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

Below are the scores as reported by HD Tune between the old Hitachi (4200 RPM) drive and the new Samsung drive. What an improvement! I was surprised that the burst rate for the Hitachi was a bit higher than the Samsung. All in all though, upgrade succeeded! Thanks again! BTW, any comments to my last post?

 

Burstrates reported by HDTune are unreliable and can be ignored.

 

Thanks for the nice comments.
The HM160HC is a great drive, and priced very reasonably.
I am glad my thread helped you make the decision making process easy

As far as the SATA drive, you cant go wrong with the WD3200BEKT, Hitachi 7K320, Hitachi 7K500, or WD5000BEVT, all fast drives at pretty decent prices. Obviously SSD's will be faster, but they are usually out of the budget for most people

As Phil mentioned burst rates can be ignored. What I think the burst rate test is, is a test to see how fast the computer can access any random file on the computer. I am guessing the disparity comes from file size differences, or maybe my assumption on burst rates is wrong. It may be interesting to email the guys at HDTUNE to see how that test is carried out

K-TRON

 

I was in the same boat, and this thread really helped me out. I was stuck on getting a 7200rpm drive, but there are very few and the cost is just to much. Then i found this post and i seen the results and it became a easy decision. I had no problems with the drive and i confirmed the results with HDtune. I also bought mine off ebay for 40 some odd dollars and i'm glad i did.
So thanks for the info K-Tron.

 

Update:

Returned HM160HC (at times I got up to 44MB/s, but very unreliable and possibly some compatibility issues with my laptop). I'm now thinking about my next move on the old drive (I didn't buy it, but it's an MP0402h).

One possibility mentioned here is the HM080GC, which according to the one and only HD tune I can find of it, has similar performance to HM160HC. It should avoid any LBA issues.

So I ask of the HM160HC people, are there any other good =<120GB candidates? It's crazy that hard drives get sold by what manufacturers claim and not by standard benchmarks.

 

The Hitachi 7K100 and the Seagate Momentus 7200.1 are good options.

K-TRON

 

This is my experience changing out my 40g Western digital 75hdt1 with a Samsung hm160hc in my 4 year old Dell Inspiron 2200.

I bought the Hm160 hc for $75.00
I bought an external 2.5 inch USB 2.0 IDE hard drive enclosure for $25.00
I downloaded, (free) from cmsproducts.com their "BounceBack Transfer software"
New drive into the new enclosure, plug into usb port, run transfer software. 1.5 hours later old system and programs etc. are cloned over to the new 160 HD, which is fully bootable.

Shut down laptop.
Remove old WD 75HDT1
Remove small removal handle, (2 screws) from old HD, install on new HD.

From this point, it may be different with different models of laptops. When I compared the edge connectors of the two HD's, I noticed that the new HD has a small plastic shroud at each edge on one side of the edge connector. This prevents the new HD from sliding into the HD slot connector on the Laptop. The old HD does not have this. You may be able to dismantel the HD and remove this plastic, but I think that is just looking for trouble. I took a small precision edge cutter and just nibbled the plastic away....very carefully, (you must be careful around the edge connector pins). http://forum.notebookreview.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

New HD slips in perfectly. Re-assemble and turn laptop on.
New drive boots up and BouceBack software re-starts and finalizes the tranfer. Checks and verifies register settings.
Runs like greased lightning. http://forum.notebookreview.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Old HD?? Installed back in the $25.00 enclosure and put away as a system backup. From time to time, you can refresh the back up with BounceBack, as it always re-partitions and formats the new section as per what it is looking at on the laptop. The only restriction to this, is if you eventually have more data then 40g......then you obviously have too much info on one drive, (my opinion only).

 

Well, yes and no. If you were to compare apples to apples and only use the same capacity, the first 160GB (64%) of the 250GB WD shows a VERY similar overall transfer rate.

I realize this thread is ancient but I stumbled upon it while looking for info on a PATA drive update for a notebook and could not help but note the assumption upon which the conclusions quoted above are based.

