Samsung F1 series hard drives w/1TB model

pleccy2000 · **Posted:** Tue Mar 25, 2008 10:43 am

This is a really long thread!

Can anybody kindly summarise the situation with the 1tb F1 drives? Is there a known problem with them or are they safe to buy?

nicko · **Posted:** Tue Mar 25, 2008 11:52 am

Nobody knows that

xen · **Posted:** Tue Mar 25, 2008 12:01 pm

Well I think that according to this thread, hard drives that give errors according to that HUTIL tool, are usually without fault, and that it is pretty safe to get one, presumably because the tool is incompatible with the drives.

zzombi · **Joined:** Sat Nov 17, 2007 4:43 am **Posts:** 47

"Can anybody kindly summarise the situation with the 1tb F1 drives? Is there a known problem with them or are they safe to buy?"

There is a hutil problem which may be more than the claimed program 'incompatibility'. That still means the drive can function 100% OK. Caution and extensive using/testing is necessary with new drives, and these F1s in particular, it looks. This may uncover errors sooner, before much data can be lost.

Unfortunately the situation isn't clear with the other new models as well. Eg the WD GP ramps/unramps the heads extremely frequently, which can't be good for reliability. Only time will tell, and the storagereview reliability database.

So indeed it appears the price for F1 performance is a higher risk.

About data maintainance, I don't really have much irreplaceable stuff. I would mirror such private stuff on an older offline hdd, which stood the test of time but became too slow by current standards. USB would be good for that. I don't use optical storage media any more. The safest way for the rest of the data is to store it online, literally. Redundancy of the thousands is the answer.

pleccy2000 · **Posted:** Wed Mar 26, 2008 9:19 am

Thank you for that detailed answer - I think that I am going to bite the bullet and get two of them. :shock:

xen · **Posted:** Wed Mar 26, 2008 10:09 am

zzombi wrote:

The safest way for the rest of the data is to store it online, literally. Redundancy of the thousands is the answer.

You mean to store it 'in' p2p networks? But it would take months to find and (re)download all that audio, video and other binaries I had lost.. but the good part is you would start from scratch, which would purge your collection of everything that is not really you anymore.

I decided I would put all 'stable' and managable data (stuff that's relatively few in number, and cohesive) like most anime series and other video, on optical media, while the data that might change often, like the collection of personal documents, and the collection of music, I would put on a spare harddisk for backup (actually, on the spare room of my system disk).

A friend of mine mentioned that having large archives of digital stuff, would somehow drag you down. I don't really experience it like that, though I can imagine it would feel light and fresh to lose all those archives of email, all the music you don't really play anymore, etc. Some other guy I know has lived with no more posessions than could fit into a bag, travelling around, for years.. he quite enjoyed it.

Kepakko · **Posted:** Wed Mar 26, 2008 10:46 am

sweatypickle wrote:

Had you run HUTIL when you got the drive in October?

I'm the second owner of the drive and I got it after christmas. I think I did run HUTIL when I got it and it had no errors.

This isn't problem with the HUTIL/FETOOL as the operating system would break too. I could boot fine but when I touched some files in certain regions of the disk everything would fail. I have screencap (as in cell phone camera picture of FETOOL) if you are interested in the errors.

I've replaced the Samsung with plenty of WD 7500AACS' in RAID5 ( :twisted:

) as they're easier to manage (less vibration and less heat/noise) and hopefully more reliable.

yuzgen · **Posted:** Tue Apr 01, 2008 6:45 am

xen wrote:

You mean to store it 'in' p2p networks?

No, I guess he/she meant using Gmail as an external HDD or similar online services.

xen wrote:

I decided I would put all 'stable' and managable data (stuff that's relatively few in number, and cohesive) like most anime series and other video, on optical media, while the data that might change often, like the collection of personal documents, and the collection of music, I would put on a spare harddisk for backup (actually, on the spare room of my system disk).

That's smart.

xen wrote:

A friend of mine mentioned that having large archives of digital stuff, would somehow drag you down. I don't really experience it like that, though I can imagine it would feel light and fresh to lose all those archives of email, all the music you don't really play anymore, etc. Some other guy I know has lived with no more posessions than could fit into a bag, travelling around, for years.. he quite enjoyed it.

I feel the x(z)en here.

Even if some members want to keep this thread strictly on F1, I will go ahead and say I love my WD10EACS, which is an alternative to the 1TB F1.

