Both of these drives offer ergonomic quality long associated with Samsung products: The are quieter in operation than a Hitachi DeskStar 7K500, and also in direct comparison to all the other drives we tested for this article. Thus, a step up from a maximum of two to three drive platters hasn't hurt Samsung's status as a maker of quiet drives. At any rate, it was essential that the company take up the challenge in the capacity race with other vendors who serve the U.S. market, all of which are racing to launch their first drive with perpendicular recording technology to even further boost data storage density.

A second look at our test results shows, however, that Samsung's forward motion stops right after the temperature measurements. With a maximum data transfer rate of barely 60 MBs, the T133 drives lag a big step behind the SpinPoint P120 models. This reduction in performance runs is about 15%! Likewise, in terms of I/O performance, the T133 drives trail behind the competition, and access times are merely average. Just recently, we criticized Seagate's Barracuda 7200.9 for its merely so-so performance - now Samsung is joining this far-from-elite group.

It's time to repeat our appeal to drive manufacturers: Today, vendors need two distinct product families to meet the various and differing needs of the marketplace properly. One set of models needs to emphasize performance above all else, while the other needs to focus obsessively on maximum capacity. Thus, we can only recommend the SpinPoint if the price is right. That said, at least the warranty is unchanged: It's still three years long.