Fact of the matter is, though, that the choices for a good PATA notebook drive are pretty limited these days and the WD and Samsung are among the apparent best choices. I myself ended up choosing the Samsung HM160HC for its lower power consumption. I assume that either one would be a huge speed improvement over the older drive that is being replaced.

 

That is a very interesting thread - thanks to the starter of it.

I hope someone might also help me with my possible upgrade.

I currently use a Fujitsu MHV2080AH 80GB 5400 hdd (came with my 700m dell, works perfectly fine).
I'm looking at upgrading primarily for speed increase, and the added benefit of a little more space.

I am considering one of these two. Will I notice a speed increase?? How can I tell which is the faster hard drive for me? (Also, are those big spikes a problem (not getting any errors)). thanks!

WD Scorpio Blue 250gb 5400: WD2500BEVE
Samsung HM160HC

My Hdtune readings:

 

You'll only notice a speed increase during the moments that your hard drive is the bottleneck in your performance, for example when opening larger applications or copying files on the same drive.

Don't expect too much of the upgrade though.

I'd recommend the Samsung, more power efficient.

 

Thanks guys (especially K-Tron) for the informative information on the Samsung HM160HC. As you probably know, this thread is famous among users searching "fastest IDE laptop hard drive" in Google. My old Gateway 7405GX (Manufactured in 2004) has had new life breathed into it. About a year ago, it started making a "clunking echoing" noise frequently. Almost like a small, hard, object being dropped onto a rigid surface and bouncing rapidly for a second or so. Thankfully because of your review, I got a Samsung HM160HC and enclosure kit for $75 after shipping from Amazon and used Acronis Easy Migrate (15 day free trial) to clone the drive. Easy. Works like a charm. Feels like a new PC. Hopefully the reliability of the HM160HC won't be an issue. Thanks again.

 

Keepin' the thread alive

I just ordered one of these samsung HM160HC drives for my sisters Dell Inspiron 6000.

*edit: naturally, of course, I only now discover that the Inspiron 6000 BIOS only can handle drives/partitions 137GB or less. ha. Not a big deal, I'll just format it from one of my machines to have two partitions before installing.

 

I am glad I was able to help. The drive has been very reliable, it has been over 18 months of owning this drive, and not a single stutter. The HM160HC is the best bang for the buck PATA drive you can buy. Its $70 cost is well worth it for anyone considering upgrading an older laptop, with plans on keeping it for a few more years to come.

K-TRON

 

K-TRON

I Have Another Acer Aspire 5612 WLMi , P/N : LX.ABT05.069 , Model : BL50

Manufactured : 2006

HD : 80 GB 5400 RPM , Maybe Its Toshiba Or Samsung

So You Still Recommend it , The ( Samsung HM160HC )

Or Theres Another 1 Better

Coz My HD Become Noisy And Slow And It`s Just 80 GB

And I Really Need Links To Purchase The Item .

 

If your harddrive is a single platter 80gb drive, which only has one head on it, than it will yield identical performance to the HM080GC/HM160HC
You can find out by listing the harddrives model number - it will be written on the harddrive.
or
you can run hdtune and compare your results to the HM160HC's posted.

These harddrives can be bought online, run a google shopping search, or browse ebay. I am sure you will come up with something. Off of the top of my head, I do not know any e-tailers who ship to Kuwait

K-TRON

 

First time I have seen this review since I've joined NBR, and I know it's a little late, but great review on that drive K-TRON, +rep.

EDIT: Seems I have to spread some rep around before I give some more to you K-TRON, sorry. You will get it though.

 

K-TRON

Ye I Think It`s 1 Head So This is The Pictures...



About Shipping I Can Purchase Any Item in The World .

I Found 1 in Amazon Samsung Spinpoint M5 HM160HC B0012451UC

 

Have just bought one of these drives for my Sony VAIO PCG-K315B.
Has any one else got it to work in this model?
Fastest transfer i can get is 2Mb/s, resulting in boot time to almost idle processor of 7 minutes.
Any one any ideas?

Derek.
In Scotland.

