Samsung SP2504C 250 GB SATA-300 Hard Disk Drive Review
By Gabriel Torres on March 30, 2006 Page 1 of 5

Introduction

Hardware Secrets Golden AwardSamsung SP2504C is a 250 GB hard disk drive using the new SATA-300 interface, which allows a maximum theoretical transfer rate of 300 MB/s. Its main specs also include an 8 MB buffer, 7,200 rpm rotation speed and support to NCQ (Native Command Queuing). In this review we checked the performance of Samsung SP2504C installed on a motherboard using a regular SATA-150 port and also on a motherboard using the new SATA-300 port.

This very same hard disk drive is also available with a 200 GB capacity, being called SP2004C. Both belong to SpinPoint P120 series from Samsung.

Samsung SP2504C
click to enlarge
Figure 1: Samsung SP2504C, 250 GB, SATA-300, 7,200 rpm and 8 MB buffer.

Samsung SP2504C
click to enlarge
Figure 2: The other side of Samsung SP2504C.

As you can see on Figure 2, it requires a SATA power connector.

Samsung SP2504C is based on the Marvell 88i6525 controller (also called SOC, System On a Chip). This chip is not only one of the smallest Serial ATA HDD controllers available on the market, but also is natively SATA-300, supporting NCQ.

Its 8 MB buffer is made by Samsung K4S641632H-UC60 SDRAM memory chip (it holds 64 Mbits, which equals to 8 MB).

As motor driver Samsung SP2504C uses HA13645 chip from Hitachi.

Samsung SP2504C
click to enlarge
Figure 3: Controller chip (Marvell 88i6525) and buffer chip (Samsung K4S641632H-UC60).

The real capacity of this hard disk drive is of 232.88 GB, since all manufacturers assume that 1 GB is 1 billion bytes, while 1 GB is in fact 1,073,741,824 bytes (2^30).

This hard disk drive has also a SATA-150/SATA-300 jumper, which should be installed in case you find some incompatibility between your SATA-150 motherboard and your hard disk drive. We installed this hard disk drive on a SATA-150 motherboard and we found no compatibility problems at all and we hadn’t to install this jumper.


Originally at http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/307/1Pages (5): 1 2 3 4 5 »
© 2004-8, Hardware Secrets, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Total or partial reproduction of the contents of this site, as well as that of the texts available for downloading, be this in the electronic media, in print, or any other form of distribution, is expressly forbidden. Those who do not comply with these copyright laws will be indicted and punished according to the International Copyrights Law.

We do not take responsibility for material damage of any kind caused by the use of information contained in Hardware Secrets.