Is the Samsung Spinpoint T series HD501LJ as good as other 500GB drives?

[duragezic]

I'm looking to get a new hard drive, a SATA one finally, most likely a 500GB as it would be pointless to get only a 320GB when I got a 250GB in 2005, and the 750GB are too much right now.

I missed out on the Fry's deal where it was as low as $99 for a 7200.10 500GB rebadged as a Maxtor with a 3 year warranty. I have checked for deals since but not have not found one deal yet!

So just going to Newegg, my best options look to be:
(all are 7200 RPM, 16 MB cache, 500 GB, free 3-day shipping(cept the Hitachi), SATA 3Gbps

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3500630AS: $125
Samsung SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ: $115 - $5 (if code is still valid) = $110
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS : $115
Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 HDT725050VLA360 $120 + $6 shipping

I am leaning towards the Samsung because

Comparable features as the rest (NCQ, acoustic/thermal management, etc), it is the cheapest by $5 or tied for the cheapest (if the code is no longer valid), is a 2x winner of the customer choice award (none of the other four got this), and has the highest rating (only one of the four with a 5/5 average rating with 84% saying 5/5 out of 282 review) on Newegg.

The few reviews I've found said that it is quiet, cool, and fast. But I don't know how it compares to the perpendicular recording tech (if that makes any difference) on the 7200.10, and I don't know its reliability and performance.

The Seagate 5yr warranty stands out as a major advantage for the 7200.10, but the other three drives are all 3 year warranty, which is OK.

I read that the latest WD drives are very quiet and very cool, but the Samsung is supposedly almost as good in those aspects. I'm mostly concerned with reliability and real-world performance like large file copying, game load times, etc. I'm not sure how the Samsung fairs against the other drives.


Opinions on any of these four drives? Due to the Newegg awards and highest rating reviews, the lowest cost, and favorable reviews on other tech sites (but some said it was slow yet others said it was fast), I'm leaning towards the Samsung, but I'm open to opinions on all of them or any other drives I didn't mention.

 

[Bradtechonline]

My two Samsung drives are very quiet, and fast. I've had the PATA 160 GB going on 3 years, and it is as quiet as the first day I used it.
I'm very satisfied with my two Samsung drives. If you don't go Samsung, WD, or Seagate would be fine too.

 

[Muse]

I'm testing my new HD501LJ right now (other machine), running Samsung's HUTIL HD testing utility. It passed all tests and is right now about 30% into the total surface scan (from boot floppy).

I bought mine from www.memorylabs.com, whose deal was around $10 better than Neweggs, and I figured on a HD I'd take my chances with this small outfit. If you order from them, undo their fluff addons before confirming. That's stuff like insurance (unless you want it), cables, a couple of other things.

Sounds like you already read the reviews at Newegg, and as you noted (I did too), the ratings on this drive were the highest. Higher than WD, higher than Seagate, and Maxtor wasn't even in the running. And it's something like 200 reviews. Newegg buyers, in my experience, are some of the more knowledgable ones out there. For quiet, fast and reliable, I figure this Samsung is a good bet. I've owned more HD's than I can count on my fingers and only had to take advantage of a warranty one time, and that was less than a year after purchase. So 5 year over 3 year warranty is significant, but not a big deal, I figure.

So, just answering your topic title (Is the Samsung Spinpoint T series HD501LJ as good as other 500GB drives?) in a word, Yes!

 

[Highly Likely]

silentpcreview recommends some Samsung drives. I have one (250GB -SP2514N) and no complains so far. All i can say is : it does vibrate noticeably ( i dont know compared to other HDD though, ie check the SPCR website for reviews) so make sure you have damped holes or some vibration silencer if you are very picky on sound and pc's

 

[Athena]

I've always been very happy with Samsung drives. They aren't as popular in the US as in other areas but they always get good reviews.

 

[SparkyJJO]

I have a samsung SP2504C 250GB SATA drive for my master drive. Just got it back from RMA, the first one had a strange grounding issue in the PCB (touch the case and the system would hang up like the HD got unplugged). It also had some extra vibration. However, the replacement has very little vibration and works great.

