Closer Look

The low-key case design has never changed for the last half a decade…

…only the electronic stuffing is different:

In the SpinPoint P80 series, Samsung for the first time realized such innovations as 48-bit LBA translation (BigLBA as Windows terms it) and faster versions of the interface (ATA/133 and SerialATA), thus creating some headroom for the future. Also new in Samsung’s drives, the allowable amount of onboard cache memory has increased from 2MB to now-standard 8MB, made possible by the multi-purpose 88i5522 controller chip from Marvell and its later 88i6522 modification that we know by the SpinPoint PL40 series. As you may recall, the PL40 was the leader among its peers in a majority of test exercises. That controller was also employed in V80/VL40 families, and its predecessor 88i5520 had worked in the SpinPoint P40 and V60, also very successful families.

The new generation of controllers features a higher read/write channel bandwidth (1Gb instead of 800Mb) and support of UltraDMA mode 6, so I haven’t found any qualitative changes. The specifications of the current and previous families are listed below:

Power consumption issues have grown very important nowadays, so I wanted to compare the spin-up current and the consumed power of the main rivals. Regrettably, Western Digital hasn’t published the characteristics of its new models, so I didn’t include them into the table.

Against the common opinion, Samsung first used fluid dynamic bearings in the second version of the SpinPoint P40 series rather than in the described family. Such devices had the letter “A” in their model name like “SP40A2H” instead of “SP4002H”. Setting the SpinPoint P80 against its predecessor, we see the mechanical characteristics like seek time unchanged. The noise is much lower now, but the power consumption grew in all operational modes. The last fact is nearly fully explained by the use of those fluid bearings. Anyway, the SpinPoint P80 remained among the most power-economical HDDs, especially at seek operations. It only loses to the new product from Hitachi, and only at “doing nothing”. Besides that, the spin-up current consumption is reduced, and that’s good if you’ve got several hard disk drives fed by a not-very-powerful PSU.

The acoustic characteristics of the SpinPoint P60 are approaching the ideal; it is no inferior to any of its competitors in this aspect. Moreover, no one can challenge Samsung’s superiority in the “fast” seek mode, for which I put the values into the table above. The patented NoiseGuard technology does wonders, achieving an excellent seek time by practically noiseless positioner movements. I should confess that some users reported a noticeable vibration of SpinPoint P80 drives that would set the whole PC case abuzz, but this tremble is only felt in cheap system cases of thin tin, or if several same-type drives (7200rpm) are in use. Otherwise, this problem is not observed.