Samsung Spinpoint F3 - Anyone heard one?

Raiser

Can't seem to find any reviews on these (And I mean the F3 in particular) - are meant to be blisteringly quick as 500GB per platter and the price is more than reasonable.

My main concern is noise, as want to use two of the 1TB in my HTPC, and I'm doing this to replace a very noisy Seagate 500GB that sounds like something from the 80's

Reliability of the Samsung Spinpoint is hard to determine also - seems to be mixed opinions at large - some people reporting 3 dead inside of a year etc.

Jock Strap

Raiser wrote: »

some people reporting 3 dead inside of a year etc.

Well they've only been out a few months so.....

Solitaire

But are they talking about the F3? AFAIK single-platter HDDs tend, on average, to be a lot more reliable than multi-platter drives. Not to mention quieter and more frugal with power

great

i have a 1tb one ordered from newegg in the states and is being forwarded on to me but it will be a week or 2.. ill post back then

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185

Solitaire

Not quite the same - lots more moving parts in there due to the second platter

Jock Strap

I have been waiting on this myself.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/10/06/samsung-spinpoint-f3-1tb-review/1

JackieChan

very impressive. I guess I won't be getting the 7200.12 1TB on my build then.

Anti

That review seems a load of bollocks to me, ive got one machine with a F1 as the primary boot drive and i can tell you now its nowhere near the boot time of 60 seconds. And its not even a fresh install, its been going for about 18 months now and never rebuilt and boot time is about 25 seconds from cold power on.

leninbenjamin

Anti wrote: »

That review seems a load of bollocks to me, ive got one machine with a F1 as the primary boot drive and i can tell you now its nowhere near the boot time of 60 seconds. And its not even a fresh install, its been going for about 18 months now and never rebuilt and boot time is about 25 seconds from cold power on.

I dunno, I've an F1 in mine and it's closer to 60. Perhaps performance differs greatly between models, i've heard it said in a few places.

Anti

Could be, im supprised that the test rig BT used too as its a good few generations old. Not really the best test platform for a brand new hard drive.

PogMoThoin

I have 3x 1TB f1's, I swear by them and have had no issues. Nice and quick. I've had problems before with cheap Seagates (Dell) and had a brand spanking WD raptor arrive with the click of death, but never a problem with Samsung.

This thread on XS is very interesting though. No info on the F3, too early for that

Hard drives in % of failures (average)

- Western 0.89%
- Hitachi 0.92%
- Samsung 2.25%
- Maxtor 2.79%
- Seagate 2.89%

Hard drives with more than 3% of failures
- Samsung SpinPoint T 500 Go : 12.9%
- Maxtor DiamondMax 22 1 To : 6.5%
- Seagate 7200.11 500 Go : 5.2%
- Maxtor DiamondMax 22 500 Go : 4.8%
- Maxtor DiamondMax 22 750 Go : 3.9%
- Seagate 7200.11 1 To : 3.7%
- Seagate 7200.11 750 Go : 3.6%
- Hitachi 320 Go IDE : 3.2%

1 TB Hard drives:
- Maxtor DiamonMax 22 : 6.5%
- Seagate 7200.11 : 3.7%
- Samsung SpinPoint F1 : 2.9%
- Samsung EcoGreen F1 : 1.6%
- WD Caviar Green WD10EACS : 0.9%
- Hitachi 7K1000.B : 0.8%
- WD Caviar Black : 0%
- WD Caviar Green WD10EADS : 0%

slave1

not quite F3 but I picked up a F2 1.5TB for my HTPC last week and no complaints, can't hear a thing and lots of storage for your euro

the_law

I got hold of the 500GB and 1TB models for a new build last week. Using them at the moment, can't hear a thing. I have quiet case fans (Nexus Real Silent 80mm, a new try for me - about £4 and dead quiet) and if I leave the PC on overnight in my room then yes, in a quiet room you'll hear something from the HDD. But I'd have no hesitation at using them in an HTPC.

There is a bit of noise on spin up for about 2 seconds, but then it goes away. Great disks all in all, looking at getting another soon. 120MB/sec sequential transfer, no problem.

The 1TB is marginally faster than the 500GB, if that matters (5-10% or so).

great

right i forgot to come back....

specs are:
AMD Athlon 64x2 5000+ 2.6ghz
3gb of ddr2 5300 667 MHz ram
Asus nvidia 9800GTX+
1TB Samsung spinpoint F3
Windows 7 ultimate 64bit

Cant hear the drive over a coolermaster haf 922,
much faster than my old 160gb 16mg drive
speeds of 120mbs~
boots in 45~sec

Deano12345

great wrote: »

right i forgot to come back....

specs are:
AMD Athlon 64x2 5000+ 2.6ghz
3gb of ddr2 5300 667 MHz ram
Asus nvidia 9800GTX+
1TB Samsung spinpoint F3
Windows 7 ultimate 64bit

Cant hear the drive over a coolermaster haf 922,
much faster than my old 160gb 16mg drive
speeds of 120mbs~
boots in 45~sec

Nice speeds,I thinking of getting 2 of these in RAID 0 to do this