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Review: Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ |
The HD103UJ was Samsung’s first harddisc to reach the 1TB (=1000GB) barrier. The 3.5” drive features a SATA2 interface for connection to the PC.
In this review we will test the performance of the Samsung HD103UJ drive.
Samsung Company Information
Founded as “Samsung Store” in 1938 Samsung has grown to South Korea’s largest company that now manufactures all kind of things. From our previous reviews you may already know their DVD burners. Besides that you may find cell phones, refrigerators, flash chips, LCD screens and harddiscs to name just a few of their products.
Further company information can be found on Samsung’s website or on Wikipedia.
Drive specifications
We found the HD103UJ’s specification on Samsung’s website:
What’s inside the box
Now it’s time to take a look at the drive itself and what the drive came shipped with.
Our package was the bulk version.
The bulk drive was enclosed in plastics to avoid transportation damage.
We can see that the Samsung HD103UJ comes with a set of screws and an installation guide.
A look at the drive’s connectors
Here you can see the drive’s PCB
Drive capacity
Windows XP reports the drive has a usable capacity of 931 GB. The difference between the announced 1000 GB and the reported capacity is caused by drive manufacturers calculating with multiples of 1,000 while Windows calculates with multiples of 1,024.
Test machine
For this review we will be using a computer with the following configuration:
Hardware:
- Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R
- Processor: Intel Core2Duo E8400
- RAM: 4 GB (2*2GB) OCZ PC2-6400U CL5 XTC OCZ2G8004GK
- GFX: Sapphire HD 3850 Ultimate 512MB PCIe
- Sound: Onboard Realtek HD Audio controller
- Hard disk: Samsung HD103UJ
- PSU: BeQuiet Dark Power Pro P7-450W
- Operating System: Windows XP Professional (32 bit) with SP3
Drive Capabilities
The drive provides the expected features like S.M.A.R.T, 48-bit addressing, AAM, Power Management or Native Command Queuing. The drive’s firmware version is 1AA01113.
Instead of just setting a jumper you need to run software that is available for download from www.samsunghdd.com in order to change the drive’s SATA mode in case your controller has compatibility issues with SATA-2 mode. This will make things complicated if you do not have a PC that can recognize the drive in SATA-2 mode. Fortunately this only affects some boards with older VIA chipsets.
Test applications
To test the performance of the Corsair Flash Survivor, we will be using the following test applications in this review.
All tests except for the HD Tune Pro file benchmarks were run with the drive being unpartitioned.
Now let’s head to the next page where we will test out reading performance…
14 Comments
- guest
- Posts: 15288
- Posted on: 05 Nov 08 23:33
Have to RMA 2 out of 2 within half a year. 
Seems ,not bad! here I have another good share: http://www.tradestead.com there are many kinds of beautiful and useful consumer electronics that I like it very much! 
:S
- guest
- Posts: 15288
- Posted on: 02 Jun 09 16:57
My verdict: don't buy, very low quality product.
See my website for more testing details.
Please help!!
I have a Asrock k8 Combo-z motherbord which will not detect the harddrive Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ. I have tried to look in the cmos and it showes that it should bee there by looking at the boot menue, but not when looking in the ide menue
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Originally Posted by dynsmerling
Hello
Please help!! I have a Asrock k8 Combo-z motherbord which will not detect the harddrive Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ. I have tried to look in the cmos and it showes that it should bee there by looking at the boot menue, but not when looking in the ide menue |
i got one about a year ago ( late Oct / Early Nov 2008 ) and it's been great so far to this day. (maybe i am lucky?)
but i guess all those failure rates cant be wrong if there is people complaining. the main reason i got one is because Samsung brand generally seems like a good product and they seem to be the fastest drives in there class due to the 3 platters vs 4-5 in everyone else so they have the best transfer speeds etc.
Time will tell for the HD103UJ. Only dare to use them in RAID config. Many issue's seem to point to SATA-2 compatibility, which manifests itself in early use of the disk. The head clicking, the high operating temp etc, doesn't sound good.
Keep an eye on SMART attributes, assuming the function is implemented without glitches.
I'm running Windows xp Professional SP3
On an Asus P5q motherboard and E8400 cpu.
I tried configuring the drives both as IDE and AHCI which makes no difference at all. Did a few benchmarks with HD-tune 2.55 and 3.50 pro but the maximum reading speeds do not exceed 96 mb/s and I always average out around 79mb/s
I have heard people complain about the high temps of these drives but I have yet to see them go over 30c
Mine is 1AA01118 production date June 2009.
SMART attribute spin-up time and temp are outside normalized spec, drivesitter keeps pulling the alarm. On top of that daily clicking. Had to switch down to SATA-1 to get it to work in a DELL SX280.