Spinpoint F1 750gb 139.99 shipped (or $5 less)

[skriefal]

Originally posted by: ArchAngel777
Ok, so what happens with the extra space that is not used? I assume that since this is an F1 it uses 334GB per platters. 334/750 = 2.25. So roughly 75% of one of the platters is unused, or the drive is only able to read 75% of each platter. If the latter is the case, I would guess the these are 1TB drives that had failures on them? Or perhaps a custom firmware could open them up to 1GB? No idea, just throwing it out there.

There is no extra space. The 750gb drive uses 250gb platters.

 

[MustangSVT]

Originally posted by: skriefal

Originally posted by: ArchAngel777
Ok, so what happens with the extra space that is not used? I assume that since this is an F1 it uses 334GB per platters. 334/750 = 2.25. So roughly 75% of one of the platters is unused, or the drive is only able to read 75% of each platter. If the latter is the case, I would guess the these are 1TB drives that had failures on them? Or perhaps a custom firmware could open them up to 1GB? No idea, just throwing it out there.

There is no extra space. The 750gb drive uses 250gb platters.

huh? so these dont have the benefit performance the 1tb one has??

 

[hans007]

the drives are stroked platters probably from the 334gb platters, so its only using the outerpart. its likely just as fast as the 334gb 1 TB drive if that is the case.


this probably is just as fast as the new 640gb western digital.

 

[bradley]

Originally posted by: hans007
the drives are stroked platters probably from the 334gb platters, so its only using the outerpart. its likely just as fast as the 334gb 1 TB drive if that is the case.

That's certainly a possibility. I have a hard time believing Samsung would run two separate production lines for the same series. I guess there's only one sure way to find out, and that's for someone to open one up. Mine should arrive from Chief Value this afternoon. I'll report back with how well, or not well, it's packaged... and how it performs.

 

[bigpow]

Mine arrived yesterday, tested and installed.
It came with ACM disabled, so in case you like quiet drive - then this already quiet HDD could get even quieter.
CV packaging was adequate and I think it was a lot better than my 500GB Samsung (USED!!!) OEM I got from NE.
It even came with a small booklet and a set of screws.

Overall impression: Faster, quieter, cooler than anything I own
(Maxtor 500G, Samsung 500G, a pair of Maxtor 300G & a Maxtor 320G)

Thanks for this deal!

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: bradley

Originally posted by: hans007
the drives are stroked platters probably from the 334gb platters, so its only using the outerpart. its likely just as fast as the 334gb 1 TB drive if that is the case.

That's certainly a possibility. I have a hard time believing Samsung would run two separate production lines for the same series. I guess there's only one sure way to find out, and that's for someone to open one up. Mine should arrive from Chief Value this afternoon. I'll report back with how well, or not well, it's packaged... and how it performs.

well i think a lot of the time, they have to make a drive with the particular size just to have one in their lineup.

i mean , intel doesnt need to make e4400 chips, since all the chips can be e4600 but they do it anyway

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Originally posted by: hans007
the drives are stroked platters probably from the 334gb platters, so its only using the outerpart. its likely just as fast as the 334gb 1 TB drive if that is the case.


this probably is just as fast as the new 640gb western digital.

Wrong...the 250/500/750 F1's use 250Gig platters. People have posted their HDTune results, and the 750Gig F1's show slower transfer rates compared to the 1Tb F1's.

 

[AmberClad]

Originally posted by: bigpow
It even came with a small booklet and a set of screws.

Did you happen to take a closer look at that booklet ? I got bored waiting for the drive to finish cloning, so I started flipping through the instructions booklet. Started cracking up at all the ingrish and the hilarious pictures of someone manhandling and abusing the cartoon hard drive :laugh:.

 

[bigpow]

Originally posted by: AmberClad

Originally posted by: bigpow
It even came with a small booklet and a set of screws.

Did you happen to take a closer look at that booklet ? I got bored waiting for the drive to finish cloning, so I started flipping through the instructions booklet. Started cracking up at all the ingrish and the hilarious pictures of someone manhandling and abusing the cartoon hard drive :laugh:.

I did, but I was mainly concerned about its jumper (SATA-300/150)
Didn't notice the "Engrish" part (probably natural to me)
I'll go check it out later

oh, and it came set to SATA-300 mode, no more jumpers.

 

[RideFree]

new code
CPMCFTSVA07
gives $6.00 off and is good for two more days.

