I heard some good things about Samsung Hard Disks on the Internet, so I thought I would give them a go.

I needed an internal SATA 3.0 500gb. My main criteria was Cost per GB, reliability, operating noise and performance.

You take such a gamble when you get a new hard disk, some are quiet, some are noisy, some make chunking noise, some don’t.

So between the good reputation from peers/users I chose the Samsung HD501LJ

So how does it meet my criteria?

Cost Per GB: 13p Per GB

Reliability: So far so good, build quality looks good too. Installation was simple.

Operating Noise: Excellent virtually silent.

Performance: I haven’t done any technical speed tests but anecdotally in use this seems very fast. I back up my data to ISO format and I can create a 20gb ISO in about 5 minuets. 

Summary

I have had nothing but a good experience so far. The key issue is reliability and that will only be known after time.

Co-incidentally My Dell XPS 420 shipped from Dell with the same model the HD501LJ

So a recommended buy from me, but if you have a different story share it with the world in the comments.

Well overnight in blustery Cheshire something seems to have killed my primary connection to the Internet. The bad weather is the most likely candidate.

Its 7:30am so no humans are at work yet in my ISP technical support department.

Access to the Internet is critical to my business without it I am much less effective.

So being the organised worrier I have a 2nd connection to the Internet. So I fire that up and away we go.

The point of my post to remind any business user reading this that their own Internet Connection is probably just as crucial to them. So ask your I.T. Department what their plan is if it ever goes down.

A few years ago BT (British Telecom) had a fire in Manchester and this caused no end of trouble for business. It was painful to watch a one of my clients manage on Dial up for 4 days. Never mind the expense.

I agreed with the client in an after action exercise that we would deploy a separate connection to the Internet in another building on a separate ISP (the two building were connected over fibre optics).

It may be expensive, but the chances of that client being knocked off the Internet are now greatly reduced and on days like this I don’t have to worry about them.