Amiga MA Magazine 1998 #6/amigamamagazinepolishissue1998.iso/www/cucug/amiga/amiinfo/reviews/samsungshd-321.txt

Internet Message Format | 1997-11-07 | 15KB

Path: news.uh.edu!barrett
From: [e-mail] (C. J. Coulson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Samsung SHD-3212A hard drive
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Date: 8 Nov 1994 20:17:45 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Lines: 346
Sender: [e-mail] (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <39omd9$[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (C. J. Coulson)
NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu
Keywords: hardware, IDE, hard drive, commercial
Originator: [e-mail]


PRODUCT NAME

    Samsung SHD-3212A hard drive


BRIEF DESCRIPTION

    This is a 420 MB 3.5" IDE hard drive for the A4000 and other Amigas
with the capacity for a 3.5" IDE drive.

    For best results, this review should be read alongside the review
written by Jorgen Grahn of the same hard drive.

    [MODERATOR'S NOTE:  this review can be found in the file
    hardware/storage/SamsungSHD-3212A in the c.s.a.reviews archives.
    See the signature, below, for the archive location.  - Dan]


AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

    Contact Information for Samsung Head Office (Korea)

    Name:        Samsung Electronics
            Storage Device Subdivision
            Computer Systems Business Division

    Address:    416 Maetan -3Dong
            Paldal-Gu
            Suwon
            Kyung Ki-Do
            Korea
            441-742

    Telephone:    [phone]
    FAX:        [phone]

    Note: I do not have any other address/phone number for Samsung.
Also note that the phone/fax numbers will require the South Korean
international access code added (unless you are located in South Korea :)).

    [MODERATOR'S NOTE:  I am sure that Samsung has a local address
    in most countries.  - Dan]


LIST PRICE

    I have never seen the official price for this drive listed anywhere
in the UK, and since it seems to be a new drive, few suppliers actually stock
it (at the time of writing this review).  I paid 179.99 UK Pounds for mine.


SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

    HARDWARE

        Any Amiga with space for a 3.5", 1" high hard drive,
        and an IDE interface; e.g., the A4000.

    SOFTWARE

        Some form of hard drive preparation utility, like
        HDToolBox supplied with some Workbench 3 machines.


MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

    Amiga A4000/030, 2MB Chip RAM and 4MB Fast RAM.
    Seagate 124MB IDE Hard Drive (ST3144AT).
    Kickstart 3.0, Workbench 3.0.


INSTALLATION

    Do NOT install anything inside your Amiga unless you know exactly
what you are doing.  Be especially careful with anti-static precautions,
since the internals of both the Amiga and the hard drive are sensitive to
static discharges.  If you are in any doubt whatsoever, leave the
installation to a professional.  It may cost you some money, but you'll be
buying peace of mind.

    If you are capable of installing hardware yourself, then read on; if
not, then skip immediately to the next section.  Thank you.

    The A4000 was designed to be accessible.  Removing the casing is a
simple matter of removing two screws and pulling the cover off, remembering
to pull up then back in order to disengage the locking tabs at the front of
the case.  (You can't see them until you get the cover off, but you'll know
about them soon enough if you try sliding the cover off without lifting up
first. :-))

    Once inside, and working with the front of the A4000 facing me (I
prefer it that way, though you may prefer a different orientation), the data
and power cables attached to the existing hard drive were removed.  My
Seagate drive grips its power connector very tightly, so I find it easier if
I remove the data connector first, giving me more finger room to grip the
power connector.  You may also like to remove the data connector from any
drives installed in the front drive bays, as you could then hang that ribbon
cable out the back of the A4000. It's not necessary though.

    After detaching the existing drive from its cables, the four
FLATHEAD screws securing the drive cradle to the A4000 are removed, and the
cradle lifted out of the casing.  Note that there is a clear plastic sheet
between the cradle and the Zorro backplane.  You will most likely need to
reposition this later on...

    Depending on whether you are mounting the Samsung drive as a slave
or a master drive will determine what to do next.  Since the only jumper
settings I had for the Seagate drive were to set it up as a master drive,
that is what I did.  Note, I obtained the settings from Amiga Format issue
55, as I didn't get any jumper settings with the A4000.

