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

[Phil]

I don't mind waiting a bit longer to move a big file around whereas the access times directly affect boot up times, looking around a files, loading programs, etc. So unless there's something I'm missing it seems that my 7k60 w/ 15ms access times should be about 13% faster in day to day usage with running programs, booting up, looking around at files, etc. I hope I have missed something, that I'm wrong, and can upgrade to the nice larger drives, which is why I'm posting here. Thanks for your time, and any extra clarification on the topic would be great,

Ryan

Real world performance is influenced by acces times AND throughput AND I/O. Let's say, for example, 50% throughput 25% access times 25% I/O like suggested by Toms Hardware.

So a 15ms vs. 18 ms acces time is nice, but can be equalled out if the 18ms drive has higher throughput.

I upgraded from Seagate 80GB 7200.1 to Samsung HM160HC. I can tell you my system boots faster and hibernates faster. Application launching is about the same.

PCMark is a benchmark application that weighs in throughput, acces times and IO. As you can see in the attachment the HM160HC beats the 80GB 7200.1 in most situations. In application launching they are virtually the same.

[max40watt]

Thanks for the quick reply Phil, you've rekindled my hope that I can upgrade the size of my laptop without downgrading the speed. So I take it that your opinion is that switching out my Hitachi 7k60 for a HM160HC or a WD25000BEVE would result in general use/application loading/file browsing being the same or improved?

[Andy]

Greatly improved. The old 7K60 was so painfully slow on my laptop. I upgraded to the WD3200BEVT which performs the same as the HM160HC, and the difference in performance was massive.

[Phil]

It will improve. Because as far as I know the Seagate 7200.1 80GB is already faster than the 60GB Hitachi 7K60. No doubt you'll see improvement.

[max40watt]

Thanks for the info guys,

Phil, I can't seem to respond to your PM as I'm a new member, but to answer your question, I did run HD Tune on my 7k60 which came up with

HD Tune: HTS726060M9AT00 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 11.4 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 39.0 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 29.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 15.2 ms
Burst Rate : 79.5 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 2.4%

[max40watt]

I was hoping to just retain the same speed with an improved storage space, it's quite nice to know that I might be getting a boost in performance as well

[Andy]

Oh wow. I have the HD Tune graph as well somewhere. The HM160HC will be nearly twice as fast.
It will be more of a kick (A55) in performance, rather than a boost.

[max40watt]

Well that is indeed quite exciting. The relatively low access time and high burst rate on my current drive in comparison to the 5400 drives in question led me to believe an upgrade would slow me down for everything aside from moving large files. I'm glad there's more to it than that, and I can upgrade without worry. Now I suppose it's just a question between the HM160HC and the WD2500BEVE.

[Phil]

I wouldn't say twice as fast (because acces times are important too) but the HM160HC will be noticeably faster than your 7K60. The HM160HC gets about 51 MB/sec average.

Between the WD2500BEVE and HM160HC, Samsung all the way. Single platter, better power consumption, less noise and faster.

[K-TRON]

When I had the 7K100 in my Dell inspiron 8500 (the test machine all of the benchies were made on), I noticed a decent performance gain by upgrading to the HM160HC.
It is not 2x as powerful as the 7K100 I had, but its noticeably faster. Adobe CS2 loads about 15 seconds faster on the HM160HC, than on the 7K100, and windows boots about 16 seconds faster with the Hm160HC, (total boot time is ~38 seconds)
The 40gb 5400rpm drive took about 1 minute 50 seconds to boot,
and the 7K100 took just under a minute (~55 sec) to boot.

The 7K100 is fairly faster than the 7K60 you have (~10mb/sec faster), so you will definitely notice quicker response from the system and shorter loading times.

K-TRON