On a side note, I'm also inviting (like others did in this thread) SPCR members to take the survey of storagereview and also take a look at the feedbacks before buying a new HDD.

xen · **Posted:** Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:02 am

yuzgen wrote:

No, I guess he/she meant using Gmail as an external HDD or similar online services.

Oh okay. I guess that's a viable alternative. Let's your data survive a fire as well.

Quote:

I feel the x(z)en here.

. Having no home must also be a wicked experience in that regard. I was once travelling randomly, hitchhiking. It felt like I had no longer any 'base' to return to so wherever I was, that was my home. It gave a huge sense of freedom.

I just ordered a 640GB F1. If it were just for data, I would have gotten a WD GP, but I guess I will be having one disk for both system and data, for a while, until I externalize the data to another device (NAS/etc.). You are talking about the "reliability survey" on StorageReview, right? I'll do that, when I've had it for some while.

zoob · **Posted:** Thu Apr 03, 2008 2:16 pm

Just picked one up.

After some very quick tests, I will be replacing my Hitachi 7K1000 with the Samsung HD103UJ. Both are enclosed in Scythe Quiet Drives.

Idle whoosh is much less, AAM enabled seeks are much quieter.

I'll be giving up a little bit of performance, but it's something I can deal with.

zoob · **Posted:** Tue Apr 08, 2008 7:41 am

Anyone notice how hot the Marvell chip gets on the PCB of the drive?
BURNING hot. :evil:

EDIT:
Pic added:

jussi · **Posted:** Thu Apr 10, 2008 6:11 am

My Samsung fight is getting dirty :evil:

I have bit of troube RMAing faulty discs so I had to write an email to Samsung support and try to convince them that I got faulty drives.

I'll include the email here, maybe it contains something of value to others:

Quote:

I bought four HD103UJ drives about four months ago from Germany. I live in Finland.

I installed the drives to a RAID5 array (linux software raid) and for a while they seemed to work fine.

After a month or two I found out that there was something wrong with the drives when two of the discs dropped from the array (one had failed before the other, but I didn't notice that before the 2nd went down). I was able to recover the data thanks to linux raid tools.

This is when I started to diagnose what went wrong. I quickly found out that writing to discs would often increase SMART "Current Pending Sector Count" attribute. One disc was worse than the others, but all of them had problems with that.

During testing process I changed everything in my hardware configuration; PSU:s, cables, SATA controllers, etc. and the result was always the same; increased Pending Sector Count value and read errors.

It turned out that I was able to reset the SMART attributes by filling the discs with zero (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/xxx). Surprisingly this worked! The Pending Sector Count would reset to 0 and there were no Relocated Sectors or anything else that would indicate a bad drive.

But partitioning the drives and actually using them in a real filesystem would soon result in pending sectors and eventually disc would drop from the raid array.

Having changed everything else but the discs obviously led me to conclusion that there was something wrong with the drives themselves. I tested them with HUTIL 2.10 and got lots of "Surface scan ECC error"s and "M.C. ECC error"s on all of the four discs.

I contacted the seller and asked for replacement units. They wanted me to contact Samsung Finland and make sure that I had tested the discs correctly.

I made a call to Samsung Finland support and they confirmed that if HUTIL 2.10 shows a sector error that would indicate a failed drive which can be RMA'd.

The seller agreed and I sent the discs back to them.

Now the seller emailed me and say that the discs are not faulty. They had contacted Samsung Germany and were informed that HUTIL 2.10 does not work correctly on all Samsung discs. The new testing method would be running HDAT2.

Apparently the four discs that I sent would all pass the HDAT2 test, and now the seller refuses to replace the discs.

My question is can you please confirm the seller to RMA the discs? I tested the discs as was instructed by Samsung Finland and they proved to be faulty.

Also, I can provide you with Linux logs that indicate the drive failures.

The serial number of the four discs was almost sequential and they had F/W revision 1AA01106

I'll keep you posted in case I actually get a reply from Samsung. Until then I'm out of discs and 1000 euros.

jussi · **Posted:** Mon Apr 14, 2008 11:11 am

Here's a followup to my previous post. I got a reply from Samsung Germany and they instructed me to check the discs with ES-Tool (they didn't mention HUTIL).

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/ ... _Tool.html

I have sent that request to the seller, we'll see how that turns out.

