Verdict: The P120S is hard to fault in terms of speed and noise, and it's good value for money
Samsung has developed a good reputation for quiet hard disks, but its SpinPoint drives aren't usually mentioned in the same breath as speed demons such as the Western Digital Raptor. Things change rapidly in computing, though, and with the P120S, Samsung could compete with the hard drive pace-setters in the speed stakes.
As well as being one of the first S-ATA II drives that we've seen, the P120S also improves on the data density of its predecessor, the P80, by more than 50 per cent. Packing the data more tightly results in a higher data throughput, and is key to increasing performance. The 250GB P120S crams 125GB of space onto each platter. The bits aren't quite as densely packed as they are in the top end of Seagate's Barracuda 7200.8 range, but with most manufacturers still on 100GB, or even 80GB, the P120S certainly puts Samsung in a front-running position.
The P120S continues Samsung's excellent record for silence too. When idle, it outputs only 25dBA, which is as quiet as any hard disk we've tested previously. When seeking, the P120S produces only 28dBA. This is far less than most currently available disks, and half of the disks in our hard disk Labs test produced more noise than this even when idle.
Samsung achieves its quiet operation by using a modified motor design and airflow optimisations, as well smoothing the motion of the head actuator. During testing, we found that the P120S was noticeably quieter than the other hard disks we had in the lab at the time.
With the P120S sporting S-ATA II transfer rates, as well as Native Command Queuing (NCQ), we wanted a test rig that could keep up. We turned to our new test PC, which is based on the Nvidia nForce4 SLI-powered Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard. The P120S might not want to shout but we found that it definitely has the performance to back up some bold claims. Our first test was with Simpli Software's HD Tach 3 RW. This executes a series of reads and writes across the entire hard disk, to ascertain raw throughput and average access times. With an average of 61MB/sec reading and 58.6MB/sec writing, the P120S was marginally quicker than the Seagate 7200.8, and only slightly slower than the 10,000rpm Western Digital Raptor. Peak outer zone performance was almost indistinguishable from that of the latter, although it dropped off much more towards the inner zone. However, with just a 7,200rpm rotational speed, the P120S can't keep up with Western Digital's champ when it comes to access times. The P120S registered an average access of 13.9ms, which is slightly on the slow side.
However, the disappointing access time doesn't seem to have a big effect on real-world performance. The P120S managed an incredible 1.92 in our image editing test, which is far quicker than the Western Digital Caviar. It was phenomenally quick in the Far Cry level-loading test too, taking just 40 seconds, while the Raptor took 50 seconds to get into the game. Some of this can be put down to the fact that, with just Windows and a few benchmarks installed on the P120S, most of the data was stored on the fastest portion of the disk, whereas the Raptor, as the permanent drive in our test rig, has more software installed.
However, as the P120S is a S-ATA II drive and was running on a S-ATA II controller, there would have been a performance boost from NCQ, which was confirmed by the good results from the Western Digital Caviar.
CONCLUSION
The P120S is hard to fault in terms of speed and noise, and it's good value for money. The 250GB Western Digital' Caviar costs almost £15 more for the same capacity, so you're not paying a premium for the P120S's performance or quiet operation. It's a win-win situation. Unless you need a truly enormous disk, the 250GB Samsung SpinPoint P120S is a truly regal choice. All hail the new king of hard disks.