    For those of you with a Seagate 124MB drive, to set it up as a
master drive you must put a jumper across the middle set of pins on the
jumper block, which is located on the PCB side of the drive next to the data
interface.  A problem here is that my Seagate did not come with spare
jumpers.  However, since the Samsung drive comes with more jumpers than
necessary to set it up as a slave drive, I took one of the redundant jumpers
from that drive and used it on the Seagate.  Unusually the Samsung jumpers
are slightly smaller than the norm, but they can be persuaded to fit the
jumper pins on the Seagate drive.  If you're not happy about this kind of
thing, correct sized jumpers can be bought from most electronic component
suppliers for next to nothing.

    Once the jumpers on both drives had been set, the Samsung drive was
located in the drive cradle and the supplied ROUNDHEAD screws used to secure
it in place, noting that the drive should be oriented the right way around,
with the PCB facing down when the cradle is held the right way up.  The full
cradle is then replaced in the A4000, remembering to reposition the plastic
sheet, and the whole mass is secured with the FLATHEAD screws you remembered
to keep safely to one side (what's that, you lost one? Bummer...).

    Now the data and power cables are connected.  It doesn't matter
which power cable goes to which drive, but you must use the correct data
connector.  However, due to the preforming of the ribbon cable used, the
correct connector should line up with the correct drive pretty much
automatically as soon as you put the cable back in place, FLAT across the
top of the drive cradle.

    If you disconnected any other cables, you'd better replace them now,
because in a moment the casing is going back on.

    OK, put the case back on, remembering those tags at the front that
cause problems on the left side of the A4000 case, since the controller
ports stick out just a bit too far and cause the bottom lip of the case to
snag when dropping it down into place.  You therefore have to remember not
only to pull the case out a bit to clear the ports, but also to get the
locking tag lined up.  Assuming you get the case back together neatly, you
can connect up the power, monitor, keyboard and mouse.  If you feel
confident you could connect up any other peripherals you have, but if you
messed up on the installation, you'll just have to disconnect them all again
in order to open the case back up.

    Let's assume the hardware side of things went fine, and you are now
looking at your Workbench screen.  You need to use whatever installation
software you have in order to let the system know about the new drive.  For
A4000 owners, just follow the HDToolbox instructions in the manual and
create whatever sized partitions you like.  Note that the drive, although
marked as a 420MB drive, will only format to 405MB.  Now this is normal for
a hard drive, since my 124MB Seagate is marked as a 144MB drive.  Usually
Amiga dealers will advertise drives with the installed sizes, whereas PC
dealers use the manufacturers sizes, but this is by no means a hard and fast
rule.

    After setting your partitions, next comes the joy of formatting
them.  Beware, formatting 400MB of drive space takes about ten minutes, so
you may like to go off and have a coffee break now while your Amiga does
some of the hard work for a change.

    That should be it. You now have 400+MB of free hard drive space,
just ready for all those GIFs and JPEGs from certain Usenet
groups............ ahem, or if you prefer, a barrow load of clip art and
fonts, Imagine objects, SoundTracker modules etc.


REVIEW

    Well, it's a hard drive, a big cheap hard drive.  It shows no signs
of dislike to either my A4000 or the Seagate drive forced to share a
mounting cradle with it.

    Sysinfo reports a speed of 1MB/second for the Seagate drive and
1.4MB/second for the Samsung.  Since some people like to ignore Sysinfo
results, claiming inaccuracies, I conducted some simple real world tests.
Using a 1.2MB LhA archive held in RAM:, the following scripts, also in RAM:,
were executed five times each, and the resultant timings averaged.


    date
    copy test.lha Seagate:test/
    date

    date
    copy test.lha Samsung:test/
    date

    date
    copy Seagate:test/test.lha ram:
    date

    date
    copy Samsung:test/test.lha ram:
    date

Results:

Drive:        RAM: to Drive:        Drive: to RAM:
Seagate        4 seconds        3 seconds
Samsung        2 seconds          2.5 seconds


    So it would appear that the Samsung is about twice as fast as the
Seagate when writing to the drive, but only about 1.2 times faster at
reading.  It also suggests that the Sysinfo drive transfer rates are indeed
suspect, at least when dealing with transfers of around 1MB.

    Just as an aside, the documentation that came with the drive
suggested a transfer rate of 8 (EIGHT!!) MB/second.  Where do they get these
figures from? (Although bear in mind the IDE interface is controlled by the
host CPU, so I guess if the drive was fitted to a Warp Engine equipped A4000
you could increase the real world transfer rate somewhat :)).