ES-Tool looks pretty much like a renamed version of HUTIL. The version number that is shown in the screen captures is 2.11. The last version of HUTIL was 2.10. The bottom of the screencapture says "[Y] AGREE, RUN HUTIL".

Has anyone that had M.C. ECC errors or Surface scan ECC errors on their HD103UJ with HUTIL tried testing the same drives with ES-Tool?

andyb · **Posted:** Mon Apr 14, 2008 1:31 pm

Well they said a replacement to HUTIL 2.10 was in the works, and they also said it might not be a HUTIL at all.

I will try that in a month or 3 when I build a new server, as all HDD testing tools have a chance of damaging the drive (heence the disclaimer).

Andy

andyb · **Posted:** Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:16 am

Just thought you should know.

Â£99.99 inc VAT in the UK, and its even in stock :shock:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143288

Andy

zzombi · **Joined:** Sat Nov 17, 2007 4:43 am **Posts:** 47

That's expensive. I found them with 123 and only 80E for 640 and 750. These also seem more reliable, from the buyers feedback. Could few % less platter capacity make such a difference? If anyone has experience with those, especially the 640, let us now.
4 busted drives out of 4 in a few months is not good at all. Another nail to 1GB F1's coffin :-(

MikeMcr · **Posted:** Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:45 pm

zzombi wrote:

That's expensive.

Expensive? For a 1TB drive? In the UK, inclusive of VAT and delivery? :shock:

They are practically giving them away at that price! I've ordered one.

zzombi · **Joined:** Sat Nov 17, 2007 4:43 am **Posts:** 47

Sorry, I didn't realize the GBP is so cheap these days. It free falled last months, a bit more and it's on parity with the Eur.
However, not sure if it's a deal any more, regardless of price.

andyb · **Posted:** Thu Apr 17, 2008 12:59 am

I'm going to order 3 soon, 10GB per Â£, I bought a HDD some years ago that was Â£10 per GB. This is awsome, I love the future.

Andy

tutu · **Posted:** Fri Apr 18, 2008 7:03 pm

zzombi wrote:

Sorry, I didn't realize the GBP is so cheap these days. It free falled last months, a bit more and it's on parity with the Eur.
However, not sure if it's a deal any more, regardless of price.

It is if you live in the UK

Got my 1TB drive today. I've been using the 320 for a while as my boot drive. Got the 1TB for Data. The 320 is a little big for a boot drive (even with a a dual boot of Vista 64 and slamd64). The 1TB.. I could do with two of them

The 320 has made a major difference in noise. Will let everyone know my 1TB experience in a day or so after formatting/checking etc.

Build date of Feb 2008. Firmware 1AA01109.

Samsung are listing ES-Tool for the F1 (2.11)

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/ ... &ppmi=1155

Might be that "updated" HUTIL everyone has been waiting for? Is ES-Tool new then as I've never had a Samsung drive before (apart from the 320 which is also quite new).

tutu · **Posted:** Sat Apr 19, 2008 6:59 am

I've done a full scan using ES Tool on my 1TB - passed all tests, no errors. Same for my 320.

JazzJackRabbit · **Joined:** Fri Jun 18, 2004 6:53 pm **Posts:** 1360

I gave up waiting on Samsung to release 640GB F1 so I ordered WD 6400AAKS from chiefvalue at $115 shipped. I stayed with Samsung through 2504C and 321KJ, but I just can't wait any longer to get new drive. Plus it seems that Samsung is having troubles with F1 drives, WD seems to fare a little better.

Hopefully I won't regret the decision.

nutball · **Posted:** Sat Apr 19, 2008 11:59 pm

Eeeffff... just ordered two of these drives from e-buyer. Most or all hard-drives I've bought before have come packed in a cardboard boxes with oodles of foam. These came in what can only be described as a glorified jiffy bag. The drives themselves are inside one of the usual clear plastic protective box efforts, which was then inside a bubble-wrap bag.

Haven't fired them up yet to see whether this extra cheapo packaging has worked as well as its more sturdy predecessor.

nick705 · **Posted:** Sun Apr 20, 2008 12:38 am

nutball wrote:

Eeeffff... just ordered two of these drives from e-buyer. Most or all hard-drives I've bought before have come packed in a cardboard boxes with oodles of foam. These came in what can only be described as a glorified jiffy bag.

I've had nothing but bad experiences with ebuyer, and I wouldn't touch them now with a ten-foot bargepole, however cheap their prices.

