Samsung SpinPoint T166 500GB: Cool, Quiet, and Quick
by Gary Key on July 9, 2007 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Quick Take
Samsung's SpinPoint T166 delivers excellent performance for the money in our opinion. The overall performance of the drive in the 500GB category remained consistent, and while not always class leading it certainly was not the class dunce. The drive's placement in our actual application tests is always near the top along with very good scores in the iPEAK productivity and general task tests.
While the speed of the drive was at question in our iPEAK game play tests, we really never noticed it during actual game play unless we had just used the Raptor drive as our comparison drive. The true strength of the Samsung SpinPoint T166 500GB drive is its incredible showing in the acoustic and thermal tests while having excellent power consumption numbers and competitive performance.
For all intents and purposes, the drive is whisper quiet - maybe not a perfect soft whisper, but quiet enough that we would not hesitate to use this drive or a combination of drives in an HTPC setup. As a matter of fact, you will see this drive featured prominently in an upcoming article centered on HTPC components and it is our drive of choice to compare against the PVR specific DB35.3 series from Seagate and the CinemaStar 7K500 drives from Hitachi.
Our opinion of the SpinPoint T166 is very high right now and unlike previous Samsung offerings we think this latest series delivers a near perfect combination of performance, quiet operation, thermal management, and price. In terms of pure performance, the Hitachi 500GB drive might be slightly faster, but in practical use it is extremely unlikely anyone would notice the difference in performance. Noise levels on the other hand definitely favor the Samsung T166 drives, and we really see no reason to spend $30 more to get the Hitachi drive. If you are looking for a hard drive in this capacity range then the Samsung HD501LJ should be at the top of your list.
Samsung's SpinPoint T166 delivers excellent performance for the money in our opinion. The overall performance of the drive in the 500GB category remained consistent, and while not always class leading it certainly was not the class dunce. The drive's placement in our actual application tests is always near the top along with very good scores in the iPEAK productivity and general task tests.
While the speed of the drive was at question in our iPEAK game play tests, we really never noticed it during actual game play unless we had just used the Raptor drive as our comparison drive. The true strength of the Samsung SpinPoint T166 500GB drive is its incredible showing in the acoustic and thermal tests while having excellent power consumption numbers and competitive performance.
For all intents and purposes, the drive is whisper quiet - maybe not a perfect soft whisper, but quiet enough that we would not hesitate to use this drive or a combination of drives in an HTPC setup. As a matter of fact, you will see this drive featured prominently in an upcoming article centered on HTPC components and it is our drive of choice to compare against the PVR specific DB35.3 series from Seagate and the CinemaStar 7K500 drives from Hitachi.
Our opinion of the SpinPoint T166 is very high right now and unlike previous Samsung offerings we think this latest series delivers a near perfect combination of performance, quiet operation, thermal management, and price. In terms of pure performance, the Hitachi 500GB drive might be slightly faster, but in practical use it is extremely unlikely anyone would notice the difference in performance. Noise levels on the other hand definitely favor the Samsung T166 drives, and we really see no reason to spend $30 more to get the Hitachi drive. If you are looking for a hard drive in this capacity range then the Samsung HD501LJ should be at the top of your list.
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8steve8 - Sunday, July 15, 2007 - link
ive had 2 of these drives for 8 months now,, so the review seems late.obviously the new samsung 1TB 3platter drives are immensly interesting.
the specs and samsungs history in this market makes it seem to be the drive to have in the next 12 months.
natebsi - Wednesday, July 11, 2007 - link
I've purchased 3 of these drives, and 2 have failed in about 4 months time. One was in my pc, the other was in an external enclosure. (The one still working is in my HTPC).2 out of 3 failures in such a short time is pretty bad.
However... the reason I won't be buying any more Samsung drives is not because they failed, but because they don't have an advance replacement program. That was fairly shocking to me! I took it for granted after sending it failed drives to Maxtor and WD (both of whom have outstanding service when it comes to that, BTW).
Hard drive failures are a given, and I can't deal with that. A drive failure is too critical a problem to wait for a replacement more than a couple days. In my opinion anyway...