 

Bohmed, that hitachi drive you have is a dual platter drive with 4 heads resulting in 80gb capacity.
If you upgrade to a single platter Samsung HM160HC you are going from a 40gb per platter data density to 160gb per platter data density.
I would estimate that your Hitachi drive is around 26mb/sec avg.
The upgrade to the HM160HC should result in quite a substantial performance increase.

djgreen30,
It sounds like your harddrive is running in PIO mode. You will need to force DMA onto this drive.
I know of two ways which this can be done,
1) Right click my computer and go to properties. Then select the hardware tab. Then click on the "Device Manager" button.
Under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, you will find your harddrive.
Right click on "Primary IDE channel"
go to properties
then go into the advanced settings tab
click DMA if available.
Do this for the "Secondary IDE channel as well"

If the problem doesnt correct itself,
try this
2) go into "Device Manager" as stated above.
This time go into the "Disk Drives" pulldown.
Select the harddrive "HM160HC"
click uninstall
When you uninstall the harddrive driver, Windows will automatically reinstall the appropriate drive.
You may need to restart windows to see any performance change.

Good Luck,

K-TRON

 

Have tried as you suggested, forced selection for primary ide to dma if available but had no effect on actual setting, ie stayed at PIO.
Also tried driver removal with no effect. Anything else worth trying?

Derek.
In Scotland.

 

Thanks to this post I decide to buy mine. It is working fine since June 2009.

 

THank you very much K-Tron. I just brought this Samsung HM160HC a few days ago and its work perfectly and the performance increased is very satisfied. Its a lot easier to decide which Disk to buy after reading your wonderful review and recommendation. Thank you once again for your kind and hard effort of it. Im a user in Thailand and I just got it for us$50 !!!

 

Derek,

Did you ever find the solution to this problem?

I have exactly the same problem as you with a Samsung HM160HC in a Sony Vaio PCG-K315B.

Bob Crabtree

 

Always happens - I post a plea for help; I find the solution elsewhere.

D'oh!

Turns out that what I needed was to update the ALi drives for IDE.

In fact, I needed ALi's UltraIDE driver, version 4.0.0.8.

The driver can be download from the link at Point 6 here:

http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~leeey/a7a266/

Hope this helps somebody

Bob C

 

Will try the new driver for Ali controller and let you know what happens. Have had original hm160hc replaced under warranty. But is still in pio mode.

Derek.
Scotland

 

Thanks bob. That fixed my one too.

Derek.
Scotland.

 

I have installed this hard drive in my toshiba satellite 1800 series laptop.

 

Hi,have the same problem with the PIO mode on a Sony Vaio VGN-A115S.It useed to work great for about 9 months until now.Tried K-TRON'S sugestion and didn't work.When I tried ALi driver version 4.0.0.8 I got an errror message: "ALi PCI BUS Master CHIP doesn't exist!". Please Help!My laptop takes ages to do anything now!
Thank you in advance for any sugestions!

 

hi k-tron, i have a toshiba satellite 1400 & i want to increase my ram to 1gb & updated the hard drive.you said that the samsung is very good for the price. my question is will that work with my laptop
thks
g

 

Hi guys, just joined the forum.

I've just bought this HD, and have had the problem (discussed on other forums) with repeated load/unload cycles on idle, up to every 10 seconds. At this rate the drive would only last about 6 months. Someone else mentioned this a while ago on this thread, but it was never picked up.

Also, I have noticed this drive runs a lot hotter than my old Hitachi drive (60GB), which makes me think it must be using more power. I notice a slight vibration when squeezing the relevant part of the case, which my basic physics knowledge tells me must be dissipating energy?

I've used hdparm to turn off off the load/unloading but I'd rather have it on but less frequently. Maybe this makes it run hotter? Its in a Dell D600.

 

Great thread this, I've read through it all and wished I'd found it earlier having just recently bought a couple of 7200RPM Hitachi drives. I'm thinking I might upgrade again though to the Samsung.

Here are my results for the two 7200RPM drives I bought. These were both tested on a minty fresh installation of XP with SP3 slipstreamed on a Compaq NC4000, 1GB RAM and 2.1GHz Pentium Mobile CPU. Both disks were no more than 20% used and partioned into C and D with the C drive being 30GB in each case. HD Tune was left at the default settings although I might repeat them tonight on the "Accurate" setting.