Scan are also now doing the 1TB Samsung F1 for Â£99.75, and if you sign up as a member at AVForums you get free shipping on all orders over Â£20. They're by no means perfect (they've let me down on delivery dates a few times in the past), but I've turned over shedloads with them over the years and they seem to be one of the best all-round UK suppliers if you take range of stock, pricing and CS all into account.

Dabs have the best packaging for HDDs I've seen to date... their cardboard "coffins" are legendary... :lol:

I do wonder why the price of the F1 seems to be dropping like a stone though, and other 1TB drives aren't following suit at the same rate... are the dealers that keen to get rid of them? Is there something we should be told...? :shock:

anakintjc · **Joined:** Wed May 16, 2007 4:11 am **Posts:** 35

Which disk would be more quiet : the Samsung F1 320 GB or the WD WD3200AAKS 320 GB single platter version ?

Any of you guys had to chance to compare them both?

PASware · **Joined:** Thu Nov 08, 2007 12:34 pm **Posts:** 37

anakintjc wrote:

Which disk would be more quiet : the Samsung F1 320 GB or the WD WD3200AAKS 320 GB single platter version ?

Any of you guys had to chance to compare them both?

Have you seen the WD review on SPCR? There seems to be a sample variance. The Samsung F1 320gb is atleast as quite as the 750GB, and the 750GB is as quite as the best sample WD.

tutu · **Posted:** Sun Apr 20, 2008 3:48 pm

nutball wrote:

Eeeffff... just ordered two of these drives from e-buyer. Most or all hard-drives I've bought before have come packed in a cardboard boxes with oodles of foam. These came in what can only be described as a glorified jiffy bag. The drives themselves are inside one of the usual clear plastic protective box efforts, which was then inside a bubble-wrap bag.

Haven't fired them up yet to see whether this extra cheapo packaging has worked as well as its more sturdy predecessor.

Same here. Drive is thankfully OK (it passed a 3hr 25 minute scan using ES-Tool and a full check in windows, as well as a full format).. so we're talking 9 hours :oops:

tutu · **Posted:** Mon Apr 21, 2008 6:39 am

I can't get these things to go into UDMA-7 Mode. I've used ES Tool are it says max mode is Mode 7 which is OK.

I've got AHCI set in the BIOS and I have reinstalled Windows Vista SP1 64-Bit. It didn't ask for any drivers and detected the drives fine. I've then installed the Intel Chipset Driver which detected the AHCI controller.

The drives are now running in UDMA-6 (SATA-I 1.5GB/s??) according to device manager and HD Tune Pro. According to HD Tune Pro they are capable of UDMA-7 (SATA-II 3GB/s??). There is no NCQ option in device manager (I am used to nForce chipsets)

Any ideas? Do I need to use Intel Matrix Storage Manager instead? I've tried this and the matrix program is empty (no drives shown)

Is it anything to do with jumpers on the HDD? I have 4 jumpers on the 320 (no jumper on it) and 2 jumpers on the 1TB (none on that either)

I also dual boot with linux and it seems to enable NCQ, but it's also stuck on UDMA6. It does say SATA 3Gpbs (but I don't if this means it can do this or it is doing this)

ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
ata1.00: HPA detected: current 625140335, native 625142448
ata1.00: ATA-7: SAMSUNG HD322HJ, 1AC01108, max UDMA7
ata1.00: 625140335 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32)
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133

ata2: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
ata2.00: ATA-7: SAMSUNG HD103UJ, 1AA01109, max UDMA7
ata2.00: 1953525168 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32)
ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133

MikeMcr · **Posted:** Mon Apr 21, 2008 9:04 am

tutu wrote:

I've got AHCI set in the BIOS and I have reinstalled Windows Vista SP1 64-Bit. It didn't ask for any drivers and detected the drives fine.

I think this may be the problem. You have to install the Intel drivers during installation even if Windows can see the drive. Otherwise it will be using non-optimised Microsoft drivers. It sounds like you are running in non-AHCI mode. The Intel Matrix program would definately "see" the drives if they were in AHCI mode.

zoob · **Posted:** Mon Apr 21, 2008 9:44 am

What version of Matrix Storage Manager did you use?
Usually when I install Vista 64 I do not need drivers on install, but later when I install this, it'll say it's older than what's currently installed. I say overwrite the newer ones and things like eSATA start working.

Samsung F1 series hard drives w/1TB model

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