Samsung RMA?

mpj88 · 22 Feb 2009 at 23:23

I had 2 x 320gb Samsung F1's running in raid 0 (one is 5 months old the other about 1 month). I had been getting problems occuring and sometimes BSODs. When i booted back into windows the RAID utility thing said there was a problem with one of the drives. So i have taken them out of RAID and re installed the OS on the non problamatic one. However the computer still crashed when the other one was plugged in. I have now unplugged it and have had no problems so far!

All of the above leads me to believe that the drive i unplugged is faulty. I have never RMA'd anything before and just wondered what the best line of action is and anything i can do to make sure it is faulty so i dont end up wasting my time/money!? I have tried to use the samsung utility but it wasnt working (see other thread!) To resolve the problem should iu contact OCUK or samsung themselves?

ChrisLX200 · 23 Feb 2009 at 00:23

It might well be faulty, but you really want to get an answer from the drive test utility first (I put a reply in that thread as to how you might do that). If you get a Fail from the utility it gets RMA'd with no questions if you quote the result and go through Samsung. My only issue with your problem description is that the drive was in a RAID array and was not properly dismounted (MBR and Disk signature were not restored). That can screw things up - not saying it's the cause, but strange things can happen with disks used like this. However, it should not stop it being seen by the BIOS even if nowhere else.

Atom · 23 Feb 2009 at 02:42

If your running Samsung F1 drives you will get use to RMA'ing them, so don't worry about that.

I would go straight through Rexo, had my drives back in as little as 3 days and longest was 5 days..

mpj88 · 23 Feb 2009 at 12:38

Thanks for your help so far

ChrisLX200 said:
My only issue with your problem description is that the drive was in a RAID array and was not properly dismounted (MBR and Disk signature were not restored). That can screw things up - not saying it's the cause, but strange things can happen with disks used like this. However, it should not stop it being seen by the BIOS even if nowhere else.

I can still see all the hdds in the BIOS and i took them out of RAID using the RAID program, the one that it boots with. Would there be any problems with that?

ChrisLX200 · 23 Feb 2009 at 13:11

If the BIOS sees it the Samsung utility should have no problem, be a good idea to use it to wipe the disk while you're at it so it's effectively a blank new disk.