Hitachi 7k100 (manufacture date May 07)


Hitachi e7k60 (manufacture date May 04)


The 7k100 has two platters so I'm guessing the single platter Samsung HM160HC with it's greater density is where the perfomance improvements are coming from rather than rotational speed and access time. I'm amazed that this one point would make such a difference given that hard disks are always sold on buffer size, RPM and access time.

However, it's encouraging that my 7k100 recorded similar times to K-Trons original test in the first post with different hardware. This would lead me to believe the Samsung would offer better performance.

The question of course, is whether it's worth upgrading the 7k100 to the HM160HC for the extra 10 MB/sec average transfer rate. Would the slower access time of the Samsung make a hit on performance reducing any gains from the single platter?

Samsung also sell the HM121HC which seems to be a 120GB version of the 160HC. Anyone have experience with this drive, is it also single platter and would it be as fast (or faster/slower) than its bigger brother?

And how important are burst rates and access times for everyday use? (browsing, email, occasional Word doc). Would partioning a disk impact performance? Finally, why set the block size to 8MB in HD Tune? What would be a typical block size to set for the above everyday use?

Thanks in advance and great thread!

Vic

 

Hi there, just discovered this thread and just joined the forum to reply to it.

Briefly am a complete computer amateur whose inner geek has just been revived.

My Vaio FS48C (C stands for China) bought in August 2006 was slowly dying on me:

Broken fan and overheating (random immediate shut down)...
60 GB HDD running out of system space extreeeemly slow (Toshiba 4200 rpm)...
No battery life whatsoever....
1 GB of ram not making any difference (had done 1 upgrade from the initial 512mb)...

It was a pretty poor situation. Add in a grubby keyboard and I was about to give up on this machine, admitedly mostly out of laziness.

Then all of a sudden my pocket book woke up and screamed in agony at the potential need to aquire a new machine. My wife had just had to give back her thinkpad to her employer, so we were possibly running out of computers at home! Disaster!

A few sweet words of encoureagement and I dealt with the wife: "go buy yourself a lenovo honey, it's be all yours!". Nicely done.

At that point you should know I pretty much used the machine for only a couple easy going browsing or such other online recreational purposes not requiring much power. Not a power user by any standard. My office machine took car of the more computer intensive tasks, but it annoyed me to be stuck in the office anytime some computing needed doing. Outlook 2007 would take eons to launch on my laptop... it was a no-go. Then came the prospect of a 3 weeks break away from the office (the longest I'd ever planned!), and the much less exciting prospect of catching up on 3 weeks of work once the break would be over (sickening).

It is in that spirit that I boldly marched in the office and demanded that my laptop not only be fixed but improved, so I may work with it. Of course I sweetened the deal with giving back my desktop to soon-to-join new colleagues.

Well, to cut a story short, I wish I'd done that and more years ago.

Basically, we sent the machine to our IT support company and asked what they could do for us. And here's where this story comes back to the original thread: they changed my HDD to a Samsung HM160HC.

They also repaired the broken fan, added another 1GB of ram and changed the battery. But after having read that thread, it seems the extra ram might just be background info.... because my machine feels impressively better than new!

Honestly, it never was as fast as it is now. Lightning speeds!!!

Well, everything is relative. Now that my wife has an Ideapad icore 5, I can see what windows 7 is capable of especially when it comes to file transfers... but whatever, you get my point:

It is fantastic to be able to breathe new life into a 4 year old machine. Absolutely fantastic. I really don't know about this hard drive, so all I can say is that am pleased to see that others praised it before me, coz am happy as a pig on E

Now I wonder what else I could do...

new cpu?
64GB ssd express card via pcmcia slot?

Bottom line is if you can extend your laptop life, and end up with a practical machine for your needs, then why should you give more money to big corporates? It's often said that a laptop's life expectancy is around 4 years. That's complete bollox. Marketing executives would like us to think that, and advances in technology do show a gap, but if you can find the best of the "old generation" hardware, like this Samsung drive sems to be in its class, then you can enjoy your machine for more years to come and save money and perhaps a little bit of the environment for added joy


Ahhh the wonders of geekyness

Cheers,
J.

