Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB HDD

So, Samsung has this series of hardrives called the Spinpoint F1 series, with the HD103UJ topping it at 1TB. All three drives in the series have a data density of 350GB, operate at 7200RPMs, and utilize the SATA/300 interface.

its the one on the left.

Only the 750GB and 1TB drives have the full 32MB cache though. All of that calculates to make the 1TB drive have a total average access time of 14.2 milliseconds, which, in the terabyte hard drive market (there aren't many) is slow, in fact, Seagate and Hitachi have models that perform at 12.7ms and 13.8ms respectively, so the only company the Samsung beats out is the WD Caviar GP with its 15/15.1ms access time.

So, why would you want a slower drive? First, it only uses 3 platters due to its higher data density, that means it's cheaper, and operates cooler, heat from an HDD might not be too big of an issue in your home computer, but in a server, or data center, it's a computer's performance's kryptonite. THG ran some tests with the other terabyte HDD competitors, as well as some other miscellaneous drive, their findings were interesting to say the least.

Basically what they found is that sure, as file server, where access times are the most important factor, the Samsung was more or less bottom of the rung, but as a Web Server, Database, or workstation, it was outperforming a large majority of the other drives in the test. And, as expected, it had some of the lowest temps of all the drives, and has one of the lower power consumptions both when idle and when being accessed. The cheapest price from a reputable online retailer was $319, which pegs this drive at one of the cheaper 1TB hard drives.

Spinpoint F1: Samsung Overtakes With a Bang [via tomshardwareguide]