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Samsung SpinPoint F4 320GB 16MB comparable to SSD

tweakboy

tweakboy

Diamond Member
Maybe Im wrong here but go to this link amazon is selling it and look at the specs.., it just came out Sept 10th. new from Samsung, its got one platter and its

Samsung SpinPoint F4 320 GB SATA/300 7200 RPM 16 MB Hard Drive General Features:
320 GB storage capacity SATA/300 interface 16 MB buffer 7200 RPM rotational speed
8.9 ms average seek time 4.17 ms average latency
Data Transfer Rate / Media to/from Buffer (Max.): 285 MB/sec
Data Transfer Rate / Buffer to/from Host (Max.): 300 MB/sec
8.7ms seek time,,

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-SpinPo...5457866&sr=8-2
 
This is the latest 666GB-platter drive; it has 4K sectors (at least the 2TB version does).

Even though it is only 320GB capacity, it is still a 666GB-platter. But it simply only uses one half of the platter with a single head instead of dual head for each surface. So only half the capacity of the 666GB-platter; but you do get a minimal amount of moving mechanical components which should be good for reliability, lifespan, lower noise/vibrations, less heat production and lower power consumption.

The 285MB/s is bullshit of course. That's if you are reading the same sector again and again and essentially read for the onboard DRAM memory; and not actually from the mechanical platter.

The F4 does:

5400rpm: 130-140MB/s
7200rpm: 150MB/s+

Given that spec, i would prefer the 5400rpm over the 7200rpm; half the heat still 80% of the performance.
 
I'm waiting until drives like this come out with the full 667mb capacity. I don't see why Samsung short-stroked this drive like this. It's such a waste.
 
Wow 150mb/s is good compared to my now 88mb/s average. Sub.Mesa good post brother man,,,Will I notice difference I mean not as big as SSD but things will be snappier? Boot times,, loading of wave or creating of wave files etc....Will it be as fast as my P2B 450Mhz Seagate Cheetah 9GB SCSI,, that thing was fast,
 
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Sequential read / write stats don't affect the "snappiness" of the system like the random read / write stats do. That's where SSDs shine - they post decent or good sequential numbers, but absolutely awesome random numbers.

In short, nothing except a SSD is going to feel like a SSD. Not even a 600GB VelociRaptor.
 
You won't notice the difference unless you are copying large media (like a DVD) from or to a similar drive. Latency is the enemy to throughput. Latency on an HDD is caused by seek time and to a lesser extent rotation time. Latency on an SSD is almost invisible.
 
Thanks all responses,, ya alaricijs seek time is 8.7 SSD is not even preset 1ms or something. Soo from what yall said, I will not notice a difference in speed unless copying big files. How about loading up big files ? I mean 320GB is all I need, so should I stick with what I have for primary or go with F4 320GB ?
 
don't forget fragmentation - a file with 1000 fragments can have massive seek times - and near zero on the ssd. thats real time if 8ms.

So in a perfect world maybe - in a real world ssd kills on latency alone
 
If you will be running Windows 7 then it has some optimizations for HDDs as well:
- defrags when the system is idle
- superfetch allows sequentially reading a large chunk of file instead of random I/O when booting up.

With enough RAM, you won't really notice the slowness of a HDD over time; all active data is kept in RAM anyway. Therefore, getting more RAM is actually the best investment you can do (next to buying SSD) to enhance I/O performance. The more RAM, the less the HDD will be used. The less it will be used, the lower the possibility for affecting performance.

So yes an SSD is unbeatable by SSD; but for simple desktops win7 + HDD works quite well too; much better than XP which terribly fragments over time.
 
SickBeast said:
I'm waiting until drives like this come out with the full 667mb capacity. I don't see why Samsung short-stroked this drive like this. It's such a waste.
Click to expand...
They also have 2TB drive; it's being sold now. This uses three fully utilized 666GB-platters.

Samsung F4 EG 2TB

The EG = 5400rpm; non-EG = 7200rpm.
 
no kidding my win7 had a schedule to defrag every wednesday.

weird.

half-platter drives are usually half-cache drives too.

16 meg = 1/2 platter
32 meg = 1 platter
> 1 platter = 64meg (maybe but not def)
 
This is the news i've been waiting on.
Now give me a 2 platter 667GB/platter drive (7200rpm) and i'll snatch up a few of them 🙂
 
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sub.mesa said:
Given that spec, i would prefer the 5400rpm over the 7200rpm; half the heat still 80% of the performance.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure it would be half the heat. It probably is just a bit warmer, and just a bit more power. I was reading some reviews at Silent PC Review yesterday and they measured some 7200RPM drives to only take up 2W more under seeks than 5400RPM drives, and 0.2W more idling.
 
no kidding my RE4 seem to run about 10F hotter than the RE4-GP (both 2TB). but damn those 5400 are slow. i had to raid-0 them to make any use out of them. lol. stick to 7200 man. for real. unless you are truly tiering your storage and have spindown capability. the green cause endless troubles for raid systems - for some reason i can't figure out.
 
