Samsung PLS-31274A (1.2GB) EIDE drive--impressions
Yeechang Lee
Background: I consider myself pretty knowledgeable, having replaced a
power supply this week, but only had an old 386sx at home until last
month, so the Samsung and another drive are the first high-capacity
drives I've owned.
Paid for the drive at a CompUSA mid-October, drive arrived
mid-December. Apparently, the killer $199 price for a 1270MB drive
attracted _lots_ of attention.
The manual was well written, even going so far as to offer the phone
#s of IBM, Quantum, Maxtor, and other drive manufacturers for jumper
settings. The drive also came with a pretty long IDE cable (handy in
my tower case), 5.25" and AT drive rails, the OnTrack Disk Mananger
software (which I haven't needed), and plenty of mounting screws. Oh
yeah, there's a three year warranty.
The drive came with jumper info on the top of the case, which my other
drive (Quantum Fireball 1280) could've used.
The ANSI-compliant autoconfiguration feature in my CMOS says the drive
does PIO Mode 3; the motherboard and the Quantum drive both do Mode 4.
I don't know how much of a difference this makes. The manual
unfortunately is silent on whether this is accurate or not, only
saying it does "Enhanced IDE" and "Fast ATA."
The drive is _loud_, far louder than the Quantum or my Teac 56E-151 CD
drive. I have Linux loaded on it (with the master Quantum holding
Win95 and LILO), and it's quite a racket, drowning out the (rather
quiet) power supply fan.
Probably ought to call tech support (800-SAMSUNG) for info on the
PIO modes. I own a Samsung 17GLi monitor too, and the couple of times
I've called them about it they were friendly and prompt.
All in all, seems like a pretty good drive and a great value for the
price. What do others think?
--
http://www.columbia.edu/~ylee/ __
__-/ |
/____ |___
PERTH------>\*-/