Review of the Samsung HM160HC, World's Fastest ATA/IDE Mobile hard drive

Phil · 06-23-2008, 01:10 PM

Yep you are right K-Tron I misread the name. Looking forward to the results of different benchmarks.

Phil · 06-26-2008, 01:58 AM

How about those PCMark HDD scores K-Tron? I'm really curious to see them.

I guess the 8,06 Mb/sec you mailed me was the the score of the Samsung 160HC. That would be a really good score.

Edit: although I don't know if it matters what kind of system the benchmark is performed on.

K-TRON · 07-02-2008, 09:44 AM

The old benchmark has been replaced by a real run. Prior I used a trial of PCMARK05, which was not 100% accurate. The real version is giving me much more reasonable results

I also included this in the first post

The test system is my Dell inspiron 8500 with 2.4Ghz P4m, 2.0Gb of Pc3200 memory (running at PC2100 speeds - cause of motherboard limitation), nvidia go 4200, and 160gb 5400rpm samsung drive.

As you can see, their is a large difference between the Samsung HM160JC and the HM160HC. The JC has two 80gb platters, and the HC has one 160Gb platter.

The Samsung HM160HC fairs pretty well against the Hitachi 7k200 which Philflow posted in the post above.
This thing really is fast, and I do recommend it for those with aging notebooks, who do not want to invest a ton of money to have more speed and capacity.
For $75 shipped it is the best drive you can get for the PATA interface.

K-TRON

Phil · 07-02-2008, 10:12 AM

Thanks for posting K-Tron.

XP Startup of 8,06 Mb/sec and General usage 5,54 MB/sec are really good scores.

I've got a Seagate ST980825A 7200rpm 80GB, XP Startup 6,896 MB/sec and General usage 4,156 MB/sec.

So based on these benchmarks (and comparing with Tomshardware) I think it is fair to say that Samsung HM160HC is the fastest ATA 2,5" hard drive .

simonov · 07-02-2008, 11:09 AM

Hmm, intresting! Would I be correct if I state that this one is faster and cheaper then the hitachi 7K200? There isnt a difference then (except the storage ofcourse)

Any reason to prefer the Hitachi?

Phil · 07-02-2008, 11:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by simonov

Hmm, intresting! Would I be correct if I state that this one is faster and cheaper then the hitachi 7K200?

No that would be incorrect. The Samsung is only faster in synthetic benchmarks. In benchmarks that simulate normal usage the Hitachi is faster.

For example:

While the Samsung scores 8,06.

Unfortunately we don't have more application benchmark results at hand, otherwise it would be even more clear. Besides that, the Samsung is ATA and Hitachi 7K200 is SATA, so different interfaces for different laptops.

PS. It is more than likely that the newer Hitachi 7K320 and WD Black Scorpio will be faster than these drives.

simonov · 07-03-2008, 08:36 AM

Yea, I'm following the 7K320 thread... You let me know when these thing hit the market in belgium/holland?

Phil · 07-03-2008, 08:54 AM

Simonov here you go: 320GB 7200rpm WD Black Scorpio in stock in Netherlands

lee_what2004 · 08-06-2008, 10:04 AM

now I'm really confused to choose which, Samsung HM160HC or WD 250GB, as now I'm using Toshiba MK6034GAX. Is the speed difference between Samsung and WD big, as in normal usage, can it be noticed?

Phil · 08-06-2008, 10:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lee_what2004

now I'm really confused to choose which, Samsung HM160HC or WD 250GB, as now I'm using Toshiba MK6034GAX. Is the speed difference between Samsung and WD big, as in normal usage, can it be noticed?

No, I'm expecting it will be very hard to notice the difference in normal use. Maybe it would be something like 3 seconds difference on a 30 second boot or loading a game level. The WD has a bit better acces times so that makes up a little for the lower transfer rates.

Certain applications might benefit more from the higher write speeds that the Samsung gets, like videocapturing for example. But there won't be many.

If you really need the extra storage I'd say go for the WD.