Review of the Samsung HM160HC, World's Fastest ATA/IDE Mobile hard drive

I was using it as a Master (since I replaced the master), but tried slave and CS also now without results.

I also tried running ESTOOL but it won't find the drive (same as bios). When I use the drive via the USB2-adapter ESTOOL doesn't realize it's a genuine Samsung and refuses to work with it, stupid software.

So, my next thing now is to buy a 44pin->40pin cable and connect the drive in my desktop computer and try to run ESTOOL there. But I put the work on hold over easter, guess I'll drive by a store today. If I get it to work I'll set maximum ATA-6 and then ATA-5 if it doens't work, and possibly also limit the size to 137gig (more than I need anyway). The drive I've replaced is a ATA-6 (UDMA/100).

One strange thing I've noticed is the hdd controller in the I6000 is a ICH6M, which is a SATA controller... Is there a SATA->PATA-adapter in there?

 

No wonder why the harddrive is not working in your laptop.
I should have looked up the inspiron 6000 before, it uses SATA harddrives.

The Samsung drive will not work in your laptop because it runs the PATA interface.
You would need a SATA harddrive for your laptop

Email the place you bought your harddrive from and return it. Tell them the situation, and they should refund you.
You can buy much better SATA harddrives.

Sorry for the mistake, I should have read more into your situation

K-TRON

 

No no, it's a 44pin PATA interface that's used, so it's unfortunately not as easy as getting a SATA drive.
However the chipset seems able to use SATA (and PATA). The 40gig Hitachi that I'm trying to replace is a ATA-6 PATA-drive. Wish Dell would have used the SATA interface instead...

I've found an old Dell D600 at work that I'll try the Samsung drive in (the D600 has the same 40 gig Hitachi as my I6000).

 

So, now I've tried the drive in a Dell D600 without problems. BIOS can only see a 137 gig size drive, but that's fine. ESTOOL works. Been trying to change the maximum ATA-specification used and the maximum address, but regardless of the settings my Dell Inspirion 6000 won't acknowledge the drive. Don't think I'll get it to work. Others with I6000:s might consider themselves warned.

I hate the BIOS in these Dell laptops. Please just give me a real Award or AMI bios, with settings...

 

Is there an interposer for your Inspiron 6000?
an interposer slides over the 40 or so pins on the end of the hard drive, and than plugs into the port inside your laptop. Without it the drive will not power up.
If the drive does not have an interposer, than I dont have any idea why it is not being recognized.

K-TRON

 

Yes it does, both my I6000 and the D600 has the same model. Can't figure it out either, so I think I will be stuck with my current drive. Thinking of firing of a mail to Samsung support before I concede unconditionally.

 

ICH6M would have a SATA controller on the southbridge. If you can identify accessible points for the 4 SATA I/O TX/RX lines on the systemboard AND enable the SATA controller in bios or software, you could run a SATA HDD/SSD instead. See this if wishing to pursue the idea further.

 

Ummm, you sure that the BIOS is only seeing that? I don't know of a chipset that has a 137GB limit on it, usually the limit is 32GB on older chipsets [way older, P2-P3 and earlier], something really high (way past 137GB) on new ones...
Windows XP pre service pack 1 only could address drives up to 137GB. I have a hunch that you're using an old XP disc and it's not seeing the rest of the drive.
Just download nLite and slipstream in SP2

 

137Gb is the normal addressing of a system which has a 48 BIT limitation. I have seen this on a number of systems. When I put a HM160HC into my Latitude C640, it reads 137GB.

On much older systems the maximum harddrive capacity was less.
For example, my Northgate from 1986 can only read harddrives less than 250 MB

K-TRON

 

The more you knoooooooooooooowwwwww!

 

Hello, did you (by chance) compare the Samsung drive to the 160 (corresponding or most similar WD?) WD1600BEVE IDE notebook drive?

I was considering upgrading my 40GB (stock) drive in my Thinkpad T41 with the WD but after reading this thread, I will consider the Samsung!

'Glad I read this thread. I believe the WD drive is a decent drive, though but the Samsung HM160HC sounds intriguing and I was wondering if the technology of the drive is a bit more new than the WD and not just faster but cooler running?

Anyway, it is good to have more than one choice and would give me more options in offering more capacity space.

Good thread!

 

I did some research and Western Digital only has one drive which can compete with the Samsung HM160HC, and that is the WD3200BEVE.

