Slow Samsung F1 640GW HD642JJ

Hello folk,

I recently purchased a Samsung HD642JJ 640GB HD, after reading reviews claiming the drive's quiet, cool and fast. However, testing it with HD Tune and HDTach showed it to be much slower than anticipated - With both benchmarks, average read throughput is about 66MB/s, while every review I came across had an average of about 90MB/s.

I discussed it with several owners of such drives in a local forum and here are our results:

5 drives had an average read of ~66MB/s, one got ~90MB/s. Some were running Windows XP and some Vista, some were using various Intel-based boards while mine's based on an Nforce 4, the STA drivers tested were from Microsoft, Intel ans Nvidia (in some cases, mine for instance, drivers from both Microsoft and the chipset maker were tested with no difference in the average read). We found only one commonality: all of the 5 slow drives are using firmware ver. 1AA01108 while the fast one is using 1AA01112.

So far we've came with three possible explanations:

1. There's a major bug in the 08 firmware.

2. Those drives are in fact re-branded HD642JI, rotating at a 5400RPM instead of 7200RPM.

3. those drives are using the smaller, 250GB platters instead of the 334GB platters.

We've made several attempts to contact Samsung using the form on this web page:
http://www.samsung.com/global/busi [...] s_HDD.html
but after close to 2 weeks, none of us got any reply!

Have you encountered a similar problem? Any idea what could be causing it, how can I test it and how can I contact Samnsung?

Thanks,

Istra Balagina

Hi!

I had one HD642JJ and today I got another one.

The old one has 110 (begin) to 55 (end) MB/s transfer rate, while the new one is about 10 MB/s slower: 100 to 45 MB/s


The old one has FW 1AA01110 and the new one 1AA01112.

Any idea why is that ?

Regards,
David

PS: I did not weight my drives ;-)