Hardware Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB

Hmmmm. I've owned this drive for just over a month now and looking at how everyones replies say how lovely and quiet it is I'm wondering now if there is something wrong with mine. I have it mounted on anti vibration blocks and it is the only thing in my system that i hear, it makes a clunking noise as it reads and writes. Its certainly doesnt sound like something is broken but it has irratted me as its in my HTPC setup. Hmmm possible RMA time.

 

Dont think any hard drive should be clunking hehe, defo send it back.

 

Ha Ha yeh i know, its just its audible enough as to the point where it bothers me as in I want a near silent system but its still much quieter than most Maxtor or Seagate drives i've used. But yeh RMA time me thinks.

 

You could try the Samsung tool for adjusting the acoustic level of the hard drive. Iirc, there are three settings. Slower/Quieter, 'Middle', Faster/Noisier.

 

I am gonna get one as soon as I have cash, my 320GB drive is full.

 

Good review, and it's nice to see that everyone here with a F1 is happy. But the user reviews at the Egg (at least for the 750 gb drive I was looking at) are abysmal. Tremendously disappointed users vis-a-vis other manufacturers' drives. The last time I saw such anguish was when WD 40 meg drives were failing left, right and centre.

High DOA and failure rates within 6 months. Synopsis of comments: fast, if it works.

Perhaps reviews here should take into account the reams of reviews that are in evidence at NewEgg, as an additional point in conclusions. Just point readers that way if there is a problem, indicating YMMV.

 

The problem with those reviews is that if 10,000 buy the drive and 1% have problems and half of those people post bad reviews then that's 50 bad reviews, most of the time the people who get a fully functioning drive don't post feedback. So all those negative reviews would only be indicative of a small percentage of peoples experiences.

 

@r4tch3t: Fair point, but considering that WD & Seagate probably sell shedloads more drives to consumers than Samsung does, I think it's rather telling by the skewed ratio of complaints against Samsung's F1 than, say WD's & Seagate's latest offerings --- Black editions or .11's. However, if in the end the commenters are happy with their F1's, that's fine. But for casual readers, fail-rates are an important balance within an article. That's all I was trying to get at. Ciao, and season's greetings to all.

 

Huge capacity for the money, good review and drive.

 

I just bought a 1TB Caviar Black over the Samsung Spinpoint F1 do to hearing about its higher than average failure rate. I was wondering what you guys at bit-tech think about Samsung's F1 failure rate? Especially since you guys said you bought half a dozen of them.

 

I think the "higher than average" failure rate is just because so many people are buying them. Therefore you hear of more failures even though the rate is the same as normal drives.

 

Can I ask something here,

Does cache matter if you use the drive for storage?

 

Don't you think that samsung outsells the caviar 10:1 has anything to do with a higher fail rate? If its failure rate is incredible high it would already be all over all the tech review sites as a news item.

 

Does the same recommendation from the review apply to the 640gb version?

Scan has the 640gb drive for £45 and I'm looking to get 2 drives in RAID 1, getting two 1tb drives would be a little to expensive for me at the moment.

 

As far as I know, they should perform on par with the 1TB, the only difference is that the 640GB version only has 2 platters rather than 3.

 

I've now got 7 1TB Spinpoints in various systems. Well, I say 'I' what I really mean is 'they are in systems I have built for others'. Four are mine. I've had them for... probably fifteen months now (I can't really remember...) and they're still going strong. The other three vary in age from just under a year to a couple of weeks. None of them have died yet either.

Which is more than can be said of the Seagate drive I replaced on a friends' system a few weeks ago. He RMA'd it to Seagate and they sent him a replacement as it was knackered. Not wanting it to happen again, he eBayed it and bought a different make.

I've not had any problems with Samsung drives. Perhaps I'm lucky. That said, I thought they were pretty much silent... but I had one open bench while building my new system... and it's fairly loud. Once in a case, though, it's inaudible.

 

Been living with this drive for 2 months now. It's been flawless.

File transfers of 110MB/sec. It's relatively quiet when seeking. Runs cool.

Highly recommended.