New price at CV is $133.99

Pretty hot for Korea's latest and greatest
(Wait, wouldn't that be the new 500GB notebook drive just announced today?)

 

[bradley]

The drive arrived in a plastic clamshell surrounded by large bubble-wrap, placed in a box of packing peanuts. I personally would have used another layer of bubble wrap, as the bubbles completely popped on one edge. Otherwise the drive has been working perfectly these past few days.

The drive itself runs very quiet and cool, around 101F/38.3C using an accurate thermocouple. I was especially curious on how the drive reacted to acoustic management settings: quiet, middle, and fast. I'm seeing average speeds of 74.7MB/sec to 75.4MB/sec, and access times of 14.4ms to 15.7ms. This leads me to believe that this particular drive is using 250MB formatted platters. Although, the large 32mb cache seems to make a nice real-world difference in multitasking.

Here are my HD Tune and HD Tach results with fast acoustic management enabled.
http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/2267/fastgj9.jpg

I think it's a nice compromise between cost, speed, and size. The performance difference between 250MB and 320MB platters isn't worth the cost to me. Perhaps late 2008/early 2009 when Samsung releases their F2 drives, with 500MB platters. That's when we should theoretically see insane 140MB+ average transfer rates. Otherwise not a bad drive for the money.

 

[Eeezee]

I remember when a killer deal was $0.25 per gigabyte Thanks OP

 

[Basilisk]

@#$%^&*... I didn't realize this price was a "special" -- I took it for current pricing -- but in going to place an order, just now, I find it's gone up to $170 on both NE & CV. Sigh... gotta look about for a new disk....


Edit:
Found another site, <a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.nowdirect.com/exec/partInfo/part_detail.tsb?prcpart=SADHD753LJ
">NowDirect</a>, selling it for $136, shipped & w/o taxes (as opposed to NE/CV, for me). So, perhaps a better deal if there are no problems.

Edit -again-:
And now I find NE is back to $140. Well, my above link still saved me a dozen tax-$$, so that site may be of use to others, 'though I'd do NE if you aren't taxed by them.

 

[Ricochet]

Originally posted by: RideFree
new code
CPMCFTSVA07
gives $6.00 off and is good for two more days.

New price at CV is $133.99

Pretty hot for Korea's latest and greatest
(Wait, wouldn't that be the new 500GB notebook drive just announced today?)

I wanted two of these for RAID 0, so to take advantage of the coupon I placed two separate orders. Unbeknowns to me, one of my order was completely wiped out from the CV system. No notification or anything. They just went ahead and canceled it. Wished they had notified me. Now the price is back up to normal.

 

[Karaktu]

Originally posted by: ricochet

Originally posted by: RideFree
new code
CPMCFTSVA07
gives $6.00 off and is good for two more days.

New price at CV is $133.99

Pretty hot for Korea's latest and greatest
(Wait, wouldn't that be the new 500GB notebook drive just announced today?)

I wanted two of these for RAID 0, so to take advantage of the coupon I placed two separate orders. Unbeknowns to me, one of my order was completely wiped out from the CV system. No notification or anything. They just went ahead and canceled it. Wished they had notified me. Now the price is back up to normal.

They assume you placed a duplicate order for some reason.

 

[chizow]

Update:

I didn't really test the drive out more than an hour or so at a time because I hadn't mounted it in my 900. Was waiting on a replacement bolt from Sunbeam for my Tuniq which finally arrived on Saturday, so I finally got around to moving some cages around and mounting the drive. When I tested the drive outside of the case, light usage and diagnostics worked but intense usage like recording with FRAPs would lock the drive up and my system as well. Then the drive would not be auto-detected by ACPI on boot-up and would hang on Windows load screen. Only a complete power down and cold boot would fix the problem. This is similar to the problems others have had with Nvidia chipsets and this drive.

Fix:

I scanned around a bit in Newegg's comments and found a workaround in there. One user said he was able to get the drive working by disabling NCQ. Figured it was worth a shot, so went into Device Manager and disabled NCQ for the SpinPoint and all has been working fine since. Recorded over 200GB in FRAPs of a certain Beta without a hitch. Drive is fast and quiet and disabling NCQ didn't seem to impact performance at all when comparing synthetic benchmarks. So again, if you're having problems with this drive with an NV chipset, try disabing NCQ and see if that fixes the problem.

 

[alkemyst]

These deals are still going which is great for those looking to buy. I debated the F1 vs the 7K1000 and chose the latter due to problems noted with nvidia chipsets...

Either are great drives IMHO.