Verdict: 400GB of tasty hard disk value
Here at Custom PC, we've had a soft spot for the Samsung SpinPoint for quite a while. The 250GB model P-Series was one of the first hard disks to hit 125GB per platter, which gave it great performance. As a result, it found a home on our Elite list for a few months, and we still use it as our standard test disk when we're benchmarking motherboards.
Whereas Hitachi and Seagate have recently been fighting over which company can produce the largest capacity disk, Samsung never went beyond the modesty of 250GB. With the T Series, though, the SpinPoint is at last using three platters instead of two, in order to push capacities up to 400GB.
We got our mitts on the top T Series model, the HD401LJ. Aside from 400GB of space, it sports 16MB of cache - beware of the HD400LJ and HD400LD, which both have 8MB, and the latter an EIDE interface. The P Series was state-of-the-art when it was released, sporting 125GB per platter, but the T Series offers only a modest increase to a maximum of 133GB per platter. With Seagate's 750GB Barracuda 7200.10 topping 187GB per platter using perpendicular recording, and Hitachi's 7K160 achieving 160GB per platter without it, Samsung lags in terms of data density. Other models in the T series have lower data density still - the 300GB model uses three platters - so they won't be as fast as the HD401LJ.
The T series has some new tricks, though, including 'Flying on Demand', which is basically Samsung's version of the Thermal Fly Height Control used by Hitachi's Deskstar 7K160. This doesn't increase performance, but it reduces the risk of platter damage by heating the head to expand it towards the disk surface only when required.
Samsung's hard disks also have a great reputation for being quiet. The T Series continues this tradition with technologies called 'NoiseGuard' and 'SilentSeek', which have been featured in Samsung drives for a while. As it uses three platters, the HD401LJ is, not surprisingly, rated slightly higher for noise when seeking than the twin-platter P Series, but it's still quiet, making it ideal for a media PC, in which every decibel counts.
For testing, we called upon our new graphics rig. This features an Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 overclocked to 3.19GHz, alongside 2GB of DDR2 memory and Intel's range-topping D975XBX motherboard. The Samsung was hooked up to a S-ATA II channel on the ICH7R controller. As this was our first hard disk test on the new rig, we also ran a bunch of recent disks for comparison, including Western Digital's Raptor X, Seagate's 750GB Barracuda 7200.10 and Hitachi's Deskstar 7K160.
First of all, we called upon Simpli Software's HD Tach 3 RW, and put the unformatted drives through synthetic read, write and access time tests. The T Series' average sustained read rate of 61.8MB/sec and write of 59.1MB/sec beats the SpinPoint P Series, as well as most previous-generation disks. However, Hitachi's 7K160 was faster in both areas, and the Raptor X was in a different class. The 7K160 also posted a more impressive 13.2ms access time, while the Samsung only achieved a pedestrian 15.9ms.
In the Paint Shop Pro image editing benchmark, the Samsung achieved a commendable 2.1, which only Western Digital's Raptor X could better with 2.15. The Hitachi 7K160, which humiliated the Samsung in HD Tach RW, lagged behind by some 8 per cent with 1.94. However, the Samsung wasn't quite as impressive in the Far Cry level load; it took 55 seconds on average to load the Fort level. Again, this is quicker than the Hitachi 7K160, thanks to the Samsung's 16MB cache. However, the Seagate 750GB Barracuda 7200.10 took 53 seconds, and Western Digital's 10,000rpm Raptor X was way out in front, taking just 48 seconds.
Conclusion
Samsung's T Series hasn't achieved the surprise benchmark coup of its P Series predecessor. Its application performance is good but it was less of an eye-opener in the game level-loading and synthetic tests. However, at £96.64, the Samsung is around £20 cheaper than any other currently available 400GB drive. This amounts to 24p per GB, which is as cheap as budget 160GB models. It might not be the ultimate performance booster, but you get a lot of storage for your money.
