With the Spinpoint S1 Mini Samsung presents a very small and also elegant external storage solution which comes with a capacity of 120 GByte. The 1.8 inch hard drive rotates with 4'200 rotations per minute, carries 8 MByte of cache and therefore proimises good reading and writing performance for such a small drive. To ensure good compatibility the drive is equipped with a USB 2.0 Interface. 
On the following pages we will show what Samsungs Story Station with 1.5 TByte is capable of.
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Specifications
| Model | Samsung Spinpoint S1 Mini |
| Capacity | 120 GByte |
| Interface | USB 2.0 (480 MBit/sec) |
| Dimension | 126 (H) x 80 (W) x 15 (L) mm |
| Weight | 91 Gramm |
| Compatibility | Windows 7 Windows Vista/XP/Professional Windows 2000 Pro Mac OS X |
| Manual | printed as well as multiligual PDFs |
| Featureseatures | FSamsung Auto Backup SecretZoneretZone SafetyKey |
| Warranty | 3 years |
With the Spinpoint S1 Samsung also delivers numerous features. There we have an automatic backup function which get available by install Auto Backup, a Secret Zone, where files can be hidden and Safety Key to encryp your sensitive files. Furthermore the manual, situated already on the Story Station itself, is available in 17 different languages. Auto Backup and SecretZone are described in seven different languages. It is a matter of fact, that the manuals are exceptionally good and the Software is explained step by step.
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How do we test?
Testenvironment
We recommend that readers who aren't interested in test procedures jump over this and the following page and head directly to the test results.| Model | Samsung Story Station | 1.5 TByte |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte X38-DQ6 | |
| Chipset | Intel X38 | 1066 MHz |
| CPU | Intel Xeon 3060 | 2.4 GHz |
| Memory | Corsair Dominator 9136 DDR2 | 2 GByte |
| Graphics card | Gigabyte GeForce 7200 | |
| Storage (system) | Maxtor | 160 GByte |
| Operating systems | Ubuntu 8.04.1 Hardy | Kernel 2.6.24-19-server |
| Filesystem | XFS |
We think everybody reading this article can imagine the following scenario: You just bought a hard drive which according the specs sheet should transfer 120 MByte/s reading and writing. In the reviews you read about astonishing 110 MByte/s but after you put the drive into you system it feels much slower. The whole story gets even worse when you start a benchmark which does randomread/write of 4 KByte blocks. There you only get two to three MBytes/s.
Because of this we don't want to publish screenshots of standard programs like HD-Tach, HD-Tune, ... we want our tests to be
- reproducible,
- accurate
- meaningful and
- varied
We test with activated caches and NCQ (Native Command Queueing) because they're also activated under daily use. But the data size tested is always at least twice the amount of the memory.
We noticed that the measuring error is constantly within ±2%. Therefore we mention it only here.
Additionally we evaluate the S.M.A.R.T. data to assess if there are already errors.
The following table give you a brief overview to which points we turn our centre of attention.
| Test | Observations |
| Sequential Read/Write Tests |
|
| Random Read/Write Tests |
|
iozone3
iozone3 is a benchmark suit for storage solutions which natively runs under Linux.
Therefore we are testing the throughput with different block sizes using the following commands:
- iozone -Rb test16k.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 16k -s4g -t2
- iozone -Rb test32k.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 32k -s4g -t2
- iozone -Rb test64k.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 64k -s4g -t2
- iozone -Rb test128k.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 128k -s4g -t2
- iozone -Rb test256k.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 256k -s4g -t2
- iozone -Rb test512k.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 512k -s4g -t2
Why do we test different block sizes?
It is important to reproduce scenarios of daily usage. Certain parameters need to be variable during the test to make a statement about the product. In our test the parameters are the different block sizes. It defines the size in KBytes which is written/read on the drive during a transaction.
With this method one can test the reading and writing of either small and big files. In a normal personal computer environment you usually don't find many files smaller than 16 KByte. The relative amount of small files is much bigger on a mail or database server. Therefore tests with small block sizes are of interest for database-based applications.
In bigger RAID arrays the hard disk cache is usually disabled and the RAID-Controller takes over the job of caching. Exactly in such setups hard drives need to be very fast when reading or writing small amounts of data. Sequential throughput isn't interesting in this case.
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iozone sequential write/read KByte/s
iozone KByte/s, sequential write |
|
| 16 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 31'997 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 16'927 |
| 32 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 32'069 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 16'945 |
| 64 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 31'896 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 16'664 |
| 128 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 31'823 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 16'980 |
| 256 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 32'169 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 17'019 |
| 512 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 31'866 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 18'445 |
iozone KByte/s, sequential read |
|
| 16 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 29'081 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 15'125 |
| 32 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 29'060 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 15'290 |
| 64 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 29'428 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 14'560 |
| 128 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 28'897 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 15'037 |
| 256 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 29'152 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 15'149 |
| 512 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 28'869 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 15'236 |
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iozone random write/read KByte/s
iozone KByte/s, random write |
|
| 16 KByte | |
| Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.0 TByte SATA | 4'569 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 4'428 |
| 32 KByte | |
| Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.0 TByte SATA | 7'652 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 6'280 |
| 64 KByte | |
| Samsung Spinpoint F1 1.0 TByte SATA | 12'360 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 8'757 |
| 128 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 19'243 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 11'544 |
| 256 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 27'501 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 14'650 |
| 512 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 31'595 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 16'936 |
iozone KByte/s, random read |
|
| 16 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 1'801 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 1'357 |
| 32 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 3'580 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 2'378 |
| 64 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 6'534 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 3'952 |
| 128 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 11'136 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 6'648 |
| 256 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 14'274 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 8'635 |
| 512 KByte | |
| Samsung Story Station 1.5 TByte 3.5'' | 20'807 |
| Samsung S1 120 GByte 1.8'' | 10'431 |
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Conclusion
With the Spinpoint S1 Samsung presents a very compact and practical external hard drive for on the go. Taking a closer look at such a small hard drive, measuring only 1.8 inch in diameter, you'll soon find controversials if you compared it to USB sticks. Therefore the biggest advantages are the biggest disadvantages. For example the Spinopoint S1's dimensions: on one hand the hard drive is bigger and heavier but on the other this is what makes it easier not to be forgotten. The certain size and the elegant design will always remind to keep it with you. Another crucial puls point comparing USB sticks and hard drive is the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) when handling the hard drive carefully. The NAND cells you find on a flash memory based USB stick is capable of executing up to 10'000 write cycles per single storage cell. In a worst case scenario this can limit an USB sticks lifespan to less then half a year. With a 1.8 inch hard drive you get an MTBF of 300'000 hours which is way beyond.
Already on the Spinpoint S1 you will find features installable on Windows 2000 and higher as well as Mac OS X. They are a very practical addition especially for home office users. At this point we again mention the manuals quality. You can find them situated directly on the drive in several languages. Installing and using the delivered application in combination with the manuals is childern's play.
The Spinpoint S1 is a reliable and good looking external storage device for on the go which is able to carry a lot of files with its 120 GByte capacity. The compact size and the confortable weight let you always feel the you're carrying your sensitive data with you.
Samsungs Spinopint S1 with a capacity of 120 GByte can be bought at Digitec.ch to a price of CHF 139.- (EUR 93.-).
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Author: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch