# Samsung F3 vs Seagate 7200.12 vs WD 640 Black



## LAN_deRf_HA (Oct 30, 2009)

The middle one is from fits, the samsung and WD are mine. Samsung outright beats the seagate, WD has the access time. Both 500s are single platter, WD is double. The samsung only cost me $50 free shipping.






Only real problem with samsung is I don't trust their reliability... even if they are the fastest drives out now... according to this at least http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/10/06/samsung-spinpoint-f3-1tb-review/1


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## erocker (Oct 30, 2009)

Ouch! My 1tb 7200.12 gets much better performance than that! Maybe it's the difference of storage controllers.


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## Solaris17 (Oct 30, 2009)

EDIT: agree with E my sammy F1 1TB gets better performance than that drive. i avg above 100mb/s minimum (when the drive was ampty.) im like 700GB in and i avg about 75 or so min


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Oct 30, 2009)

Well I don't know how to explain the minimum rates, only thing I see that's similar with your rigs is you both have cpus with high memory bandwidth? Not sure if that really relates.


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## Solaris17 (Oct 30, 2009)

no thats purely ram based. our bus speed is still the same as it has to be locked


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## erocker (Oct 30, 2009)

Have you checked your device manager to make sure there are no missing drivers? You may want to update your chipset.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Sea...=Intel®+Chipset+Software+Installation+Utility

INF Update Utility -​​ Primarily for Intel® 5,​ 4,​ 3,​ 900 Series Chipsets


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Oct 30, 2009)

I did that first thing when I installed win7 a week ago. All I can think is you two have much newer controllers? Because the center benchmark from fits and many others I've seen around the forum match up to mine, having above 100mb/s minimum seems to be a bit uncommon.


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## Kantastic (Oct 30, 2009)

Sorry about the thread jack, but at the same price would you get a 500GB F3 or 500GB .12? I'm looking to grab my dad a new HDD since the old .9 makes really loud grinding noises (been like that since day 1), and I don't want to get another Caviar Black since I have one.


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## newtekie1 (Oct 30, 2009)

Wow, WTH is wrong with that Western Digital?  My seagate LP drives average only 10MB/s slower, and they are 5900RPM drives...:shadedshu


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## LittleLizard (Oct 30, 2009)

Kantastic said:


> Sorry about the thread jack, but at the same price would you get a 500GB F3 or 500GB .12? I'm looking to grab my dad a new HDD since the old .9 makes really loud grinding noises (been like that since day 1), and I don't want to get another Caviar Black since I have one.



if i were you i would go for seagate. I know their reliability is good (at least in my case)


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## kylzer (Oct 30, 2009)

Ive got a 640black ill post my results later as i get different from that.


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## MilkyWay (Oct 30, 2009)

WD drives win in reliability, the new F3 was supposed to be faster than the F1. F2 was just some "green" low power thing i think?

Seagate are okay mixed bag your drive will either die rather quick or live forever, i have a seagate 7200.12 tis okay has 32mb of cache just a backup drive really.

The F1 had sector problems tho, got a FREE refund and a replacement cannot beat that!
Money no expense id get a fast WD drive tho, for me at the time the F1 was fast and cheap or well SSD but they are low capacity right now so...


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## erocker (Oct 30, 2009)

erocker said:


> Ouch! My 1tb 7200.12 gets much better performance than that! Maybe it's the difference of storage controllers.



I need to put my foot in my mouth.   My 7200.12 gets the exact same performance as that with an AMD system. One thing I just noticed though is your CPU usage for that drive is insanely high!


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## theonedub (Oct 30, 2009)

Solaris17 said:


> http://img.techpowerup.org/091030/poke.png
> 
> EDIT: agree with E my* sammy F1 1TB *gets better performance than that drive. i avg above 100mb/s minimum (when the drive was ampty.) im like 700GB in and i avg about 75 or so min



That drive is pure win, love mine.


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## twicksisted (Oct 30, 2009)

i just bought a 1TB samsung F3 to go into my main rig earlier today (arriving tomorrow morning!).... have a 250Gb samsung drive in my spare pc which is on 24/7 for the last 3 years or so with no issues.... i trust these sammy drives as much as i trust WD drives... and on top of it they run loads cooler and quieter


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## MilkyWay (Oct 30, 2009)

twicksisted said:


> i just bought a 1TB samsung F3 to go into my main rig earlier today (arriving tomorrow morning!).... have a 250Gb samsung drive in my spare pc which is on 24/7 for the last 3 years or so with no issues.... i trust these sammy drives as much as i trust WD drives... and on top of it they run loads cooler and quieter



samsung drives are quiet, cool and not power hungry


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Oct 30, 2009)

I suppose it's worth noting the two drives I tested are half full but recently defraged. I recall the samsung scoring higher when it was empty but I don't remember what it got.


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## Steevo (Oct 30, 2009)

Comparing a older lower capacity drive to a newer one is wrong. the higher the aurial density the faster the continuous reads and writes.

A 1TB drive has much faster reads and writes as the amount of data per revolution is higher due to more physical disks and heads, or higher data density. A 2TB drive will have faster reads and writes, a smaller drive like a 500 will have slower.



The 640 is only directly comparable to the 500's if they have the same number of platters, heads or were direct competitive offerings/made in the same short time frame.


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## angelkiller (Oct 31, 2009)

Solaris17 said:


> http://img.techpowerup.org/091030/poke.png
> 
> EDIT: agree with E my sammy F1 1TB gets better performance than that drive. i avg above 100mb/s minimum (when the drive was ampty.) im like 700GB in and i avg about 75 or so min


AFAIK, hdd bandwidth has nothing do do with how full it is. Any specific point on a hard drive can deliver data a a certain speed regardless of what that data is (or isn't). I could be wrong, but it doesn't make sense that the fuller it gets, the slower a benchmark is.



newtekie1 said:


> Wow, WTH is wrong with that Western Digital?  My seagate LP drives average only 10MB/s slower, and they are 5900RPM drives...:shadedshu


Platter density. 500GB @ 5900rpm vs 320GB @ 7200rpm. But I guarantee your access time on that LP drive isn't under 12ms!  Big platters give high bandwidth but 5900rpm gives slow access times.


Now those benches bring up a new question... Access times or bandwidth? The WD Black has a sub 12ms access time, which I'm sure has to be in the top 3 for 7200rpm drives. However, the Samsung can deliver data 24% faster on average, sequentially. I'm more inclined to the WD Black unless I have a specific need for sequential reads.


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## newtekie1 (Oct 31, 2009)

angelkiller said:


> Platter density. 500GB @ 5900rpm vs 320GB @ 7200rpm. But I guarantee your access time on that LP drive isn't under 12ms!  Big platters give high bandwidth but 5900rpm gives slow access times.



13.0ms exactly, so faster than the other two drives, and only 1ms slower than the WD.  Not bad, the access time difference wouldn't even be noticeable.


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## angelkiller (Oct 31, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> 13.0ms exactly, so faster than the other two drives, and only 1ms slower than the WD.  Not bad, the access time difference wouldn't even be noticeable.


I find it hard to believe that a 5900rpm hard drive can achieve an access time of 13ms. Seagate has a drive called the Pipeline HD Pro, which is not a part of the LP series and it spins at 7200rpm and has a capacity of 1TB. Do you have this drive, by chance?


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## newtekie1 (Oct 31, 2009)

angelkiller said:


> I find it hard to believe that a 5900rpm hard drive can achieve an access time of 13ms. Seagate has a drive called the Pipeline HD Pro, which is not a part of the LP series and it spins at 7200rpm and has a capacity of 1TB. Do you have this drive, by chance?



Nope, I have LP drive, ST31500541AS to be exact.





Ignore CPU usage, F@H was running in the background.


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## angelkiller (Oct 31, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> Nope, I have LP drive, ST31500541AS to be exact.
> 
> http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/newtekie1/5900.jpg
> Ignore CPU usage, F@H was running in the background.


 Well then. I'm wrong.


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Oct 31, 2009)

This is what someone reports for the 1 TB F3 on newegg.

Burst rate: 165 MB/sec
Max Read: 148 MB/sec
Avg Read: 117MB/sec
Min Read: 72 MB/sec
Access time: 13.1 ms

Seems pretty close to what I got on the single platter version, though for some reason the access time is better despite being the 2 platter version? I suppose that's just differences between chipsets and how full/fraged the drives are.

