Newish Samsung F1 500GB failing already?

KrooKedUK · 30 Aug 2008 at 01:42

So my PC is running fine, not noticeably slower or anything at all and then today I get a nice little message from S.M.A.R.T when I boot telling me that the drive is about to fail. I ignored this and when vista had loaded I got a similar message saying that I should backup all my files, cause it's likely the drive will fail.

Anyway as I said above I don't see any performance decrease or any slowdowns whatsover. I ran hdtach just to see if there was any decrease in performance and it's basically the same as before with slightly higher burst rate and a slightly increased access time.

Should I just keep using it until I do run into problems or it does actually fail, or would it make sense to RMA it now?

oh and I have made a backup of everything on the drive just in case

neoboy · 30 Aug 2008 at 04:57

Try HD tune health test and whatever testing tools samsung provide.

Berserker · 30 Aug 2008 at 10:04

Doesn't sound good.

I have an F1 500GB that showed 6 bad sectors within a few weeks of installing it, but it hasn't developed any more than that.

I'd certainly not be trusting that drive.

AbsenceJam · 30 Aug 2008 at 11:29

I'd just RMA it.

KrooKedUK · 30 Aug 2008 at 15:47

kk thanks for the replies.. i'll run a few more tests then setup an RMA

KrooKedUK · 30 Aug 2008 at 19:29

Hdtune is reporting a fault on the disk.

Don't have a clue what that part does but its way below the treshold. Anyone know anything about that?

OCdude · 30 Aug 2008 at 23:26

Duh... it's the 'unknown attribute' - what else do you need to know

JimAroo · 30 Aug 2008 at 23:31

I've had one for around 4 months, no problems as of yet.

KrooKedUK · 30 Aug 2008 at 23:45

OCdude said:
Duh... it's the 'unknown attribute' - what else do you need to know

lol that helped me out a lot thanks :rolleyes:

JimAroo do you mean you have the same drive and it is fine?

KrooKedUK · 5 Sep 2008 at 22:13

Just thought I would update this. Sent the drive off to Rexo, cost £6.40 for recorded delivery.. they received it the next day and posted the new one out the same day. Must say I am impressed with how quick they got it sorted, but then again they are a company setup just for returns

Anyway hopefully this drive should last me a bit longer, lol... otherwise its WD drives for me from now on.

deuse · 6 Sep 2008 at 09:58

KrooKedUK said:
Just thought I would update this. Sent the drive off to Rexo, cost £6.40 for recorded delivery.. they received it the next day and posted the new one out the same day. Must say I am impressed with how quick they got it sorted, but then again they are a company setup just for returns

Anyway hopefully this drive should last me a bit longer, lol... otherwise its WD drives for me from now on.

Are they going to give you your £6.40 back?
As it was not your fault the HD is dead or am I missing something here

KrooKedUK · 6 Sep 2008 at 10:21

Nah I doubt they will give me it back, but I will look into it

smo · 6 Sep 2008 at 14:42

Distance selling act - they are legally obliged to return the postage for returns of faulty items.

On a note of the HDD, i built a server recently with 3 in RAID5 and within 2 months 1 of them has failed - not good, but i hope its an isolated incedent and not a repeat of the deskstar drives of old!

Berserker · 6 Sep 2008 at 16:38

Don't think distance selling would apply to this, and even if it does, I don't think you're correct about return postage.

smo · 12 Sep 2008 at 23:03

If it was purchased through the internet (rather than in store) then distance selling does apply, and i am correct about the return postage on faulty items i guarantee you as i've worked for and have a large vested interest in a long running mail-order/internet business.

KrooKedUK · 13 Sep 2008 at 15:14

Another update... got the replacement drive on monday and the read/write speeds and access times were far worse than the original

, so I bought a WD RE3 320GB afer having seen some good reviews and I'm very happy I did.

I just seem to have bad luck with samsung drives

as I know many people love them... anyway I didn't get rid of the 500GB F1, I'm just gonna use it for storage and run vista on the WD drive.

ѕнσσтєя · 22 Mar 2009 at 09:10

Just found this thread and mine is failing on exactly the same thing on HDTune. Going to send it back - you ssaid you sent it to Rexo , do you have any details?

[timko] · 22 Mar 2009 at 09:15

ѕнσσтєя said:
Just found this thread and mine is failing on exactly the same thing on HDTune. Going to send it back - you ssaid you sent it to Rexo , do you have any details?

Enter your serial number to double check warranty and then register and request an RMA...

http://rexo.co.uk/warranty.php

Your serial number can be seen on the Info tab in HDTune, saves you having to unplug the drive etc

ѕнσσтєя · 22 Mar 2009 at 09:22

Thanks. I can't run Samsungs bootable software - estool, quick search shows neither can a lot of people. Atleast it looks like they will accept the fault based on HD Tune.

CaptainCrash · 22 Mar 2009 at 10:30

ѕнσσтєя said:
Thanks. I can't run Samsungs bootable software - estool, quick search shows neither can a lot of people. Atleast it looks like they will accept the fault based on HD Tune.

To cut a long story short, the ESTool ISO's built-in DOS-mode CD/DVD drivers aren't completely compatible with all optical drives, so it's a bit hit-and-miss as to whether the CD version will work.

If you don't have a floppy drive, you can still run it by making a bootable USB flash drive by following the instructions here, and copy the ESTool executable onto it from the CD you created.

It's probably not strictly necessary though, I'm sure a SMART failure as per your own thread will be all the information needed.