This is the first samsung drive I've had any problems with. All the others I had have been flawless. My grandparents' PC is running on my old 40GB samsung that UPS played football with (twisted the case, and my full weight won't bend it back) and it still works perfectly 4 years later.

 

[orbiter]

I've had a bad experience with Samsung HDD's :disgust:

Apart from the excessive vibration from these drives.

About four months ago I purchased two 250GB SP2514N drives and after a week or two my BIOS POST was reporting that both drives where bad and were giving SMART errors My hardware suppiers where great and immediately replaced them with two more drives of the same type. As soon as these were fitted they gave SMART errors right from the start, telling me to back up my data and replace the drives which I did> Again!!

Now I thought to myself whilst fitting my latest pair of new drives that these surely couldn't be faulty!! Could they?.... Well YES, they were So thats six drives of the same make and type (all with different serial numbers) faulty. At this point I was starting to wonder if there was something wrong with my newly self built system :Q

I RMA'd the drives once again and told my suppliers that I was not happy with these Samsung drives anymore, and asked if I could pay the difference for two slightly more expensive 320GB SATA Seagates. A day later the drives arrived and where installed. Since then I've not even had a sniff of trouble.

So that's a big :thumbsdown: for Samsung from me.

 

[jpeyton]

A huge :thumbsup: from me; I have a HD501LJ, and not only is it fast, it's dead quiet.

This drive is highly recommended by the folks at SPCR Forums.

If you ask enough people, you'll always find someone who is dissatisfied with a product. Someone always has a bad luck story with hard drives, regardless of the brand.

 

[Night201]

I'm about to order one right now. My current 200GB drive is beginning to click. I'm frantically copying all of my data on it to my wife's computer as I type. Actually, now as I type, I just got an error and my drive disappeared. I think it's going to be a rebooting night until I can get all my data off.

 

[duragezic]

Cool... well I don't care much about silence, as I'm sure it will be quieter than the three older 7200rpm drives I'm using now, which don't bother me at all. Plus, the fans generally overpower the sound from hard drives (not sure if its the little chipset one, videocard, CPU, 80mm front case fan, or least likely the 120mm PSU fan). I remember hard drives back in the day, even 5400rpm ones, seemed a lot louder than anything I use now. The old 7200rpm WD Expert 27.3gb is loud and makes a whining sound, but 27gb is pretty much a waste for that whining sound and I don't trust my data on something that old so I don't even bother to have it in.

Well, I think I'll pick up the Samsung.

I sure hope I don't get any bad vibration. I have a POS case which has no dampening stuff for hard drives, but as I said, my case cover is off so I am used to fairly loud fans... I just hope it doesn't vibrate enough to be too loud over the fans.


I have nothing against the Hitachi or WD, just it seems the Samsung is rated better and cheaper. But the Seagate should seemingly be better faster, quieter, and cooler due the PRT, but from what I have read, that doesn't seem to be the case. The Seagate 5yr warranty is really nice, cause it's just weird to think that the 7200.8 250gb I have from 2005 (which seems like its been quite a while already) has valid warranty until 2010!! And you know that if say it died in 2009 and I requested a RMA, they possibly would not have any 7200.8 250gbs around, and would likely get sent something newer and bigger, as seems to be the case with videocard RMAs, but maybe not to that great of extent.

But 3yr ought to suffice. Of all the hard drives I've owned, I've only needed to RMA one once. That was a WD 800jb that started to click and crap out within a couple months of getting it. I got drives that are less than 1 GB that probably still work.

 

[duragezic]

I ordered it last night. The $5 off promo code that worked a few days ago then said it is only for newsletter subscribers. So I subscribed, but it would take 24 hours to process, and no garuantee the code would even work then, so I'm unsubscribing from that crap!

So for $115 with free 3-day shipping, it's still not a bad deal. It's $15 more than I wanted to pay, for example the recent $100 Fry's Maxtor 7200.10 500GB deal, but oh well.

In a few weeks after I get some use out of the drive, I'll chime in with comments on any threads relating to it. And I'll run benchmarks with my current Seagate 250gb and older drives then do the same with the new drive. It should be noticeable faster, and I finally should be able to get my case down to having only one 80pin PATA cable.