to compare the speed to other drives out there.

My 320gb drive has had under 10gb free for probably more than 6 months now.

 

[rgarjr]

I used to have the WD 640 and it would make the arm movement sound a lot, very annoying.

 

[Gabriel GR]

Can you please post the model number? I have several Spinpoint F1's and F3's in my desktops and (knock on wood) they have all been awesome).

I'd like to look it up in greek stores.

 

[chp5592]

Here's the Xbench disk results:

Results 55.25
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.2 (10C540)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacBookPro5,1
Drive Type SAMSUNG HM641JI
Disk Test 55.25
Sequential 99.72
Uncached Write 69.55 42.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 117.18 66.30 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 104.30 30.52 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 131.36 66.02 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 38.21
Uncached Write 14.00 1.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 99.58 31.88 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 68.63 0.49 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 115.82 21.49 MB/sec [256K blocks]


I bought this at Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152204


Very quiet!! I have yet to hear a seek/park click sound..

 

[chp5592]

It looks promising. I have a couple recent Samsung 3.5" drives, and they are great. I'll wait for Tom's Hardware to test this one, though, since they test power consumption and make it easy to compare the speed to other drives out there.

My 320gb drive has had under 10gb free for probably more than 6 months now.

I noticed that my WD 500 Blue drive was getting very slow as I got to >90 to 95% capacity. I guess its true with all hard drive. With the new Samsung, the computer seems to be flying again.. (probably until it fills up again).

 

[chp5592]

What about noise? I'm looking for a quiet replacement drive.

Very quiet!! I really can't hear the drive at all. Even when I had temporarily installed on external USB enclosure for the Superduper copy, I really couldn't hear any seek sounds even when I put my ear on the drive. Having been through many laptop drives in my life (and I work in a quiet environment so I am very sensitive to HD sounds), this is by far the quietest HD I have ever had. Really seems like an SSD...

 

[m85476585]

I noticed that my WD 500 Blue drive was getting very slow as I got to >90 to 95% capacity. I guess its true with all hard drive. With the new Samsung, the computer seems to be flying again.. (probably until it fills up again).

The problem is that the drive gets fragmented, and related files get separated. OS X's built-in fragmentation prevention doesn't work (well) when there is very little free space.

I'm torn between this drive and a SSD. I can afford this drive now, but if I wait until the summer, I could probably afford a SSD. But I also want to wait for SSD technology to mature a bit more. I also want to wait for the upcoming MBP refresh to see if there is any better 2-drive option.