Maybe we need to start a thread where everyone posts their hd tune results along side their chipsets and a general statement about how full/fraged it is. The first post can be updated with a direct link to posts with the hd tune results, grouping them by exact drive models. So people can see differences between drives, and differences between the same drive, both on the same and different chipsets. Might not be necessary, but could be useful.

On a related note, I find my brother's old raptor results interesting. Def. wins latency, but nothing else.


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## twicksisted (Oct 31, 2009)

ill post up a HDtune of my 1TB sammy F3 i just installed today after i get all my service packs in


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## newtekie1 (Oct 31, 2009)

angelkiller said:


> Well then. I'm wrong.



The RAID0 performance of two of these is even better!  I was really impressed actually, I expected really crappy performance from them since they rae only 5900RPM, but they really impressed me.  Now I just need to hook them up to a proper RAID controller instead of the shitty 650i controller they are currently on...


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## twicksisted (Nov 1, 2009)

ok heres my HD Tune screenies of this Samsung F3 1TB drive






pretty decent... beats my Raid 0 setup i was using before handsdown... looking forward to getting another to run in raid 0 with 

My previous drives were WD 320RE16 (raid edition) in raid 0 64kb stripe


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## BababooeyHTJ (Nov 1, 2009)

I want two of those 500GB F3s in Raid0. Those drives are impressive.

Here is a screenshot of my 1TB F1 for comparison.






This is 2 250GB AAKS dirves in Raid0.


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## Asylum (Nov 1, 2009)

Heres the Blue 2x320GB WD AAKS in Raid 0
Get you 2 of these and put them in raid0.
At about $55 apiece thats some good bang for the buck.
Looks like there just as fast as the blacks also.


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## El_Mayo (Nov 1, 2009)

What is RAID?


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## Dark_Webster (Nov 21, 2009)

Don't have any HD Tune benchmark screenie, but i have a HD Tach one .






I was used to a Maxtor with 3.5 years old, this Samsung F3 1TB is a beast .


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## jalyst (Nov 28, 2009)

So has anyone done a direct comparison between F3 500GB and Black 500GB?
Aside from the Bit Tech review of course!   ;-P


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## jalyst (Dec 9, 2009)

Sniffle 



jalyst said:


> So has anyone done a direct comparison between F3 500GB and Black 500GB?
> Aside from the Bit Tech review of course!   ;-P


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## Delta6326 (Dec 9, 2009)

jalyst said:


> So has anyone done a direct comparison between F3 500GB and Black 500GB?
> Aside from the Bit Tech review of course!   ;-P



when i finally get out of bed i will do a test i have a 500gb wd black. im in a blizzard so i dont want to get up last i checked we where at 13" at 10pm yesterday still snowing


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## jalyst (Dec 9, 2009)

you're a legend, 220am here time for bed 



Delta6326 said:


> when i finally get out of bed i will do a test i have a 500gb wd black. im in a blizzard so i dont want to get up last i checked we where at 13" at 10pm yesterday still snowing


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## Delta6326 (Dec 9, 2009)

heres my test the first one is horrible going to do a retest





Heres my second test after i did a disk cleanup





so i would say get the F3 Sammy my WD really hasn't impressed me much


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## jalyst (Dec 10, 2009)

Thanks Mate, looking pretty clear now.

All the best.


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## DirectorC (Dec 10, 2009)

LAN_deRf_HA said:


> Only real problem with samsung is I don't trust their reliability... even if they are the fastest drives out now



That's exactly it.  You got very close to defining the very fact of the matter: the faster a drive is, the the faster it will fail and/or the more likely it is to fail.


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## Jstn7477 (Dec 10, 2009)

I've had a pair of Samsung F1 1TB drives in RAID 1 for over 3 months, not a single issue here. These are my first Samsung drives, too (long time WD and older Maxtor user).


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## JTS (Dec 10, 2009)

Jstn7477 said:


> I've had a pair of Samsung F1 1TB drives in RAID 1 for over 3 months, not a single issue here. These are my first Samsung drives, too (long time WD and older Maxtor user).



I've had a pair of F1 640GB non-raided for just over a year now, and these have been the quietest and coolest running drives I've ever used.  These were my first Samsung drives as well, but now I wouldn't hesitate to go Samsung again.

Then again it's really luck of the draw when it comes to mechanical HDD's and  quality.  There really isn't any manufacturer that can boast the 'best overall quality and reliability' anymore.


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