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

[felix_w]

Originally Posted by K-TRON

It should be a nice upgrade. Phil had upgraded from the 7200.1 to the HM160HC and he noticed a nice increase in performance.
You can probably turn around and sell your 7200.1 for say $30-40 or so
and than the upgrade really only costs like $20-30.
In my opinion, its definitely worth it

K-TRON

I hope so....if not i can still convert it to external with an ac-ryan case i've got...

Initial thought was to get an Mtron Mobi 3000 32GB for my Aspire 2003Wlmi ...but the price was high enough for such an old machine i guess....i'll wait 3-4 months or so, and if no new Pata SSD comes out, i'll go on an buy the Samsung.....

[K-TRON]

This thread will be updated soon
As a matter of fact the HM160HC now shares the number one spot with the HM080GC and the WD3200BEVE
The HM080GC is built on a single 160gb platter as is the HM160HC, however the HM080GC uses one head rather than two, so areal density is still the same.
I have seen benchmarks of this drive, and I may buy one soon for an older system which has a 48 bit LBA restriction to do comparative benchmarks.

So to make a point here:
If your laptop has a 48 bit LBA limitation, the HM080GC is the best drive for you
If your laptop does not have this limitation, the HM160HC or the WD3200BEVE would be best for you. Which one you get is based around what you want to spend and how much space you need. The WD3200BEVE is the largest to date PATA 2.5" notebook drive scaling in at 320gb 5400rpm.
It strikes me as to why Samsung did not release a dual platter 320gb model of the HM160HC.

Now the WD3200BEVE is based on a 160GB platter like the HM160HC, however it has two of these platters. So in essence the drive performs the same as the HM160HC. However I have not seen any benchmarks yet.

If you have a HM080GC or a WD3200BEVE, please run hdtune, and pcmark and send me the results via PM, so I can include them in this thread

Thank you to all who donate benchmarks, we need to keep this thread going since quite frankly this thread gets alot of hits and we need to keep it updated

K-TRON

[powerhp73]

Hi all, the Samsung HM160HC is really fast but in real condition and with PCmark on My NW8000 the 7K100 100Gb is a bit more faster due slow access time. With HD Tune testing on small file the 7K100 is faster than Samsung. The marging decrease with bigger files due the pure transfer speed is more importan than the access time.

I'm still looking for increase speed of my NW8000 (I love it too much! ) so the next step is the raid solution with 2 disk! (Damm HD manf that go only 7.2 drive with SATA interface! )

I find a second hard drive caddy to fit inside the notebook. I bouth the SATA version but the conversion chip offer poor performance (24Mb/sec instead of about 40Mb/s Hitachi 5K250), so I'm waiting for PATA version...

[K-TRON]

If the HM160HC/7K100 is not fast enough for you I think you should step up to a SSD for your notebook. Unfortunately their is not a mechanical drive faster than the HM160HC for the PATA interface. Some of the Samsung PATA SSD's are faster, but I cannot remember the model number off the top of my head.

I had the 7K100 in my inspiron 8500 and on all levels the HM160HC was an upgrade for me. Well nonetheless the only way your system will get faster is an SSD, or raid two mechanical drives together. I dont know if your system supports raid 0, so I cant comment there

K-TRON

[K-TRON]

I updated the first thread. I removed the inaccurate PCMARK 05 trial results I had. I replaced them with the values I was getting from a full copy of PCMARK 05.

I included an easy to read chart in the first page

If anyone buys a HM080GC or a WD3200BEVE please run PCMARK05 and post your scores. This way we can keep this thread as accurate as possible

K-TRON

[stevezachtech]

Nice review on the Samsung HM160HC, it sure is nice to know on what is the best HD component on the market to have for upgrade purposes...

[alliao]

thanks, looks like I may end up using this for my Panasonic laptop! (If I could find one selling in NZ that is.....)

[SMOGGY-UK]

Hi,

I need help please off someone!
I recently purchased a HM160HC Samsung drive, and got it on a very nice deal. It is to replace a 3.5 year old 40gb Fujitsu in my Acer Aspire 1640 laptop.
However, once installed (correctly) it does not find a HDD ID in my bios settings, so I cant install Windows on the disk.

Please can someone talk me through what I need to do.....

Many thanks in advance

[K-TRON]

Smoggy,
when you removed your 40gb fujitsu harddrive, did you remove the interposer? (the small adaptor which fits over the ~40 pins on the end of the harddrive)

An adaptor is usally used on PATA based laptops, so if there was an adaptor on your Fujitsu harddrive, you should remove it and install it on your samsung harddrive.

Without the interposer, the drive will not be connected to the motherboard, and will not be powered, thus it will not turn the harddrive on.

K-TRON

[jaxelsson]

I can't get this drive (HM160HC) to work in my Dell Inspiron 6000. When I replaced the original Hitachi 40gig I cloned it using Acronis and a IDE-to-USB2-cable. The Samsung drive works perfect with the USB2-adaptor, but isn't found at all in BIOS when I put it in the drive-bay (yes, I moved the pin adapter from the old drive). The POST process takes a really long time, and then shows a "Internal HDD error, press F1 to continue, F2 to enter setup".

I use the latest BIOS (A09). Any ideas?