 

I have a question further to my last post:

After more research, I figured out that my VAIO is based on the Centrino Sonoma platform and able to handle a SATA hdd.

So would it make much of a difference to eventually upgrade from the Samsung HM160C to a top SATA drive in the future? Or given the great performance of the SAMSUNG drive, would it be superfuous?

Also, would it make sense eventually to upgrade the CPU to a better version of Pentium M (currently mine stands at 1.7 GHz and I've seen it could go up to 2.2 Ghz) or would it overheat and kill battery life? If the mothrboard is designed for it afterall, as it seems to be (given the intel 915 chipset) it must be just a question of pricing vs performance, so worth it.

Finally, seeing as the motherboard handles PCI express, could I change the PCMCIA reader for an expresscard reader? it seems there is a format of expresscard as wide as PCMCIA...

Thanks if anyone sees this and feels like answering.

Rgds,
J

 

even if the chipset can handle a SATA drive, the connector soldered onto the motherboard is that of an IDE drive, and not compatible.

Your cpu could be upgraded, but you won't gain any performance unless you notice your CPU usage is consistently high.

I doubt you can change out the PCMCIA slot for expresscard.

I would just enjoy the machine for what it is rather than dump a bunch of money into it, or look into upgrading in the future.

 

As great as the Samsung HM160HC is compared to other IDE HD's, it is by no means state of the art when compared to SATA offerings (like the Seagate XT Hybrid).

I think you'll find that the only three things worth upgrading on an older machine is the O/S, the RAM and the HD (in that order).

After that, the return on investment gets a little hazy compared to buying a new machine/platform.

Any same generation cpu upgrade I have seen performed was almost always eclipsed (and for a lot less money too) by the next generation platform offerings. It may seem like a no brainer to get 2.2/1.7=29% more performance with a few $$$, but if you stop and consider what the latest platform will get you (200% or more performance) for just a little more money, you may see it like I do: a cpu upgrade is just money down the drain.

As for trading up from a PCMCIA slot to an ExpressCard slot goes: I think that is wishful thinking. Not only does the chipset not support the connections/signalling for the newer tech, but the O/S (Win XP?) will probably not be able to use it fully - if at all.


O/S: as low as $30 for Win7 student and/or family pack editions.
RAM: as low as $60 for 2x2GB sticks (will ensure dual channel operation good for about 5-10% performance increase in the RAM subsystem).
HD: as low as $50 to see a significant performance increase over stock 4-5yr old HD - if you have SATA connectors then even $140 for the XT Hybrid 500GB is not out of the question - if increased performance is your goal.

So, if you have ~$140-$230 for upgrades, you will get great bang for you buck.

No current netbook (currently the cheapest computers you can buy new) could touch it for the cost and/or performance from such upgrades.

But, the best bang/buck upgrade is always going to a new platform - especially when your demands of your system keep increasing over time (as they usually do).

 

many thanks for both your replies.

I understand the point about the CPU. seeing as all I do is use ms office (outlook heavily: gigabytes of emails..., the rest, simple multitasking between word/xls and I.e) then a CPU upgrade would make no difference as am probably not using all the computing power available. The reason am guessing this is because the machine is very fast already. case closed (I checked this with Task Manager and it seems to be true)

on other potential upgrades:

the HDD seems to be maxed already. just the same, I understand the point made: there's 1 HDD in the machine and its a PATA. as such that means there's only a PATA connector on the motherboard, even if the system could have handled a SATA. another case closed. (Still I'm delighted to have that SAMSUNG Drive no doubt!!!)

the ddr2 ram is already maxed at 2G. Case closed too.

Point taken on expresscards and wishfull thinking. I was only daydreaming about fast backup solutions.

Seeing as all my work is on this machine now, and how laptops are a little more fragile, I want a daily system and files backup. The windows system backup function will only work with an internal drive, so I only get 1 choice, the Memory Stick. I think my Memory Stick reader will only handle up to 8GB (there's only one driver upgrade on the sony support site dating back to 2007... up from 4gb capacity to 8GB capacity. So seems am stuck with that), and right now I have about 10 gigs that need regular saving.