Here is the break down:
WD1200BEVE based on 80gb platters, with limited head movement
WD1600BEVE based on 80gb platters
WD2500BEVE based on 125 gb platters. Performs decent, a near second behind the HM160HC in terms of performance
WD3200BEVE based on the same 160gb platters as the Samsung HM160HC, so it should perform approximately the same

The higher data density, the faster the drive can access files on the drive. You want a drive based on 160gb platters, because it will yield the highest performance.

Right now the Samsung HM160HC is tied with the HM080GC and the WD3200BEVE for the fastest harddrive.

However the HM080GC is near impossible to find, and the WD3200BEVE is too large of a drive, so many partitions will be needed to actually use the full capacity (this is generally the case if you have a 48 bit LBA restriction)

K-TRON

 

Thanks for that rundown, K-Tron!

Very interesting. I'll probably go with the Samsung (easier to find, too) and I agree with you about the WD 320GB drive. As for the laptop, It's just an older notebook anyway and I'll use a large drive in an enclosure if I need extra data space. The stock 40GB drive is okay but it would be nice to have a bit of extra OS room. I might try VirtualBox but I usually have about three partitions including Windows.

 

I found a hm080gc. http://cgi.ebay.com/SAMSUNG-HM080GC...Computing_HardDrives_RL?hash=item360146365590. I wish i would have bought that just to test it instead of the hm160hc

 

Hi,
I have an ACER TravelMate 530 with a 20gb hdd. I want to buy a Samsung HM160HC, but I don't know if will work on my laptop.
Bellow I have the result from testing with Everest:

Code:

ATA Device Features:
	48-bit LBA  	Not Supported

Edit: the actual drive uses UDMA 5 (ATA-100).

 

That means that the largest harddrive you can install is 137GB. Your system should be able to read the 160gb drive, however only 137gb of it can be used. That means, you can partition the drive into say a 125gb and a 35gb partition to make full use of the 160gb of space.


K-TRON

 

Thanks. I read that before, but I wanted to be sure.

 

anybody got either the HM160HC or WD2500BEVE in an Inspiron 5150?

i had a 60gb hitachi for 5 years before it started getting bad sectors. then i borrowed a 40gb hitachi off a friend for the past few months and im tired of running out of space.

im wondering whether ill need to partition it or not...

 

I havent seen a inspiron 5150 in a few years, so I wouldnt know.

You can find out though.
Download HDTUNE here:
http://www.hdtune.com/

go into the "info" tab
Look for the "48 Bit Address" line
If the box is checked, your system supports drives greater than 137Gb
If the box is unchecked, than your system has a limitation and can only read a maximum of 137Gb at a time. This would mean that you would have to partition the drive.

If the box is checked, than you can install a 160gb/250gb 320gb drive and it should see the entire capacity.

K-TRON

 

i thought the info tab showed the info about the installed drive. the 48-bit address is not checked, but i could have sworn that when i had the 60gb drive installed it was....

oh well, looks like ill have to partition which ever drive i get.

 

The info tab should give the same 48 bit addressing status regardless of the drive installed. That should be a direct reading from BIOS/Chipset support.

I think my friends 5150 had a 30gb drive in it.

K-TRON

 

Hi "K-TRON",

I have a Omnibook 510 which I got for free. It's got that terrible toshiba CDRW/DVD reader in the docking tray, which I have to replace.

Meanwhile, I picked up a HM160HC.

This drive worked wonders in my Sager D500P/Clevo 5680, a hefty 8kilo P4 3ghz. Performance is on par with my wife's Lenovo 3000 N200, at least, I think so.

The Omnibook, after setting up a bootable USB stick, is flashed to the latest version x.44 of Bios.

In a MSI K7N2 Delta2 Platinum, I plugged the 2.5" HM160HC into the IDE controller, and setup windows. I was testing a slipstream XPSP3 + driverpacks vanilla DVD.

So now, XPSP3, is setup on the first 30gig partition of the the HM160HC. I moved the drive into the Omnibook, and it doesn't boot. I'm thinking this is a drive geometry issue. When I'm in the Mini XP, which is on the Hiren's 9.8, off the USB stick booted, it sees the first 30 gig partition and all the files normally.

My understanding is the first 30gig can be used as a system partition, and the remainder used for data, available once XP is running.

