T41: Which HDD to buy? .. and Samsung HM160HC issues.

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yak · #61 Post by **yak** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 6:57 pm

I don't know how long you guys have your HM160HC but my is running since Feb 02 without any problems (knock, knock). UDMA-5 all the time. Power On Hours Count value in HD Tune (or any other tool supporting SMART) shows 897 which equals to almost 40 full days.

The T41 it is running in runs Windows XP almost exclusively (sometimes Ubuntu/Linux). The AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management) has been disabled (to get full performance) and each time the system starts up, the APM (Advanced Power Management) is set to 0xFE using hdparm to remove drive clicks and prolong its life (in exchange for slightly increased power consumption).

So far I'm really satisfied with this drive.

o1001010 · #62 Post by **o1001010** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 10:45 pm

bypassing all the replies, for my t42 i bough seagate .3 from newegg. 80 gb.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148128

for my t60 i bought a fujitsu 120 hd, i dislike samsung products as it feels like they have an expiration date built in.

marYn · #63 Post by **marYn** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 7:06 am

After some time you can find the differences of my HM160HC in T41.

What I don't like is small vibrations which can be felt from the HDD when I put my wrist on the right-front edge of T41 while typing on the keyboard.

I'm thinking about selling it and getting WD 250GB 2.5"
What do you think?

yak · #64 Post by **yak** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 4:39 pm

@marYn

I didn't notice any vibrations. Well, you can feel that something is moving in there but barely. I can feel more vibrations on the left side when the CPU fan is on. None of them is disturbing me.

However, it may be possible that the Seagate you had before generated no vibrations at all, I think Seagate is known for that. My Toshiba didn't. I never owned a WD notebook drive but I owned both WD and Seagate desktop drives and WD was never as silent as Seagate.

I still think the HM160HC is a good drive, especially attractive if you consider its price (starting from EUR 45 here in Germany as of today).

marYn · #65 Post by **marYn** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 5:16 am

Hallo Yak, wie geht's?

I think the best would be to buy 2-3 drives, test them for a while and then decide..

But you're right this HM160HC is quite good drive, it's very fast even faster than 7200rpm PATA drives. The high density platters pay off well. I think WD 250GB is not so fast.

Anyway I think there is no ideal drive at the marked now. Every one has it's pros and cons.

BTW 45EUR is a nice price. It was very hard for me to get Samsung 2.5" PATA drive in Czech Rep., Samsung drives are quite rare here.[/quote]

Bgradid · #66 Post by **Bgradid** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 12:00 am

I got a 250gig wd scorpio drive and i've been extremely happy with it, up in performance from my old 60gb 7200 rpm that was in my machine. sustained read/writes went from 30mB/s to about 55mB/s with this drive, instillation was not a problem

this of course was in my t42p

AIX · #67 Post by **AIX** » Sun May 04, 2008 8:48 am

Which one to pick?

1. HITACHI Travelstar 5K160 HTS541612J9AT00 120GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache
2. SEAGATE Momentus 5400.3 Ultra ATA/100 80-GB Hard Drive 8MB Cache

Price is approximately the same and size is not a problem (80GB is more than enough for the moment). I'm inclined toward Hitachi but I read Seagate Momentus 5400.3 provides a little bit more performance than the Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 drive.

marYn · #68 Post by **marYn** » Mon May 05, 2008 11:33 am

Ceau AIX,

for me it would be a hard decision but I'd better choose Seagate. I expect it to be quieter and cooler.

Madox · #69 Post by **Madox** » Wed May 07, 2008 5:08 am

Bgradid wrote:I got a 250gig wd scorpio drive and i've been extremely happy with it, up in performance from my old 60gb 7200 rpm that was in my machine. sustained read/writes went from 30mB/s to about 55mB/s with this drive, instillation was not a problem

this of course was in my t42p

Did you get an 2010 error? I'm going to buy this hdd for my t42p and I would like to know if I get this error.

ResidentG33k · #70 Post by **ResidentG33k** » Wed May 07, 2008 5:13 am

I bought the 120gb Fujitsu HDD, works great with the HDD Performance app if you drop your laptop...

