Im happy with with Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB, though it is not a boot drive.
I notice the Spinpoint F1s don't get a lot of press or reccos around here, but I've had one for about 4 months now and would like to point out my experience.
First, when I ran it with a 680i mobo, I had some problems with the drive. There is a well documented issue where when used on an nvidia chipset mobo, and nvidia Forceware Drivers 15.08 (which I was using) the drive will simply lock up, thus locking up your whole system, when you try to copy large amounts of data to it. The solution is to simply roll back to Forceware 15.01, and the drive works fine. Again this is only an issue on the nvidia 6xx series (I belive limited to the 680i). The drive currently works fine on my new X48 mobo.
Second, the drive is fast. I run 4 HDs, see sig. The Spinpoint is definitely faster in sustained transfer rates than the Segate 750 is. I have not compared it to the 2 Segates in Raid 0, as that would not be fair.
Third, the drive runs cool, check out the SMART temps:
http://img107.imagevenue.com/v...ps_volts_122_902lo.jpg
The temps of the two Segate 500 Barracudas in Raid 0 can not be shown, as Raid inhibits smart monitoring. However, when comparing the temps of two totally idle drives, in a fairly hot system case in a fairly hot room environment (Temp sensor 3 is room temp, 84 F!!) you can see that the Samsung runs much cooler than the Segate 750 barracuda ES. Again, this temp reading is with both drives totally idle. Will try to do a screen cap later with each drive working is *** off.
Forth, to me anyway, it's quiet. Hard to tell in a system with 4 HDs, 2 of which are in Raid 0 for booting Vista. However, when I test copy a large chunk of data using the Samsung vs my Segate 750 (the one not in Raid), the drive noise is less with the Samsung.
So, in summary, I really like the Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB. I've never had a crash associated with it once I figured out the Forceware 15.08 issue. And even then, it never lost data or developed a bad sector. It's faster than my Segate 750 Barracuda ES, and runs much cooler.
When I get home I will post some HD Tach benchs of both drives.