Could I find out the geometry data from samsung, plug that into the CMOS, minus however many sectors the bios is limited to, and then at least the BIOS will have the correct geometry for the drive?

Going from 28bit LBA to 48bit LBA, requires different translations. So while the laptop is seeing the drive, it's my understanding that it is looking at it in a different geometry, and that is why the boot sector is not working in the Omnibook.

 

I just picked up this drive for an old laptop. Its speed is pretty impressive for 5400rpm and IDE. 160GB platter is nice.

 

I dont really know how to answer this.
I do know one thing you can do.
Email BIOSMAN.
They have the ability to integrate 48 bit LBA addressing into your current BIOS. All you need is a EXE or copy of your Bios and like $25 or whatever they charge, and 48 bit addressing can be set into your BIOS.

MaxGeek, I am glad the drive worked out well for you. It is a very snappy drive.
I was quite shocked too when I installed it. It was a night and day difference between the original 40gb 5400rpm drive.

K-TRON

 

Yeah from the benchmarks I've done of before and after this drive is about 60% faster then my old drive (80GB Seagate ST980815A). I tested with HDTune and CrystalDiskMark. I'm wondering if its worth short stroking the Samsung to 80GB. Anyone tried? The extra space is nice, but not necessary. There are no media files or games on this machine.

 

Bad news for me today. I came back to my desk to find my laptop restarted on its own and could not detect any boot devices. Turns out the HD died. Its making the clicking noise of death. I attached it to another PC with a USB adapter and it couldn't be recognized. I'm sending it back and might try the WD 320GB IDE harddrive instead. I've had bad luck with Samsung. My 750GB F1 drive died a while back too and now this.

 

Sorry to hear the bad news. Your the first one to report a dead HM160HC.
Since you bought it so recently, you should be able to report it as DOA to the e-tailer you bought it from. They should either give you full refund or a replacement drive.

I hope your harddrive luck changes with the next harddrive

Good luck,

K-TRON

 

Yeah I'm sending it back to newegg. I requested a refund, but neweggs system charged me a restocking fee even though I tagged it as Defective. I'll have to call them. Anyway it was a very fast drive, just sucks it died after I spend all that time getting the OS all set and working.

I'm tempted to get the WD 320 and short stroke its to 160GB or 80GB, but I'm going to hold off for now.

 

Found one at Microcenter in the OEM bin for $60. I replaced my old 30GB 2MB cache Fujitsu drive and there is an AMAZING speed improvement, as well as reduced noise.

A+ so far.

 

Nice buy, I am glad to hear the drive made your system alot faster

My HM160HC is still running strong.
I wonder if Newegg sent "MaxGeek" a new drive yet

K-TRON

 

The vibration seems a lot higher, though.

 

Really?
If anything it should vibrate less. It only has one spinning platter rather than two.
Have you ever thought of mounting small pieces of rubber or cloth on the corners of your drive to prevent vibrations and make the fit a little better?

K-TRON

 

What is the model of the 320GB SATA version of this drive?

I would like to upgrade my wife's Lenovo 3000N200. I believe the PATA performance of the Samsung HM160HC's is better or as good as the OEM drive which was shipped with my wife's laptop.

-----

Contrary to what K-TRON posted, and I do appreciate his info:

If your laptop has the 137GB limitation, a.k.a. no 48-bit LBA support, as the Omnibook 510 I mentioned earlier, install XP to a fresh partition in the first 30 gigs or so, then later, move your user profiles and data to the second partition, drive D:. If I do an install, the OS and apps only go on the first partition. Goes back to the days of people filling up their data partitions, and if that was the same as the system partition: crash.

In my earlier post in this thread, I had done an install while testing out a new XP-install disk, on a system which had 48bit LBA support. Then later when I moved the HM160HC to a system with no LBA48bit, a USB boot of Mini XP could see the partition fine, but the system would not natively boot until I wiped out and re-installed the partition and XP operating system on the HM160HC. There is probably some disk-edit workaround but I'm not proficient enough nor do I have the time for such geek-fixes

After install, XP (disk install with vanilla XPSP3 + mass storage drivers) sees all the space on the HM160HC on the non-48bitLBA computer. In the beginning, from booting off the CD, make your install partition from only the first 30 Gigs or so. After install, use the normal disk management utilities in XP (Computer Management) to create the second partition.

