SAMSUNG Spinpoint M Series HM121HC 120GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100 / ATA-6 2.5″ Notebook Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: It’s cheap.

Cons: Very audible clicking sounds when idle and when head unloading. Works otherwise. Very frustrating Samsung support. Samsung’s main web site lists drives, but not this one, and requires flash. Sucks if you are on dial up. If you happen to know about them, Samsung Global and SamsungHDD sites do cover it, but provide almost no useful information. Emailed queries get auto response which is useless. Live support could not tell me if the drive was bad, but offered to exchange it. I just wanted to know if the clicking was normal or abnormal. Support person did not seem to know much about hard drives.

Overall Review: I also bought a Samsung SATA drive at the same time, which is absolutely noiseless, so I suspect this one really is bad. Since this is on a backup computer that will not get much use, I just may let it go rather than go through the hassle of eating the shipping and restock fee, not to mention all the time installing the OS.

No question, though, I am through with Samsung. Support not knowing their products is unacceptable.

Pros: much better than the F*j** that came with the Dell Laptop and much faster, but do not expect a miracle. You will find the improvement in loading programs and making copies of stuff within the hard drive, but yes the performance increase is quite noticed.

Cons: read below as not really a con

Overall Review: If you absolutely have to clone a drive as to not have the downtime to reload all of the program stuff etc…..and you as in my case have a dell or another pc that behaves the same way with clone software, just remember, that as in my case, all of those weird, unknown, undefined sorta…..partions that you clone will grow in size by proportion….i.e. take the 3.5 gig proportion on my old drive…..by cloning it went to 11.5…..

By cloning a 120 gig laptop drive from a 40 gig OS it shrunk to just a bit over 100 gig without any data. Best bet is to back up your data, and reload all apps……I think I could probably gain 10-20 GB

Pros: This drive is great. It is very quiet in my averatec AV7115-EH1 laptop. I had no problems installing windows XP. The drive is easily formated without proprietary setup software. I was skeptical at first because I didn’t know Samsung made harddrives, but now I am very happy with my purchase.

Cons: I really can’t think of anything bad about this drive.

Overall Review: The drive was very securely packaged when I recieved it.

Pros: none

Cons: Drive did not work properly right out of the package(bubble wrap).

Overall Review: Returned it and got a WD a bit more expensive but it was worth it.

Pros: Quick installation, no problems with harddrive at all. Quiet and cool.

Cons: The bare drive (in mylar) was wrapped with bubble wrap and shipped in a cardboard box. I too would have liked to have seen more bubble wrap in the box.

Overall Review: I purchased this to upgrade the 20G hard drive in my car’s PhatNoise MP3 player, so noise, temp (5400 rpm), and shock-resistance were very important to me.

Quickly shipped from Newegg — and it got here the next day.

Pros: This HD works very well. It was recognized by the bios right away. Had no problems installing Windows XP Home SP2 on it.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: Was replacing a drive in a HP laptop that was starting to act erratically. My system is very stable now with this new hard drive. (I’m sure the fresh install of Windows is another huge factor!) Make sure you know which kind of hard drive you need. My laptop is older and uses IDE or PATA based drives, newer laptops use SATA.

Pros: Works great. easy to install. No problems so far.

Cons: None

Pros: Fast drive and beats my old Toshiba drive my laptop was running. Also it is barely audible, unless your ear is right next to the disk.

Cons: None