Samsung F4 2TB Drive any good ?

drf · 22 Feb 2011 at 16:29

Allegedly they are £52.38 now (were £51.80 yesterday), but I cannot find that shop:
http://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/Samsung-EcoGreen-5400RPM-SATA-II-Internal/product/B0042SGDVG

drf · 11 Apr 2011 at 18:12

From another forum:

"Have Samsung truly fixed SMART or have they implemented some kludge to work around the problem?

I have a pair of these HD204UI disks, with the 'fixed' firmware, manufacture date March 2011. Although I am not seeing data corruption (and I have done a lot of copying them full and md5 checksumming before even considering using them) they both keep incrementing their ATA error count in the SMART log with an "abort" error. I can see it in dmesg too. It appears they do this when SMART is queried whilst they are in low-power mode, at which point the SATA controller performs a reset and they continue working. If I am streaming video files from them there will be a delay whilst this happens. All of actual the SMART counters (error rates, reallocated sectors etc.) are healthy.

If I send hdparm commands after bootup (Ubuntu 10.04 seems to be somewhat broken at setting /etc/hdparm.conf itself) the ATA errors cease. If I reboot and forget to set it, they increase again, either gradually throughout the day (background SMART polling?) or every time I manually read the SMART data.

Nothing special about the disk controller, nVidia MCP51 with SWNCQ and RAID disabled. And works perfectly with my various Hitachi and WD disks."

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=538921#p538921

dunnyuk · 12 Apr 2011 at 12:35

ive got a samsung f3 1tb and its allways been a good drive. in fact ive got two now.

Radiation · 12 Apr 2011 at 13:01

I've always used WD drives but am tempted by these as i need a new 2TB drive, both seem to have had some issues, first is the 4k sectors on both then there's something to with heads stopping every 8 seconds on the WD drive to save power which may shorted its life, lastly these samsungs could cause corruption before they were patched, which is a bit more serious and concerning tbh.

So what's the sensible choice, these are a bit faster but is it really that much better to be worth it?

drf · 12 Apr 2011 at 13:14

Radiation said:
I've always used WD drives but am tempted by these as i need a new 2TB drive, both seem to have had some issues, first is the 4k sectors on both then there's something to with heads stopping every 8 seconds on the WD drive to save power which may shorted its life, lastly these samsungs could cause corruption before they were patched, which is a bit more serious and concerning tbh.

So what's the sensible choice, these are a bit faster but is it really that much better to be worth it?

Some people also complain about vibration of HD204UI - it varies from drive to drive, though - if you are unlucky it would vibrate a lot, if you are luckier, it would vibrite moderately, if you are lucky, it would not vibrate too much.

Radiation · 12 Apr 2011 at 13:23

drf said:
Some people also complain about vibration of HD204UI - it varies from drive to drive, though - if you are unlucky it would vibrate a lot, if you are luckier, it would vibrite moderately, if you are lucky, it would not vibrate too much.

I hate decisions like this, it ends up putting me off buying anything!

Radiation · 18 Apr 2011 at 19:50

Ok i went and got one and mine says "rev a" and 2011.02 in tiny text, is that ok, im unsure if i need to do the firmware update or not?

Balb0wa · 18 Apr 2011 at 19:54

Radiation said:
Ok i went and got one and mine says "rev a" and 2011.02 in tiny text, is that ok, im unsure if i need to do the firmware update or not?

should be fine

Radiation · 18 Apr 2011 at 20:13

Thanks, so there's not been an even newer firmware released then?

So far the drive is very quiet and reads/writes at 140mb/s as far as i can tell, hopfully it will be ok.

drf · 2 Aug 2011 at 02:54

There are two Samsung 2TB HD204UI bought together (their S/N is different just by one digit at the end, so they had to be next to each other on the assembly line), but they behave very differently in tests, as you can see here:
http://forum.hddguru.com/samsung-2tb-hd204ui-identical-hds-but-work-differently-t20154.html

Do you think those HDDs should be RMAed?

Could you please test yours HDDs for comparison.

Many thanks.

Surveyor · 2 Aug 2011 at 11:31

drf said:
There are two Samsung 2TB HD204UI bought together (their S/N is different just by one digit at the end, so they had to be next to each other on the assembly line), but they behave very differently in tests, as you can see here:
http://forum.hddguru.com/samsung-2tb-hd204ui-identical-hds-but-work-differently-t20154.html

Do you think those HDDs should be RMAed?

Could you please test yours HDDs for comparison.

Many thanks.

I have 4 of these drives.

Make what you will of these tests.

HDD1 quick bench test:

HDD1 long bench test:

HDD2 quick bench test:

HDD2 long bench test:

HDD3 quick bench test:

HDD3 long bench test:

HDD4 quick bench test:

HDD4 long bench test:

And for comparison a WD20EARS.

Quick bench test:

Long bench test:

drf · 2 Aug 2011 at 12:59

Thanks. Can you also please test the surface of at least one or two HDDs with HDDScan 3.3 (particularly that first HDD with larger "teeth" on the chart)? At the end of the test click the Report button (in the appropriate place), so that you get results of all of the tests made by HDDScan in one place (the chart and the number of delayed sectors).

Surveyor · 2 Aug 2011 at 18:34

Here you go.

Test done on the first drive.

Don't take this the wrong way but I'm not doing any more. That one took 5 hours!

drf · 2 Aug 2011 at 18:45

Yeah, that's fine. At least you know now you have no bad sectors on this one. Thank you very much.

Surveyor · 2 Aug 2011 at 18:47

You're welcome.

Generious · 2 Aug 2011 at 22:22

I have 6 of them in a HP Microserver and two in a Qnap 2 Bay nas device these have all been running since end of march now, no issues as of yet.

And yes I upgraded the firmware on them before using them.

SoildSnake · 3 Aug 2011 at 14:31

Hey guys i just ordered this drive and wondering about the advanced format thing; does windows 7 sort this out automatically?

Also would i need to update the firmware. What is the latest version/would it matter if i update and its the same version?

drf · 3 Aug 2011 at 14:36

SoildSnake said:
Hey guys i just ordered this drive and wondering about the advanced format thing; does windows 7 sort this out automatically?

Also would i need to update the firmware. What is the latest version/would it matter if i update and its the same version?

1. Yes. 2. No (assuming it was manufactured this year). Now, can you please test it with HDDScan 3.3 as described above? Thanks.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 17 Oct 2011 at 15:28

bhavv said:
Somethings wrong with one of my F4s:

Or are they meant to slow down like that with stuff put on them?

My new F4 2TB arrived today and I am getting similar scores on a newly formatted drive!! It is made in June and is connected to SATA3.0 port of my H67 motherboard.

Scores for F4 2TB.

Scores for F3 1.5TB in external e-sata enclosure.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 17 Oct 2011 at 16:34

The scores have seem to improved when using the SATA2.0 port and a SATA2.0 cable.

However the burst rate seems 20% lower than what other people are getting.