Final Hamlet - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link
Backup + cooling = No need to worry.I remember having a 20gb Western Digital Caviar, which did me the favour of giving me a special sign that it had come near the end of it's life, so I could replace it in time. If only all HDs could issue that kind of warning...
TA152H - Wednesday, July 11, 2007 - link
Oh boy. Useful to know this. I guess I will wait to buy them.You're a lot more forgiving than I am. I really hate hard drive failures, because they take so long to recover from. It's the worst type of failure in my opinion. And also, because I'm stupid and go a few days without doing a proper backup sometimes. So, for hard disks, I value reliability more than any other part (except maybe the power supply, which tends to screw up a lot of things further down the food chain).
The replacement policy shows that Samsung doesn't quite get it. They don't seem to understand how important reliability is, or how important it is to get someone up and running again as quickly as possible. I always carry a spare or two if it's for a RAID array, but Samsung is selling these to residential people too, and no one likes being without their computer, and they aren't going to keep spare hard disks.
natebsi - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link
It's not that I'm forgiving, its more that I've excepted the fact(or at least high probability) that any hard drive I buy today, from any manufacturer, will fail. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, maybe 5 years from now.So as a consequence, I am extremely diligent about backing up my data. I use both RAID and a backup service from mozy.com for the most important data.
Also, I hear a lot of talk about how "Maxtor sucks!" or "Seagate sucks" or "<insert manufactuer> sucks!". The simple fact of the matter is: Without factual data from the hard drive makers themselves, there will NEVER be any method of determining which hard drive manufacturers are the most reliable. And none of them will ever produce that data for obvious reasons.
Case in point: I've had more hard drives than I can even remember in the last 15+ years, and I truly can't think of "the best manufacturer". Every time I've thought I had a great series of drives, I had failures at some point that made me rethink it. So...... backup, backup, backup, and go with the company that provides the best warranty, service, etc. Which, IMHO, ain't Samsung.
TA152H - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link
Well, you have some factual data from Seagate, look at their warranty.Hard drives can fail, but I have had none from Seagate fail, and this included drives over 5 years old, actually, some over 10. And this goes back to the ST-255 and ST-251, although you'd have to low level them every few years because they were steppers. Crashtors I never bought, but they were so widely recognized as bad, it was way past anecdotal. IBM's drive problems were also not anecdotal, they were widely publicized and even recognized by IBM. Western Digital's were similar, although I don't remember exactly what Western Digital did to fix it. I had bought two of their drives around that time, and both died as well. So, it's not just people blabbing, some of it is very clearly bigger than that. I have never seen Seagate get into that situation, and they sell a lot of drives.
I actually did have a Seagate fail, but it was some 10K monster made in the 1990s, and it was left in a garage for about three years. I can't really blame it for that, it probably got stepped on and kicked and slept on by a raccoon. But, it worked before it's garage experience. Having used well over 200 Seagate hard drives over the years, just my own, not for a company, that's not a bad success rate, especially since the ones in my main machines I don't change often. The one on this machine is from 2001, and doesn't make a sound and is on 24/7. Try that with a Samsung.
I do agree, back up early and often. I forget to sometimes though, I wish I didn't, but I do. You really have no control over it, it can happen any time, so the only way to address that truly is to make sure the impact of it happening is limited. But, I'm a moron, I don't do it as often as I should, and I just don't seem to be able to get into the habit of it.
Gary Key - Tuesday, July 10, 2007 - link
I am not too impressed with the Hybrid drives and Vista right now. ;) We will have that review up next week.crimson117 - Monday, July 9, 2007 - link
How do I read the full blurb? On the main page, I seebut I can't find anywhere that shows the remainder of the text. It's not anywhere in the article.
crimson117 - Monday, July 9, 2007 - link
I found the whole blurb when I do a search for the article.Frumious1 - Monday, July 9, 2007 - link
If you click on the storage header that will take you to a page where you can see all the intro text for those articles - same goes for the other areas, of course. Not like it really matters much, does it?