Samsung SpitPoint 500GB

LunarMist

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Samsung HD501LJ 500GB SATA drives are inexpensive and I could use another 2TB of drives for storage only. Are these drives any good or is there some reason not to get them, such as poor reliability, high heat, or high noise? I want to order some drives ASAP. Thanks.
 

Mercutio

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I'm pretty happy with the 400GB models that I have. They are not as loud or hot as my bigger Hitachi drives.
 

RWIndiana

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Why is it that Samsung drives seem significantly cheaper than other brands? When I'm looking for drives on Newegg I noticed that Samsungs are rarely on the front "featured" page, but when I look for a specific manufacturer (Samsung), every one of them beats the prices of the featured drives. Why is this? I hope there's not something I'm missing.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Samsung drives aren't "bleeding edge" units. I suspect that they cost Samsung less to manufacture because Samsung isn't competing in the state of the art space that Hitachi and Seagate typically occupy.
 

RWIndiana

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Could that be related to whatever reason most people here consider them more reliable?
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I think there's a strong correlation, myself.
I've heard rumblings that the bigger and newer Samsungs aren't as wonderful as the old ones, but my experience remains excellent overall; I might see a Samsung fail once in every six months. Considering the number I have deployed in the last four or five years (call it 200 drives a year? 250? Something like that. I could look it up if anyone wanted to know), I remain happy with them.
 

Handruin

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Between you, Tannin, (and buck?), I think there's probably some good historical data to see how samsung's reliability is in the field. I had a discussion with a friend (also a member here) and I questioned where samsung drives are made.

The reason for my question was to know if the models Tannin uses comes from a different plant than the ones you and I use? I've deployed only a small handful of various samsung drives (around 5 ranging between 120-160GB), so my data is useless at this point. In any case, all 5 are still working as far as I know.
 

Clocker

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Is Spitpoint a new line of low end drives for Samsung? :)
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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It's better than my words for S*ny and Western Digital product lines.

Also, I think time might have some historical data worthy of examination. Don't forget time.
 

sechs

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The problem that I see with Samsung drives is what happens when you do get a failed drive.
 

Explorer

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RWIndiana said:
When I'm looking for drives on Newegg I noticed that Samsungs are rarely on the front "featured" page...


Samsung storage division seems to have a rather pathetic marketing department behind it when it comes to selling to the retail space. WesternDigi and Seagate/Quaxtor are on the opposite end of that spectrum.

Samsung concentrates on supplying hard drives to big-box vendors. HP/Compaq apparently consumes trainloads of Samsung SATA drives each day manufacturing desktop PCs.



 
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