Samsung EcoGreen F4 HD204UI

Internal Hard Drive Reviews

This could be the last ever Samsung HDD we test here at DigitalVersus, as since Samsung's hard drive division was bought by Seagate, Samsung-branded hard drives could soon be a thing of the past. So should this EcoGreen F4 HD204UI HDD be confined to the realms of history without second thought, or should you be out there snapping up every last model before it's too late? Answers below. This 3.5-inch (desktop PC format) hard drive has a 6 Gbps SATA-3 interface which should mean that large files can be transferred pretty quickly. The spin speed is limited to 5400 rpm, which could hinder performance with other types of file. However, this limit is easily explained by the fact that the HD204UI is part of Samsung's EcoGreen range, designed to keep power consumption and operating temperatures to a minimum. Finally, the 32 MB cache memory is pretty standard for this type of HDD. Note that high-performance drives often have a 64 MB cache and some SSDs pack in a huge 128 MB cache. Remember that unlike the hard drive's overall score, its rating in this section is based on a comparison been all the drives we've ever tested, including SSDs.