Samsung 500GB Spinpoint T166 (HD501LJ) Best Bang For Buck Drive?

Big.Wayne

Big.Wayne

Big.Wayne

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£66.96 inc VAT

I just wondered what people thought about this model? I seem to be stuck on them at the moment despite having had one from a ten-pack go bad.

They seem to be very fast drives to me and at the same time they run pretty cool compared to some drives I have used, even without active cooling I've yet to see one of these Samsung HD501LJ's run much over 35°C

What other hard-drives are there worth buying under £75?
 
The Seagate 7200.11 is on offer this week (well until lunchtime today) at £74 inc vat and is the quickest you'll get until the new AAKS drives appear. The original AAKS is probably the best bang for buck at the moment - slightly cheaper and quicker than the Samsung.

If you can wait and stretch a bit though the first of the next gen AAKS drives is now on pre-order. 640Gb, 2 platters, £73 ex, much speed.
 
rpstewart said:
The Seagate 7200.11 is on offer this week (well until lunchtime today) at £74 inc vat and is the quickest you'll get until the new AAKS drives appear. The original AAKS is probably the best bang for buck at the moment - slightly cheaper and quicker than the Samsung.

If you can wait and stretch a bit though the first of the next gen AAKS drives is now on pre-order. 640Gb, 2 platters, £73 ex, much speed.
Click to expand...
The new AAKS are great at STR, but i think their response time is pretty bad at ard 16ms, which is kinda low for 7.2k rpm hdds, which should average 15ms.
 
I have two of the spinpoints and they are very fast - they load some game levels faster than my 10,000 rpm raptor. I don't know how or why, but they do.
 
rpstewart

how do the aaks drives fair against 74gb 16mb raptors?

might be time to ditch my watercooled raptor raid in favour for a normal drive if the performance is fairly comparable :)
 
You're never going to get the same low latency that the Raptor gives you from a 7200rpm drive and it seems that as the data density on the big drives goes up so does the random access time due to the higher precision required by the smaller tracks.

Unfortunately this is one of those scenarios where real world testing beats theory and having never used Raptors myself I'm not really in a position to comment.
 
rpstewart said:
If you can wait
Click to expand...
Hey thanks rpstewart,

sorry if I mislead you, I'm not clucking for a new 3.5" drive at the moment as I'm loaded up to the gills with those Samsung drives! :D

Just wanted to see what else what worth buying, I will look into those next gen AAKS drives you mentioned, thanks for the pointer! :cool:

Now can you pop into my other thread and help me with some laptop hard disk suggestions! :o
 
Big.Wayne said:
£66.96 inc VAT

I just wondered what people thought about this model? I seem to be stuck on them at the moment despite having had one from a ten-pack go bad.

They seem to be very fast drives to me and at the same time they run pretty cool compared to some drives I have used, even without active cooling I've yet to see one of these Samsung HD501LJ's run much over 35°C

What other hard-drives are there worth buying under £75?
Click to expand...

I have one of these (my first Samsung drive actually) and they run cooler than both my 500GB WD drives. Only had it for a few months now but i have no complaints as they are priced well and perform very well as far as i am concerned.
 
ACESHIGH said:
they are priced well and perform very well
Click to expand...
Yeah they tick a lot of the *buy me buy me* boxes, good price, good performance, good noise levels (or lack of it) and run cool, pretty hard to beat which is why I made this thread to here about any contenders!

Will have to look up this AAKS thing, wonder what makes it possibly better than the SAMSUNG HD501LJ?
 
I have a 500GB AAKS. I almost bought the Samsung but since doing a fair bit of research I found this WD beats it in a couple of areas. To be honest I wouldn't have minded buying either, but somehow I went for the WD.

It's a fantastic drive. I came from a 160GB Hitachi 7K250 to the WD and the difference in speed is very noticeable. Windows loads much quicker, so do games, apps, and it seems to excel in copying files to the same drive. Very happy with it, especially for the price.
 
Sara08 said:
I have a 500GB AAKS. I almost bought the Samsung but since doing a fair bit of research I found this WD beats it in a couple of areas
Click to expand...
The AAKS beat the Samsung drive, I don't believe it! :D

Sara08 said:
I came from a 160GB Hitachi 7K250 to the WD and the difference in speed is very noticeable.
Click to expand...
That was my last drive also, nice but mine made the odd *clunking* sound every now and then. worried me a bit. . .
 
Big.Wayne said:
£66.96 inc VAT

I just wondered what people thought about this model? I seem to be stuck on them at the moment despite having had one from a ten-pack go bad.

They seem to be very fast drives to me and at the same time they run pretty cool compared to some drives I have used, even without active cooling I've yet to see one of these Samsung HD501LJ's run much over 35°C

What other hard-drives are there worth buying under £75?
Click to expand...

you can find the 750gb F1 for 90quid, 250gb platters so quite a bit faster and better price per GB.

the 501LJ was and still is a good drive but i wouldn't spend my cash on one at this point in time.
 
Nice ^^ :D

Nearly had a couple of the sammy's cos of reviews but ended up WITH WD AAKS in the end, partly price partly cos an incident years ago where they were getting bad sectors as quick as i could replace them! but i'm sure there much better now.
 
had my 500gb samsung for a month or so now and cannot fault it, quick, quiet and great value for money. Other than the 501 i'd suggest the 7200.11 or the new WD 640 seems to be getting a lot of good press as well.
 
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