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Samsung fail!

Soldato
Joined
28 Oct 2002
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Hiraeth
I have 2 samsung drives, 1 purchased a year ago and 1 purchased recently. After pluggin in the second drive, the first one disappeared from bios and windows and now clicks.

The second one isn't detected at all and is quiet.

Arrrrgh. What can I use to get the information from the first one?
 
Run the Samsung diagnostic to see if the drives are actually faulty, but my guess is if they're not showing up in the bios then the diagnostic software maybe not see them either. The problem with faulty disks is once they die it's quite difficult to get the data off them without spending ludicrous amounts of money :(

MW
 
Samsung make many fantastic techy items. Their HD's on the other hand are friggin awful in terms of reliability (speaking for bitter experience). Good luck with it...
 
I've just had one of their drives die on me. Not terribly impressed, as the backup is on the same type of drive. I sympathise. WD for me next time.
 
All makes of drives can and do fail. Very recently I have had a Samsung F4 2tb and WD 2tb fail.
Whilst I'm not able to say which drives would be more reliable than others I must say that I was very impressed with WD's phone support. They were extremely helpful and guided me through the diagnostic reports to determine that the drive had too many bad sectors. They offered me an advanced replacement. They followed up my two free phone support calls with an email asking me in detail my thought on their support.
Samsung on the other hand were absolutely appalling with their support and simply refused to offer me any help whatsoever and directed me to the web to their "optical disc" website, nothing to do with hard drives. They would offer no advice and help with their diagnostic tool.
As both drives were replaced over the counter by the retailers involved, and thus did not need the manufacturers return service, I replaced them with 2 WD drives.

I was most impressed with WD and their support and for me that has made enough of a difference when I would choose a new HD to influence which make I would buy and, more importantly, which I would not.
 
Well Samsung are telling me that the hard disks I bought are not in warrenty. ON A 1 WEEK OLD DRIVE?!?! FFS. Apparently I have to take the issue up with the place with which I bought it (a competitor with a very short name). They appear to completely ignore attempts to contact them either via phone or via e-mail/webnote, so if I don't get a response soon I will have to take them to court.

Just what I want for Christmas. I just realised I moved my family photos onto that drive, so I have lost everything since I last backed up. Sigh.
 
When I bought my WD drive and it went fubar I talked to the tech support in WD and I remember now that they checked the serial number and it was returned as a drive that should have only have been sold in the USA (IIRC). However the WD person said not to worry and if I needed the advanced replacement they would sort that out. That totally contrasted Samsung's support.!

To be frank if your drive is only that old I would be returning it for a full refund and not bothering at all with the manufacturer. Your guarantee is with the retailer and not the manufacturer.

A pity that you can't access it with any recovery software.
 
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Well Samsung are telling me that the hard disks I bought are not in warrenty. ON A 1 WEEK OLD DRIVE?!?! FFS. Apparently I have to take the issue up with the place with which I bought it (a competitor with a very short name). They appear to completely ignore attempts to contact them either via phone or via e-mail/webnote, so if I don't get a response soon I will have to take them to court.

Just what I want for Christmas. I just realised I moved my family photos onto that drive, so I have lost everything since I last backed up. Sigh.

Was it an OEM drive?
 
Sorry mate it sounds like you have a grey stock drive which will have been intended for either a large account system builder or another region. The only warranty you have is with your place of purchase but I think if it is the place I am thinking of they are covering the full three years so best get an rma in with them.
 
My 1tb F1 drive is now 3 years old and still going. However i dread the day when it finally goes :(

I have seen loads of WD drives pop on me some with some nice amount of smoke!!
 
My 1tb F1 drive is now 3 years old and still going. However i dread the day when it finally goes :(

I have seen loads of WD drives pop on me some with some nice amount of smoke!!

Smoke is pretty rare to see from a HD, sounds like an electrical short.

Also, don't worry about your 3 year old F1, I have 3 of them and they are running fine (touch wood!), I've been unlucky with Seagate drives though, have a stack of broken laptop Seagate drives which I can't RMA due to them being OEM... :(
 
I have a load of WD's and Samsungs. One of the Samsung F1's has bad sectors but it has been working fine for over a year with those bad sectors. On the other hand one of my WD Caviar Black 1TB drives has something severely wrong with it, it makes funny ticking noises and sometimes just times out completely and cannot be read, smart will say it has a bad sector waiting to be replaced and then a few days later it's all back to 100% health with no bad sectors :/

I've always been looking for reliable hard drives but I swear any of these mechanical things will fail no matter what.

Good luck with warranty replacement, I'm not sure about mine for the WD because it's smart info is all normal.
 
Don't want to hijack too much but if you were purchasing based on support and RMA'ing what disk maker would you go for?

Is Samsung support really that bad?
 
Well Samsung are telling me that the hard disks I bought are not in warrenty. ON A 1 WEEK OLD DRIVE?!?! FFS. Apparently I have to take the issue up with the place with which I bought it (a competitor with a very short name). They appear to completely ignore attempts to contact them either via phone or via e-mail/webnote, so if I don't get a response soon I will have to take them to court.

Just what I want for Christmas. I just realised I moved my family photos onto that drive, so I have lost everything since I last backed up. Sigh.

I would go on their dedicated support forum on a site which sounds similar to Nexus.
 
For the record, it's the supplier which is responsible for repairs/replacement during the first year of warranty, after than it's the job of the manufacturer.
 
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