I'll send you a model # in a bit.

marYn · #71 Post by **marYn** » Wed May 07, 2008 5:42 am

Did you get an 2010 error? I'm going to buy this hdd for my t42p and I would like to know if I get this error.

As far as I know people get 2010 error on T43 only because it has PATA/SATA bridge - its mobo chipset is native SATA but the HDD cage is for PATA disks and there's that bridge in between.

T40-T42 have native PATA chipset with PATA disks so they are little bit different and shall not have this problem.

AIX · #72 Post by **AIX** » Wed May 07, 2008 5:47 am

I just bought the Seagate 5400.3 80GB drive, I'm waiting for it to come. I hope I made a good choice.

Madox · #73 Post by **Madox** » Wed May 07, 2008 1:59 pm

marYn wrote:
Did you get an 2010 error? I'm going to buy this hdd for my t42p and I would like to know if I get this error.
As far as I know people get 2010 error on T43 only because it has PATA/SATA bridge - its mobo chipset is native SATA but the HDD cage is for PATA disks and there's that bridge in between.

T40-T42 have native PATA chipset with PATA disks so they are little bit different and shall not have this problem.

Thanks a lot for information. You really helped me.

alstein · #74 Post by **alstein** » Wed May 21, 2008 7:06 am

sktn77a wrote:Wow, this seems to be a major disadvantage to what would otherwise be an ideal drive for the T4x series. You'd think Samsung would come up with some firmwar fix for this (I wonder if they even know its an issue?)

I chickened out and got the Hitachi 5K160 drives last week for my upgrades.

Is there a list of (non IBM/Lenovo)approved hard drives for the Thinkpad series? I have the T41 and would like to increase capacity from the current 40 GB.

rbena · #75 Post by **rbena** » Wed May 21, 2008 10:54 pm

alstein wrote: Is there a list of (non IBM/Lenovo)approved hard drives for the Thinkpad series? I have the T41 and would like to increase capacity from the current 40 GB.

On my T42, I use a Samsung HM160HC for my main drive, and a Hitachi 5k160 in the ultrabay for backups.
Both work equally fine, though the Samsung is quieter being a single platter drive.

If you're going for less capacity, I find the Hitachi 5k80 single platter drive is just as quiet as the Samsung, even moreso (but not by much).

spelunker · #76 Post by **spelunker** » Tue May 27, 2008 8:31 pm

Hi,

I recently installed a new 120GB Fujitsu MHV2120AH drive in my T41 and I am happy to report that it is extremely quiet and overall performance feels nearly as fast as the original 60GB 7200-rpm TravelStar drive.

Based on the article link below, I chose the MHV2120AH to preserve the Active Protection System and Hard Drive Password features. It's my understanding that not all drives on the market support these two key features.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Active_Protection_System

poleframer · #77 Post by **poleframer** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 3:05 pm

Hi all, was finally time for an upgrade (I'm cheap) from a T20 that served me well for years of fieldwork to a T41 ($350 refurb), put in 2g memory, and ordered a samsung 160gb HDD.
Well, they sent me a WD1600BEVE-00UYT0 instead (they were out of the samsungs). I have it installed, and notice some clicking that I didnt have with the 30gb that I had. The specs are about the same- 5400 rpm, etc., and it seems to function fine.
I called and they would replace it when they get the samsungs in. I suppose I can get used to the slight "tic tic tok", but silent HDD would be nice. Is there much difference? What do you all think?
Russell

Matt · #78 Post by **Matt** » Fri Feb 05, 2010 5:36 am

yak wrote:I'm using Windows most of the time. I've added

hdparm -B 254 hda

BAT file to the Autostart. The setting seems to survive both suspend and hibernation so there is no need to reissue it after those. It doesn't survive reboot so it has to be put into the Autostart.

I haven't heard any "superclicks" since. My Load Cycle Count increases very slowly now. Since my last post on 12.02 where I put the screenshot of HDTune with current values, my Load Cycle Count has increased from 2189 to 2407 and the Load Retry Count from 313 to 325.

