Conclusion
This article aimed to compare three of the last few hard drive generations, taking into account the current tendency to move away from 7,200 RPM to only 5,400 RPM in the high capacity segment. This makes sense, because higher capacities are easier to reach at relaxed spindle speeds, and also because high capacity storage devices don’t need to perform as fast as possible: there are faster hard drives and flash SSDs, which serve better as high-end system drives. The best solution is to get a fast system drive, and look for an efficient storage monster the next time you upgrade.
We chose three Samsung hard drives for this analysis: the 500 GB Spinpoint T166, which was released in 2007; Samsung’s F1 EcoGreen 5,400 RPM 1 TB drive from 2008; and the latest addition, the Spinpoint F2 EcoGreen at 1.5 TB. Our testing revealed that the increase in data density made up for the throughput decrease when going from the Spinpoint T166 to the F1 EG. The latest F2 EG finally manages to deliver throughput of 110 MB/s, which is as much as first generation terabyte hard drives. At the same time, power consumption has reached low levels, which helped to effectively double power efficiency.
But there is a downside: the lower spindle speed results in longer access times and handicapped I/O performance for the EcoGreen drives. However, if you want an efficient high capacity drive, you can probably live with a small performance penalty. Throughput is nice, power consumption has reached really low levels, and I/O workloads should be taken on by workstation or server hard drives and flash SSDs anyway.
One rule remains: whenever you get a hard drive, you should make sure to get the latest product generation.
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"Most people don’t think about Samsung when they talk about hard drives"
How do you figure that?
How about you test these drives with the AAM(AUTOMATIC ACOUSTIC MANAGEMENT) turned off?
I'm pretty sure it will be quite an interesting benchmark.
Though it is a very informative article, I find the temperature measurement for the T166 (500gb) drive inconsistent with my own T166. Using SMART drive information, it runs idle at 31C. Not 45C.
Wow good article
buth i need a help too.
i wan't to buy a new HDD and i need help to decide wich form the two HDD it's the best: HE103UJ (7 years worrantin) or WD1002FBYS (8 years warrentin) :|
Someone can help me ? the hdd i will use it for storrage or for run the OS (Vista/Windows 7 x64)
I have the 2007 and 2008 model, and I want to get their 2009 1.5TB 7200RPM model at some point, as well as an SSD (possibly Samsung). I'm a bit of a storage geek, and, from where I sit, Samsung is the best storage solution.
Nice guide, handy for those looking for HDDs.
I like WD
i use western digital, simply because, i've got a sammy 1.5TB on RMA for the 4th time since i got the drive a few months ago, whereas the WD i got at the same time (a 1tb drive) is still chugging away. i've had several sammys die, never lost a WD in 5 years.
There is now a 512 gigabyte SSD from Toshiba and Super Talent.
I agree with anon, I also have had 4 Samsung drive failures. Price performance is irrelevent when reliability is compromised. I am going back to Seagates.