Review of the Samsung Spinpoint M7 2.5” Hard Drive

For any of you out there that have laptops, netbooks, or even PlayStation 3s, and have decided that your current hard drive just isn’t big enough for your needs, then you should look no further than the Samsung Spinpoint M7 hard drive – in this case, model number HM500JI.

This little beauty is 2.5” in size and packs a whopping 500GB of storage space.

SPECIFICATIONS

Capacity : 500GB

Interface : SATA 3.0Gbps

Buffer DRAM Size  : 8 MB

Byte per Sector : 512

Rotational Speed : 5,400 RPM

Average Seek time(typical) : 12 ms

Average Latency : 5.6 ms

Data Transfer Rate / Media to/from Buffer(Max.)  : 138 MB/s

Data Transfer Rate / Buffer to/from Host(Max.)  : 300MB/s

Drive Ready Time(typical) : 4 sec

Acoustics

Idle : 2.4 Bel

Performance Seek  : 2.6 Bel

Environmental Specifications

Temperature / Operating  : 5 ~ 55 ?

Temperature / Non-operating  : -40 ~ 70 ?

Humidity(non-condensing) / Operating  : 8 ~ 90 %

Humidity(non-condensing) / Non-operating  : 5 ~ 95 %

Liner Shock(1/2 sine pulse) / Operating : 400 G

Liner Shock(1/2 sine pulse) / Non-operating : 900 G

Vibration / Operating : 1.5 Grms

Power Requirements

Voltage : +5V±5%

Spin-up Current(Max.) : 1000 mA

Seek(typical) : 2.5 W

Read/Write(typical) : 2.5 W

Low Power Idle(typical) : 0.85 W

Standby(typical) : 0.25 W

Sleep(typical) : 0.2 W

Physical Dimension

Height (Max.)  :9.5 mm

Width : 69.85 mm

Length : 100 mm

Weight(avg.)  :105 g

CONCLUSION AND FINAL THOUGHTS

This little drive is great – it was extremely simple for me to remove a drive from one of my computers (ok, I will admit it, I put the drive in my MacBook Pro because 80GB just isn’t enough to run Snow Leopard and also Windows 7) and place this there.

The drive is really quiet and so far, appears to be fast, even though its only a 5400 drive.

I’m not really sure what else to add – it works great, and I’m going to get some more of these to upgrade some of my other devices!

Have a search around for the best deal, currently Amazon.co.uk are selling them for around £68 and Amazon.com are selling them for around $82.

If anyone else has used these drives, or any other 2.5” drives, let us know your thoughts.