I am however compacting my Outlook pst files right now, and hoping for some good savings on space (it's taking forever!!!!). If daily back up on a Mem Stick works, that would be pretty elegant.

Anyway, all these closed cases somehow put me at ease. The inner geek can rest. All that could have been done has been done. Happy pig on E!

That leaves us with the O/S: I suspect the recent reinstall of xp through the new HDD installation may have helped speed things up a bit.

but installing w7? I asked our IT guys about it, and the answer was its not worth it. the machine is barely fast enough to run it, not modern enough to make the most of it. And it seems I might lose some hardware functions too, as it was designed for XP after all (chiefly all the Vaio keyboard and button utilities).

on that note, I will happily keep using the machine for as long as I can. why bother upgrading to a new one when everything works fine?? I think we should all just use what we need for as long as we can. No point creating rubbish for nothing...

only thing I can think of to extend its life a bit further is another bigger battery, although that would add weight to the machine, so not very convenient. That bright screen kills the standard battery (and a new one at that!) in 2:30 hrs... that or a docking station + extra charger for convenience in the office (for extra screen, USB keyboard, mouse, Internet cable, back up HDD). That would a nifty little tool.

So that's it and thanks for the help! To conclude: for an old PATA laptop, the SAMSUNG drive is really the best upgrade!
Cheers
J

ps/ none of these upgrades were paid out of my pocket, the company paid. clearly I would have thought more about buying a new machine if I had to... But still, even if the $ to performance ratio is better with a new machine, the nominal investment remains lower to repair/upgrade an old machine. For example, repairing the fan, changing the battery, adding the ram and the HDD came up to around 3000 RMB. The same day my wife bought a fantastic new Lenovo Ideapad (i.core 5) for 7000 RMB. If sufficient performance vs needs can be attained that way, then it's better to spend less and let your machine live longer... There's a certain ethic to thinking that way I beleive.

 

well... quick update on CPU usage. The compacting process in Outlook 2007 took a good 4 hrs. It finished with Outlook completely crashing. I think this might be due to the Xobni plug in, it's not very stable (but oh so useful). In the end Outlook went into recovery mode, managed to force itself to close, sent an error report to Microsoft and resarted without a problem. I checked, my emails are still there, they can be accessed and the PST file was compacted from 3.9 gig to 1.8. That's only 6 months of emails, so I have another 4 Gigs at least to compact in my PST archive file (Although I suspect my IT guys have done this already as it stands at 4 gigs for 3.5 years of emails...

Question within the question: I recently transfered the last half year of emails to the archives folder (it helps Outlook to run faster to have less items in the inbox). Question is, is there a transfer between PST files at that point by adding a folder in the archives within the Outlook program? If that's the case I guess the transfered files were a net increase of gigs to the archives PST with no need of compacting, while the main default PST file had kept those file sizes in its total space (like ghost space if you will)

Anyways anyways, the point is that when I eventually got back to the computer while waiting for the compacting process to finish, Outlook was completely frozen. I opened task manager and no surprise, CPU usage was locked at 100%. I wated for another few minutes until it came down to try and close the program.

I think am an Outlook power user... Hundreds of emails per week (about 100-200 a day), with rules filtering what concerns me and what doesnt. I still need to keep an eye on everything including past years of archived mails for references (am in sales, and it's good to know everything about someone!), and Xobni does a great job for that by indexing everything and providing super fast search results with cross-references (not only mails but files exchanged, links exchanged, ppl cc'ed, contact numbers, mailing addresses etc etc...).

So, maybe I could avoid this sort of mess in the future by improving my CPU per by 30% and going for the 2.3 Ghz?

Sounds logical.


Rgds,
J

 

Even if Windows System backup only works with internal hard drives, many complete external hard drives come with their own backup or cloning files, and there are also many free and paid backup utilities available for download. Your notebook is listed as having 3 USB2.0 ports and a firewire port, so it still might be worth looking into an external hard drive for your backup needs.

 

Hi together,

I am newbie here in forum and came from google to you

Hope my english is good enough to describe my "problem"...

My old hdd in my X31 is to slow and "loud", so I decide to buy a new one. So I found the HM160HC.

