PCSTATS     
[X]   Directory of
Guides & Reviews

Beginners Guides
Motherboards by Brand
Weekly Newsletter
Archived Newsletters

+70 MORE Beginner GUIDES....
Samsung SV8004H 80GB HDD Review
Samsung SV8004H 80GB HDD Review - PCSTATS
The hard drive we are looking at today is the flagship model from Samsung, a name you generally don't associate with hard drives in the first place.
Filed under: Hard Drives/SSD Published:  Author: 
External Mfg. Website: Samsung Dec 10 2001   Max Page  
Home > Reviews > Hard Drives/SSD > Samsung SV8004H

Samsung SV8004H 80GB Hard Drive Review


The hard drive we are looking at today is the flagship model from Samsung, a name you generally don't associate with hard drives in the first place. Given that we have spent most of our dollars in the office on Maxtor, IBM, and Fujitsu hard drives we weren't quite sure what to expect from Samsung. The best examples of engineering we've seen from Samsung have been in their LCD display market, where we have generally been impressed with their offerings. Conversely, on the MP3 player front we have seen some varied examples of product, some amazing, and some lack luster.

In any case, we started off with an essentially blank slate of what to expect from this 80GB, two platter 5400RPM ATA-100 IDE hard drive. With an average of 8.9ms seek time, and seven way interleave OTF error correction the specs looked good on paper. The low speed of just 5400RPM sounded bad at the beginning, but after realizing there were only two platters, and that the drive was exceptionally quiet we began to rethink some initial assumptions.

Samsung SV8004H 80GB Hard Drive
  • MFG: Samsung
  • Model No: SV8004H
  • Est Drive Cost: $166USD
  • Cost/GB: ~$2.02 USD
  • Features: ImpacGuard, NoiseGuard

Memory Type

On initial inspection, the quality of the aluminum frame seemed to pale when compared head to head with drives from Fujitsu and IBM, showing some extraneous casting marks. Up top, the heavy-weight upper casing looked just fine however. Best of all, the drive proved it self to be very quiet while in operation (max 3.2bels), thanks to something Samsung calls NoiseGuard. At no time did we hear any armature movements during testing.

With the motor wires semi-exposed on the base of the SpinPoint SV8004H it would be worth noting that care should be taken during installation so as not to crush or otherwise damage a wire by carelessness. Other manufacturers have taken to protecting fragile areas like this with small plastic or aluminum shields.

Comparison Drive Specs:

Parameter Samsung SV8004H   Maxtor 5T060H6   Samsung SV6004H
- Capacity 80.0 GB 60.0 GB 60.0 GB
- Areal Density 40GB/platter 20 GB/platter 30GB/platter
- Interface Ultra ATA/100 Ultra ATA/100 Ultra ATA/100
- No. of Platters 2 3 2
- No. of Heads 4 6 4
- Buffer Size 2MB 2 MB 512 Kb
- Rotational Speed 5400 RPM 7200 RPM 5400 RPM
- Acoustic Noise 3.2 bel 3.3 bels 3.2 bels
- Avg. Rotational Latency 5.56 ms 4.17 ms 5.56 ms
- Internal Data Rate (max) 443 Mbits/s N/A 402 Mbit/s
- Avg. Seek Time (Read) 8.9 ms 8.7 ms 8.9 ms
- Avg. Track-to-Track
Seek Time (Read)
0.8 ms 1.0 ms 0.8 ms
EST cost $162 USD $140 USD $116 USD
Approx. price/GB $2.02 $2.33 $1.93

Test Bed System Specs:

Each of the test hard drives was cleanly formatted and set to one partition of the maximum size. Hard drives were connected to the test motherboard via an 80 wire ATA-100 compliant cable in groups of two. No other devices (like CD ROM's for instance) were connected to the same IDE channel as that of the drives being tested. To ensure that everything was configured properly, we used Samsung's SETUDMA.EXE utility to reset the test drives to ATA-100. The utility and instructions on how to use it can be found here.

Test System Specs
Computer:

Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz
MSI 845Pro Motherboard
ProLink GF2 Ti200 Video card
TwinMos PC166 256MB SDRAM
10/100 Realtek NIC
Enermax 430W PSU

Software: Windows 2000 SP2
All devices had their respectable latest drivers
Benchmarks:

HD Tach 2.61
Winbench 99 V1.2
Sisoft Sandra 2001 Le

© 2023 PCSTATS.com Next Page >

 

Contents of Article: Samsung SV8004H
 Pg 1.  — Samsung SV8004H 80GB HDD Review
 Pg 2.  Drive Performance Benchmarks:
 Pg 3.  Full Spec Sheet

 
Hardware Sections 


 
PCSTATS Network Features Information About Us Contact
FrostyTech
PCSTATS Newsletter
Tech Glossary
Technology WebSite Listings
News Archives
(Review RSS Feed)
Site Map
PCstats Wallpaper
About Us
Privacy Policy
Advertise on PCSTATS

How's Our Driving?
© Copyright 1999-2023 www.pcstats.com All rights reserved. Privacy policy and Terms of Use.