SickBeast said:
I'm waiting until drives like this come out with the full 667mb capacity. I don't see why Samsung short-stroked this drive like this. It's such a waste.
Click to expand...

I "heard" they only use one side of the disk, and one read head...not sure if that's true.
 
Zap said:
I'm not sure it would be half the heat. It probably is just a bit warmer, and just a bit more power. I was reading some reviews at Silent PC Review yesterday and they measured some 7200RPM drives to only take up 2W more under seeks than 5400RPM drives, and 0.2W more idling.
Click to expand...
Well if you compare the latest single platter 7200rpm against the oldest 5400rpm of 6 years ago, then yes perhaps it won't differ all that much. But generally you could say that 7200rpm consumes twice the power of 5400rpm disks.

Idle power consumption comparison:

Intel X25-M with DIPM: 0,075W
Intel X25-M without DIPM: 0,5W
2,5" notebook drive: 0,7-0,8W
2,5" Velociraptor drive: 4,5W
3,5" 5400rpm green drive: 3,5-4,5W
3,5" 7200rpm single platter: 5-6W
3,5" 7200rpm multiplatter: 7-9W

Any other power consumption measurement (for example when seeking) is irrelevant; unless you do nothing but seek all day long. The total power consumption of HDDs do not exceed the idle power consumption much. Due to their mechanical nature they always consume power due to the air-friction of the platter rotating; the added power consumption of seeking is negliceable unless you do laboratory tests and let them seek all day long.

A HDD doing nothing and a HDD reading at 150MB/s differ only slightly in power consumption; heavy seeking and doing 0,1MB/s requires the most power consumption.

As air resistance increases exponentially, a 7200rpm will be only 25% faster but use 50% more power; if all the rest of those two drives remain unchanged. The 2,5" Velociraptor at 10.000rpm uses more than 4W of power; which is ALOT for such a tiny drive and the reason it needs excellent cooling in its 3,5" caddy. Though even with all this 'brute force' a simple 5400rpm green drive could beat the Velociraptor; in fact most green drives do at this moment; thought the latest 600GB Velociraptor is still a tiny bit faster.

Concluding, i think 7200rpm will become much less popular than they currently are. HDDs can't do IOps very well so we won't use them for that in the future. All we would use them is mass-storage for sequential workloads. 5400rpm are almost as fast as 7200rpm in that area, so would be more logical. SSDs would be used for all random accesses instead.

At this moment, if you do not have an SSD, you can still consider the 7200rpm version. Otherwise i would pick the 5400rpm and benefit from potential higher reliability and endurance, sound production, vibrations, power consumption and heat generation.
 
sub.mesa said:
This is the latest 666GB-platter drive; it has 4K sectors (at least the 2TB version does).

Even though it is only 320GB capacity, it is still a 666GB-platter. But it simply only uses one half of the platter with a single head instead of dual head for each surface. So only half the capacity of the 666GB-platter; but you do get a minimal amount of moving mechanical components which should be good for reliability, lifespan, lower noise/vibrations, less heat production and lower power consumption.
Click to expand...
Thank you! I've been looking all over to try and figure out why the HD322GJ is faster in tests than the HD103SJ and HD502HJ, and found this page in a search, and you just probably explained it (more areal density).

Those two F3's are 500gb platters and I thought the F4 was a 320gb platter, but I see now it's a halved 667gb (according to Samsung) platter. That explains the quote "The one-head platform of the new 7200rpm Spinpoint F4, packing up to 320GB of storage capacity per one head in half platter, delivers added reliability that our customers have come to expect from Samsung."
http://www.samsung.com/us/business/s...o?news_id=1163

BTW, the HD322GJ is 512 byte sectors. The larger F4EG models are 4k sectors (w/emulation and are only 5400rpm). 😉

Now if it only had a 32mb buffer, I'm tempted to wait to see what's next in the 7200rpm F4's.
 
Im going to get the Samsung SpinPoint F4 320GB drive and I will compare it to my current WDC 320GB drive which does 88mb/s I will be writing a tweakboy review of this drive and its speed. Im getting OEM though, is that bad ? Or as long as its packaged well ?

42.99 at ChiefValue
 
The F4 320GB should be one of the fastest and most reliable disks around. Perfect buy if you don't need the capacity and can't afford SSD (yet).

Most disks are OEM; the cables should be from your motherboard. You need SATA power cable and SATA data cable.
 
Ya Im stoked sub.mesa , and ya I cant afford SSD at all,, soo ya this is next best thing I guess...

and ya its OEM
 
Sub.Mesa can answer,, I didnt make that comment LOL. But I have no choice but to agree with it since Im buying this F4 320GB.. thanks
 
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