But I don't found only positive arguments about the hdd. A lot of users said, that their HM160HC died in the first 4-8 month. Other said, that the hdd clicks very loud and often in idle-mode...maybe it's the parking-noise of the head? But it should not click every 5 minutes (or even more!) and much loud!!!

(In front of I heard similar arguments about samsung hdds generally and so my thought of samsung hdds is not positive!)

What can you report about these facts?

Do you mean Samsung hdds are comparable to WD & Seagate, in technical visibility???

Thanks in advance for tips...

ole258

 

Yeah look.. the Samsung HM160HC is a crazy fast PATA drive, definitely. It breathed new life into my ThinkPad R50 (which may finally now be reaching end-of-life, at almost 8 years old, as it appears the USB ports no longer function after a spillage).

But I'm onto my second one right now. First one proclaimed it had an exorbitant number of bad sectors and files stopped working. I purchased a new one (since, hey, the field for new PATA drives isn't very broad these days), mirrored my data (or at least the data that wasn't corrupted) and moved on.

However, it appears some things never change:


Since taking that screenshot, it's now over 100 bad sectors.

Perhaps I'm just particularly unlucky, but given my ThinkPad has an accelerometer and parks the drive heads when it detects rapid movement and others are saying they've got issues with the drive failing.. perhaps you should steer clear.

Might grab that WD 250GB PATA drive instead now.

 

Stuff happens!!!

In meantime I bought a HM160HC and I received it 3 days ago...

At the moment is all okay but I am a little bit sceptical, then I am reading much of this "reviews".

I also use a ThinkPad - the X31.

What's your opinion about the WD-drive?

Slower speed?
louder noise?

 

Any info if the WD800BEVE is 160gb/platter drive just as the samsung? Im trying to find cheapest/fastest and 80gb is usually cheaper than 160gb and western digital appears to have more supply/market share than samsung.

 

This says yes:

Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD800BEVE-00A0HT Review: Best of IDE?

Interesting.

 

I did some research and the WD800BEVE is 160GB/platter as long as it has the "-00A0HT" suffix. It appears Western Digital uses the suffix to indicate drive generation. Link This drive does have older generations such as -"00UYT0" which Im pretty sure use older generation platters.

 

i have t41 system, 1gb of ram, 1,7ghz centrino (2mb cache) and here are results of oem ibm hdd :


though the system is kinda slow & i'd like to have better performance on it.
should I go for hm160hc? will I have noticeable boost in system performance?

 

Well, transfer rate would nearly double while access times would get slightly worse. All in all should be worth it. Everything bottlenecked by the harddisk would be faster except in cases where access time is more important than transfer rates.

 

Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD2500BEVE 250GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" PATA Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive


Here you go all. This is tthe worlds fastest and biggest

 

The WD2500BEVE is not faster than the HM160HC or WD3200BEVE and is lower capacity than the WD3200BEVE.

 

hi there, just wanted to give a quick update...

Since I wrote on that forum asking about hdd upgrade vs cpu upgrade, now I have done both on my old Vaio VGN-FS38C and the improvement is remarkable.

In my previous posts I had already upgraded to the Samsung HM160HC from a 4500rpm hitachi drive, which gave much better speed overall (incl an extra 1gig of RAM, maxed at 2 gigs)

But now that I have also upgraded the cpu from 1.73 ghz to 2.1ghz, I enjoy faster computer starting/shutting down times, better performance in heavy duty programs (Outlook with gigabyte of email stored, Norton 2011, etc...) and a pretty stable system all in all.

Am sure those with a Vaio FS series (dating back to 2006) like mine will be pleased to know that (although there are many motherboard configurations for those series.... so be careful!)

Best,
UltraGeez

 

Lo
I bought a Samsung HM160HC to replace my old Hitachi travelstar in an Asus L5000D laptop.
That Hitachi was my secondary master (my primary is the CDROM reader). I install it (w/o any jumper as master) and it does not work. My BIOS (AMI) does not detect that harddrive at all...
I was very surprised. Does anyone got an idea on how this drive could work on that laptop? Does anyone got a problem with such a laptop?
Thx