hey there
 
I recently purchased a samsung spinpoint F1 750GB and i'm trying to work out weather it is performing as good as it should.
 
I was just wonder what accurate HDD benchmarking software is out there and also what application toms hardware uses for their charts so i can compare my results.

Well I can tell you that HDTach is a commonly used program and is fairly accurate. As far as what Toms uses for their benchmarks, I couldn't tell you, but I'm sure someone else on the forum can.

sisoft sandra will give you a good comparison

HDTach doesn't work with vista but sisoft sandra... wow! never again will i be looking for a piece of software to benchmark something  
 
dam i've just had a look on the toms hardware charts and the 750GB one is much slower than the 1TB one! ah well i might just have to raid this one. I'm running out of storage with this anyway... kinda... as long as i don't delete my horde of junk.

HD Tune is good. I recommend that. Lets you benchmark it, scan for errors, displays temps.
http://www.hdtune.com/
 
Also SpeedFan has S.M.A.R.T tab that gives details of the hard disks condition. Theres also a button to peform an online analysis.
 
Check my thread on how the online analysis looks. I think its quite good because I've been having slow downs with my hdd.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/foru [...] sk-failing

speedfan doesn't detect my hdd    but i tried that hdtune and i like  it shows everything i want to know in an easy to read format.
 
btw noexpert i dunno what os you are running but i'm on vista and in hdd properties in device manager under policies is an option to enable advanced performance. i found enabling it reduce the amount of spikes for benchmarking (not noticeable in the real world) dramatically but i'm also into my overclocking with a crappy psu. one time my computer crashed with this option enabled and i ended up having to do a system restore then i found all of the .cfgs on my hdd had vanished. i don't recommend this option to anyone without system restore enabled and their computer is unstable enough to crash at least once since they have had it.

After selecting the S.M.A.R.T tab did you select the HDD from a drop down menu just in case. Btw i'm on XP, but thanks for the info I didn't know it would do that, hope nothing seriously affected.