Samsung Spinpoint F4 Review (HD322GJ)

The Spinpoint F4 features a single 320GB capacity model, but that's 320GB on a single drive platter. That platter spins at 7200 RPM and feeds 16MB of drive cache. By using a single platter and a single drive head, the SpinPoint F4 benefits from both a greater platter density and a reduced number of moving parts. While it's hard to define a category that the F4 fits neatly into, there is something to be said for a blend of low-cost and performance.

Samsung is proving with their new Spinpoint F4 drive, there's still room for hard drive technology to grow and improve, even in low-capacity drives. Higher platter density can mean an improved transfer rate among other things, and the best part is that advances in mechanical hard disk technology typically enter the market at competitive prices. Not everyone is willing, or needs to shell out $100+ for a low-capacity SSD just to use as a system drive, or nearly double that for a high performance 2TB monster. Samsung seems to think a lot of people would be willing to drop $40 on a fast mechanical drive and call it a day.

They're probably right. OEMs certainly use drives like the F4 to keep system build prices down and truth be told, most computer users aren't filling up their drives with terabytes of digital media. So today, we're going to see what the F4 brings to the table. If nothing else, performance be damned, price-to-capacity should be an undeniable value. But let's see just how good of a deal Samsung is planning on cutting us.

Samsung Spinpoint F4 Specs

• Unformated Capacity 320GB
• Interface Serial ATA 3.0Gbps
• Buffer DRAM Size 16 MB
• Byte per Sector 512 bytes
• Rotational Speed 7,200 RPM
• Average Seek time(typical) 8.9 ms
• Data Transfer Rate / Media to/from Buffer(Max.) 285 MB/sec
• Data Transfer Rate / Buffer to/from Host(Max.) 300 MB/sec
• Average Latency 4.17 ms
• Drive Ready Time(typical) 8 sec
• Non-recoverable Read Error 1 sector in 1015bits
• Idle 2.6 Bel
• Performance Seek 2.8 Bel
• Temperature / Operating 0 ~ 60 °C
• Temperature / Non-operating -40 ~ 70 °C
• Spin-up Current (Max.) 2.0A
• Seek (typical) 5.1W
• Read/Write (typical) 5.0W
• Idle (typical) 4.2W
• Standby (typical) 0.8W
• Sleep (typical) 0.8W
• Height (Max.) 26.1 mm
• Width 101.5 mm
• Length 147.0 mm
• Weight (avg.) 430g

Aesthetics

No one's going to accuse the Spinpoint F4 of bringing too much style to the inside of your case, but the girth of the drive is confusing. It's the same size as any other 3.5” drive, but with just a single platter inside you have to wonder why they didn't elect to produce something trimmer. Seagate, for example, tends to use smaller enclosures for their drives. Something as fast as the F4 could potentially be might benefit from being used in a multi-drive RAID array in a home machine, where increased space between the drives due to smaller enclosures might help improve airflow. It's a minor quibble if anything at all. It is light though, not that it matters much in a desktop build, but the drive weighs roughly half of a normal 2TB drive. 

Disassembly

The Spinpoint F4 is held together with a handful of torx bits securing the circuit board to the bottom of the hard drive. The design is such that the components are face-up, instead of face-down and letting their heat soak into the body of the drive. A thermal or vibration isolation pad is located between the circuit board and drive body.

At the heart of the Spinpoint F4 is a Marvell 88i9122-TFJ2 controller, with 16MB of DDR400 cache added with Samsung K4H281638L-LCCC memory module.

Synthetic Benchmarks

For our synthetic tests, we use IOMeter and CrystalDiskMark to gauge how the Samsung Spinpoint F4 falls in line. Western Digital is a market leader these days for mechanical hard drives, so we have three of their drives on tap for comparison. The Caviar Black is their desktop performance line, with the 500GB model sporting 32MB of disk cache and the 2TB model sporting a healthy 64MB. The Scorpio Black is a 2.5” notebook drive with 16MB of drive cache. All of these drives run at 7200 RPM.

Source : www.storagereview.com

Tags : Samsung, OEM, RAID, Marvell 88i9122-TFJ2 controller, Memory Module, Seagate, RAID, CrystalDiskMark, synthetic, Western Digital, circuit, Samsung Spinpoint F4