as I was having problems with the drive (the HD Tune benchmark was quite spiked as well) I contacted Samsung (from my post in another forum)...Other Thoughts: Bought 6 drives together. Ran Samsung's drive diagnostic (ESTOOL v3.01p) on all the drives out of the box and 5/6 drives failed with the same error (Ram Error, Service Code AJ41) after doing a full surface scan even though the error has nothing to do with bad sectors. However, if I skip the surface scan, they all pass the ram test so I'm not sure if this is a bug in ESTOOL or the drives. Still, doesn't really make me feel confident to use these drives. It would be great if someone from Samsung could chime in on the issue. My drives are serial number:
S2H7J1CZ918495
S2H7J1CZ918486
S2H7J1CZ918482
S2H7J1AZA14578
S2H7J1AZA14581
S2H7J1AZA14580
With the above in mind yesterday I went back to my supplier and exchanged the drive. The next one also failed the RAM test (on two different PC's) and also had hardware write errors. Back it went and I exchanged it for a 2TB Western Digital drive. This drive passed all WD's tests and is running fine.I have just come off the phone with Samsung - what a very frustrating experience that was.!!! After giving the person all of my details they then told me that they offered no telephone support for the hard drives they sell and instead directed me to their website www.samsungodd.com (according to the first page on that site it is for Optical Disk Drives)
I asked them about the AJ41 error and to be frank I was completely wasting my time as they assured me that they cannot support me and the website they noted was my only source of assistance.