Samsung SpinPoint PL40 SP0411N 40GB (2003)

Released in mid-late 2003, the SpinPoint PL40 was one of the defining members of the slimline lineup Samsung had at the time. In what seemed like a mini-trend in the industry, several manufacturers flocked to building super slim 3.5″ desktop drives, for one reason or another. Notably, Maxtor and Seagate would be two members demonstrating prominence in this sector.

While slimline drives are mechanically fascinating, they certainly haven’t held up as well as other drives have from the same era. Personally, I don’t trust these to a massive degree.

An early example.
 Drive Attributes
  -------------------------------------
  Samsung SpinPoint PL40 SP0411N
  -------------------------------------
  Capacity      40GB
  Mfc Date      2003-12
  Format        3.5"
  Interface     PATA
  Platters      1
  Heads         1
  RPM           7200
  -------------------------------------

Sporting only 1 head on a single 80GB platter, these drives are incredibly simple in terms of hard drive design. Nonetheless, it’s fascinating to see how thin they managed to make these things. Samsung used this base design for a few generations, spanning to around late 2005, until they seemingly dropped them entirely.

Made in Korea.

Samsung were previously my go-to brand, alongside Hitachi. I didn’t have much experience with these when they were relevant, but I have fond memories with Samsung’s labelling structure. Mode selections are super simple, drives are always dated and everything is nice and clear. What more could you ask for?

On the other hand…

The bottom looks like any other Samsung from the time! It might be hard to even tell it’s a slimline from this angle. The usual Nidec spindle motor takes hold in the centre. From this angle, we can clearly see the internal code-name for these drives, being Pango, shown on the silkscreen (near the notch on the right hand side). This was also mentioned on the label earlier, which is slightly more obvious.

Big chips.

Samsung loved using huge Marvell-made IC’s on their drive PCB’s, which was often a telling sign you were about to deal with one when having a peek in a computer for the first time. A lot of drive logic was integrated on these chips, before many other manufacturers moved to do the same. It’s certainly a relatively large package to see on a hard drive, but the PCB layout suggests it also hosts the PATA bus controlling logic. There’s also some buffer RAM (right of the Marvell controller IC) and the motor controller IC to the top left.

Inside! Inside? Huh?

This is one of those rare opportunities where we can look into one of these, without horrific consequences. The drive shown above was previously dead, but after some minor adjustments it came back to life in rather bizarre fashion. This isn’t the same drive shown above, but seeing as they’re identical it doesn’t matter much.

Concerning internal design, it’s easy to see how they made these so slim. The top surface of the platter is ignored entirely, with only a single head on the bottom side. Everything was stuffed in there pretty well.

The actuator.

The actuator design on these is quite fascinating to look at. It’s dialed down by a huge degree, in order to meet the ultra thin requirements of these drives. Aside from that, these drives are like most other modern drives.

In terms of reliability, I’m not too fond of these. Of the three I own, two show issues. Well, I suppose only one of them does now after the open drive above clearly practiced necromancy at some point. Surprisingly, these are fairly inconsistent in terms of longevity and consistency. They definitely seem to throw a tantrum if they so desire, but then come back to life when they please also.

They’re truly fascinating drives, but they are some of the only Samsung’s I’ve ever had issues with in my many years of dealing with them (if we ignore the truly cursed SHD/Apollo early days of Samsung, which should be forgotten and buried). Nonetheless, they’re fun when they work.

If you missed the video I made on this drive, you can find it here:

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