Just upgraded an HP Omnibook 510 (P3, 1Ghz) with an HM160HC, now it's lighting-fast. Also have one of these running in a D500P P4 3Ghz laptop.

 

Thanks for your guide

The 320gb SATA version of the HM160HC is the HM320JI (320Gb 5400rpm)
The 320gb SATA version of the WD3200BEVE is the WD3200BEVT (320gb 5400rpm)

You may want to look at faster SATA drives such as:
500gb 5400rpm (250gb per platter)
WD5000BEVT
Hitachi 5K500.B

320gb 7200rpm (160gb per platter)
WD3200BEKT
Hitachi 7K320

These four drives will be significantly faster than the SATA HM160HC equivalents because they are based on higher density platters.

K-TRON

 

Just got my Samsung HM160C drive and put into a Compaq V2000 laptop, benchmark is as follows:

Transfer Rate:
Min: 28.4
Max 66.3
Average: 51.8

Access Time: 18.5ms
Burst: 61
CPU: 14.5%

I notice I had a search protocol service that kept taking cpu time. I will try to kill that next time I run it. My desktop SATA drive is 56 MB/s average. The last drive in this laptop was Average 20MB/s. So, very happy with drive so far, so much faster when doing anything on this laptop now!!!

 

That is great to hear.
Thanks for joining notebookreview to share

51-53mb/sec is the typical average for the HM160HC. It is quite an improvement over 20mb/sec

K-TRON

 

Really great review K-TRON!

Even though I prefer SSD's.

 

Once the SSD's come down in price, I will get one for my desktop OS and try it out. Thought about just getting a small one 32GB and have it run the OS then store my data on the SATA drive.

 

Hi everyone, I am a new guy here. I come from China. Several days ago, I update my drive from Hitachi pata 100G to Seagate 5400.3 160G pata. It is when I bought the ST that I notice HM160HC ! The avarage speed of it is faster than my current ST.I really wanna buy it immediately.
But in China , people don't think highly of SAMSUNG's HDD, and was concern about the life.I am a little hesitating now.

 

If you do not like Samsung, than well you have one other option, the WD3200BEVE. It is manufactured by Western digital. It is based on the same platters the Samsung HM160HC is based on, so performance is near identical. Both are faster than the 5400.3 series from Seagate.

The WD2500BEVE is another option, but as you see in my original post it is slower than the HM160HC. It will still be faster than the 5400.3 you have. I am only recommending this drive if you are on a budget. The WD3200BEVE is quite expensive since it is the only 320gb PATA 2.5" drive

I have had no problems with my HM160HC and it has been nearly a year since buying it.

K-TRON

 

thank u k-tron.
yeah,the wd320BEVE is a good choice ,but it is a little expensive,about 600rmb, which is equivalent to 80$. and HM160HC is nearly half the price. OK, I am gonna buy the HM160HC next week, and thanks again!

 

hi k-trom. I bought the HM160HC this afternoon,with the highest reading speed of 68m,and the lowest reading speed of 9m, average speed of 53m under HD TUNE 3.5PRO, it's really very fast.

I also test it in the ATTO, the highest reading speed is 69m,but the writing speed is only 34m.My last drive of ST 5400.3 160G is reading 42m,writing 40m,I wonder if the writing speed is normal,and what is ur speed of writing.thank u

 

@ harmoniker, try disabling wlan, AV and as many other possible background processes.

Here's mine

 

thanks Phil. Actually, I do open the wlan while testing , I will test it again under a noiseless environment. Thank u again!

 

Hi Phil, I tested again just now, and disable nearly all the processes that may be killed, but the writing speed is almost the same, 32m, and don't know why.

 

In the Info tab of hdtune, what speed is your drive running?
ATA -4, ATA -5 ?

K-TRON

 

Hi , K-TRON, it's in the ATA-5. OS is XP with SP3. I wonder if the slow writing speed is due to that I have installed some software and my drive space is filled with staff of my last drive's. I mean ,whether the writing speed is related to the empty space of the drive. thank u all!

 

A full drive should make no difference on performance.

I am thinking your PATA controller may be the limit on your laptop.
I do not think you can do anything to increase system speed if that is the case. It should be blisteringly fast anyways, when compared to the original drive

K-TRON

 

yeah, I also considered that case ,but in my last drive,st 5400.3, writing speed is 42m.

 

here is the result