    Another useful fact from these tests was that the LhA archive
remained uncorrupted after being passed to and from the Samsung drive, which
means that since I had left the MaxTransfer rate at the default setting, the
Samsung drive will work with that setting, unlike some other IDE drives.

    Unlike Jorgen, I find the noise the drive makes to be fairly
normal.  It is louder than the Seagate drive, and to me it sounds like
someone tapping their fingernails on a hard table top.  It occurs only when
the drive is stepping its heads in and out, in the same way that Amiga
floppy drives make a loud noise only when stepping from track to track.  If
your Amiga has a cooling fan, or if you listen to music whilst computing,
you'll probably not notice the sound after a short while.  I've heard much
worse noises coming from other types of IDE drive.


DOCUMENTATION

    Here I begin to differ substantially from Jorgens' review.  My
drive, purchased in the UK, came with a small six page booklet, detailing
the specifications of the drive, the jumper settings to use, notes on
installation and formatting.  However, the formatting notes assume you have
fitted the drive to a PC and are of little or no use to the average Amiga
user.  On the other hand, the notes about jumper settings are good, with a
very clear diagram showing just where the jumpers are located.


LIKES

    The price is low, certainly lower than that of any other 420MB IDE
drive in the UK.  The build quality appears excellent, with no last minute
changes to the PCB apparent.  The installation instructions are clear and
tell you what you need to know, apart from Amiga specific things which you
couldn't really expect the drive documentation to cover, bearing in mind
that Samsung no doubt expect most of their drives to be sold to PC owners.

    Now, unlike Jorgen, I have yet to see the drive fail to spin up from
a cold boot.  The only two things that differ between my setup and his are
that my Seagate drive is a 124MB model rather than an 80MB model, and that
(perhaps more significantly) I configured the Samsung as the slave drive,
whereas Jorgen made it the master.

    Since I don't know what the jumper settings are to make the Seagate
a slave, I can't test whether swapping the master/slave settings makes a
difference; but since I don't think it has anything to do with the
difference in our Seagate drives, I can only assume that either I have a
later revision Samsung drive which spins up faster, or that setting a slow
spin-up drive as a slave somehow makes everything work just fine.

    Finally, the drive can handle the standard MaxTransfer rate and is
100% compatible with the Seagate drives (copying a 60MB partition from the
Seagate to the Samsung caused no data loss or corruption at all, proving
that inter-drive transfer works, and general use of the Amiga has shown no
problems in accessing data from either drive)


DISLIKES

    Hmmmmm. I suppose it could be even cheaper, but that's really
scraping the bottom of the barrel.  Honestly, I can't say anything bad about
the drive.


COMPARISON TO OTHER PRODUCTS

    See above for speed comparison to the Seagate ST3144 drive.


VENDOR SUPPORT

    I had reason to contact the vendor when the drive was late in
arriving (I had ordered the drive as part of a larger order, and two weeks
after all the other parts of the order had arrived, the drive had not).  A
telephone call to the order query line sorted the problem out, a drive was
dispatched that day and it arrived three working days later, as the dealer
advert said it would.  I regard the service I received as good; the phone
was answered quickly, the woman at the other end of the line dealt with my
query efficiently and in a friendly manner, and she then called back later
that day to confirm the dispatch of the drive.


WARRANTY

    No warranty information came with the drive. If any problems arise
with the drive I must contact the supplier who will then inform me of what
action to take.


CONCLUSIONS

    If you are sick of constantly shuffling files around on your current
hard drive and are looking for more drive space, or if you are looking for a
first time drive, then this is an excellent purchase. The Cost/Size ratio is
very good compared to other sized drives, and it is also (currently) the
cheapest 420MB drive.

    Note that I had read Jorgen's review of the drive before I decided to
purchase mine, and until I actually fitted and tested my drive, I was quite
prepared to put up with the spin-up problem.  The only reason you could be
put off buying one of these drives is if you need to be 100% certain that
you won't have a spin-up problem.  It didn't bother me, and the fact that I
don't have the problem is just a nice bonus.


COPYRIGHT NOTICE

    This review can be used in any way, distributed wherever you so
desire. Just try and remember the author somehow. :-)

    Thanks to Jorgen Grahn for the original review, without which this
review would probably be about a Western Digital 420MB drive instead.

    This review was hand crafted by an infinite number of monkeys, aided
by Chris Coulson and his A4000.

Chris
[e-mail]

---

   Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews
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