I did the above when I first got this HM160HC in October, and all has been well--until yesterday when the superclicks came back and Load_Retry_Count began incrementing again. It's incremented over 1000 since yesterday.

Any suggestions? Should I just call Samsung and tell em I want a new drive?

Matt · #79 Post by **Matt** » Sun Feb 07, 2010 2:23 am

Load_Retry_Count is over 5000 now, up from 400-ish 3 days ago. Superclicks ranging from once every 15-20 seconds to once per second. Methinks this drive will be toast soon.

beeblebrox · #80 Post by **beeblebrox** » Mon Feb 08, 2010 3:02 pm

I have had my first 160HC in mid 2008 and it had clicks every few seconds, which drove me crazy. I then used CHC centrino hardware Control and set 254 default on power management. means no load/unload. never had a problem. The drive is silent and cool.

Yesterday I bought another HM160C. It has a different revision code. It is silent withouth the need of CHC. So either they changed the mechanics or the firmware or both.
I love the drive, it is superfast and quiet. never had a problem.
Just check your drive with HDD Tune. If there are no bad sectors, then everything should be ok.

Beeblebrox

SCM · #81 Post by **SCM** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 8:38 pm

I'm ashamed for reviving such an old thread, but I just need to know how did it go with the problematic Samsung HDDs. I would really appreciate if the people owning those HDD could tell me if the rising in the "calibration retry count" caused some sort of premature failure or something. (I think it is the case, telling from Matt's last post).

I ask this because I had a HM641JI that gave me "superclicks" too, and had the same other symptoms. In the end I had to return it because I noticed a sudden drop in the performance, as it can be seen in the SMART data.

To cut a long story short, I replaced it with the same model, thinking it was an isolated problem. To this day, this HDD is less than 2 months old and the SMART data looks like this:

I'm afraid this may be an omen of this HDD suffering the same fate than its predecessor.

The good thing is that I haven't heard any "superclicks" yet, but as I said, what I'm worried about is being able to anticipate to a premature HDD failure. I used STOOL and everything was OK, weird.

Thanks in advance.

PS: [censored], look at these read/write error rates, not even my grandma's HDD is like that. Good thing I keep backups of my backups.

lukee · #82 Post by **lukee** » Sun Dec 04, 2011 12:21 pm

I have HM160HC in my secondary machine. The HDD has been bought as brand new. After 2,5 years 2 sectors were reallocated to the spare area and I can feel light performance drop than it was when I bought it. This experience changed my opinion to Samsung HDDs and I will not probably buy them anymore. In my primary machine (T43p) I have currently an WD Scorpio Blue 320GB HDD and I'm totally satisified with this drive. Best HDDs for ThinkPads are Travelstars made by Hitachi - I own 7K100 and 8 years old 7K60, both are in a perfect condition!

wpyh · #83 Post by **wpyh** » Wed Dec 07, 2011 11:24 am

Just to follow up on the thread:

1. My Samsung HM160HC eventually died (multiple bad sectors) and had to be replaced under warranty. I gave it to a friend who uses the disk in an external enclosure, which means that its power-on hours will be less than an internal laptop hard drive, which should prolong its life.

After re-reading this thread and the new posts here, I don't think I will buy a Samsung laptop HDD again.

2. WD Scorpio Blue is good, I have a 500GB version and it's still working fine after two years.

3. Hitachi is good but a bit slow -- my 750GB Hitachi feels slower than my 500GB WD Scorpio Blue.

I heard Seagate is also good but haven't had a chance to try it myself.

edit: I have since upgraded to a Thinkpad X61s, and the WD Scorpio Blue and Hitachi drives are SATA

SCM · #84 Post by **SCM** » Wed Dec 07, 2011 5:35 pm

Thanks for the answers.

I'm still worried about my HDD, I don't think those write/read errors are a normal thing. Maybe I should RMA the stuff and try another brand.

Well, thanks again.

T41: Which HDD to buy? .. and Samsung HM160HC issues.

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