Samsung SV Series Hard Drives

Samsung has launched two hard drives–SV8004H and SV4002H–in its SV series. Meant for the regular desktop PCs, both have 5,400 rpm spindle speed, an UltraATA/100 interface and 2 MB cache buffer. The only difference between the two models is their storage capacity–40 GB and 80 GB. We tested the 80 GB drive since both have similar technical specifications.

We used an ASUS CU4XV motherboard with PIII/700 CPU, 128 MB RAM, and ASUS V300C graphics card. We used WinBench 99 to test the seek time, transfer rate, and CPU utilization of the drives. The drive performed quite well in all the tests. It showed a seek time of 8.32 ms, which was better than its rated seek time of 8.9 ms. Its average data transfer rate came to 34 MBps, which is quite good, and better than Seagate’s 80 GB drive reviewed earlier. The drive didn’t hog up the CPU either leaving the CPU utilization to a low 2.02%. The drive’s cost per GB comes to only Rs 113, which is cheaper than Maxtor’s and Seagate’ 80 GB drives.

Given its performance, price, and the three-year warranty, the drive’s a good buy.

Neelima Vaid at PCQ Labs