Samsung drives are certainly quiet and seem cheap on the sticker, but I had 4 Samsung P80s in my personal fileserver for two years, and encountered three drive failures during that period.

Therefore, I can't recommend the use of Samsung drives in anything but redudant configurations.

I cant comment. I have never owned a quiet drive. But I have never had performance that low.

I own a Samsung P 80GB, SG Barracuda 120GB 7200.7, and a Maxtor DM10 200GB.

Of those three the Samsung wins hands down in quietness (although I suppose you can say the 'cuda is only a .7 so it's unfair).

But you do notice a trend in sound pitches. Maxtor's tend to have deeper pitched sounds while the 'cuda has higher pitched sounds so it sounds a bit louder that way. The P80 on the other hand I can barely notice it's sounds with my fans going in the background.

Wow what a nice suprise :) just the other day I was looking to find some decent report on those drives as I am thinking about buying one, and not much on the web really...

I am sooooo pleasantly suprised for this review to spring up here! Of to read it now :-)

I've used WD drives primarily for the past few years, maxtor before that. I finally bought a 250g sata spinpoint drive for storage and couldn't be happier. With a raptor as my OS/program drive, I have found the two a perfect combination, with the spinpoint fast and its price quite low. It did well in a review of similar drives as conducted by storagereview.com. Like you folks pointed out, the spinpoint is not perfect in all spheres (what drive is?), but for my needs it has been a perfect performance/price storage drive for going on six months now. And it's extremely quiet.

so, it sounds like these drives are custom-made for desktop applications... they meet the bar, but don't even worry about going over it. interesting approach. :)

We've been having these drives supplied with Dell systems for the last 2 - 3 months. I've never had a problem with Samsung drives until now, but of the 100 systems we've had over 20 have developed HDD faults within 2 months and have required replacements. Normally I would expect maybe one or two at the very most.

The only reason to buy Samsung drives is for their unbeatable quietness, and this T series continues the trend nicely.

edit - I only say that because SPCR disagree with you, placing the T series quieter than the older P series and even WD's latest caviars.

I have 2 x 250GB P-Series in a RAID0 and they're considerably quieter than the 7200.9 I have in the same system.

Clearly Samsung's changes to the T-Series are for the worse - but at least we have more capacity.

The 500GB RE2 looks like the new king of quiet.

Does anyone know if it is possible to lower the speed on these drives to 5400 RPM? I'm only using these drives for music and movie-storage and don't need fast drives. That would also make them really quiet.

own the P series myself..

They're cheaper than competive and it's super quiet if you add in the Acoustic mode...

Never had problems with recent Samsung drives...

I'm one of the ones always saying "Why don't you add a Samsung drive! It's quieter." Well, I just bought a 300GB T drive also and I must say that I am ALSO disappointed in it's noise level and performance compared to the older Spinpoint P series. I kept doing A/B test and the P series is noticeably quieter and seems a tad quicker than the T but I believe it stops at 250GB. I am tempted to sell this 300GB drive on ebay and buy another 250GB drive as a backup to my other P series. They even look totally different.

Comparing the T and P series in the same box sounds like I added a small and slow additional case fan to my PC when the T drive is running.

I have been buying SpinPoints for a while because a friend who owns a small computer shop swears by them reliability wise. In his opinion, the reliability outstrips all other brands. So far, so good.

I really, really hate loud system components, so obviously I have opinions about the noise characteristics of the harddrives.

I own both a Barracuda 7200.9 (160GB) and a Samsung Spinpoint P120 (200GB). While the Barracuda may have a lower measurable noise, the Spinpoint seems much more quiet. According to Samsung this is acheived by controlling the frequencies of the noise. http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/whitepapers/WhitePape...

I do not know if the acoustics of the Spinpoint P120 and Spinpoint T are the same, but I really love my Spinpoint.

If anyone is interested in the noise aspect, I sincerely recommend http://www.silentpcreview.com

i use 2 samsung spinpoints. i bought them because
1. my WD was failing me- crashing, corrupting data, etc.
2. both my WD and maxtor were annoyingly noisy.

i love my spinpoints. nice and quiet, haven't given me any trouble so far.

Digg it!

http://www.digg.com/hardware/Samsung_SpinPoint_T_Serial_ATA_hard_dr...