Recent Samsung drive failure rates?

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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jwoolen01
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Post by jwoolen01 » Mon Oct 22, 2007 12:35 pm

I've owned an HD321KJ and an HD501LJ for about six months and they've both developed a clicking problem. The drives begin to click and the system becomes unresponsive.

However, I've had these drives in a scythe quiet drive the entire time, and that could have had something to do with it.

protellect
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Post by protellect » Mon Oct 22, 2007 1:39 pm

Having that many components fail sounds like you have some serious problems.

How is the power at your house? Do the lights and other electronics flicker a lot? Do you have problems with other electronics at your house?

I know that the washer/dryer/air conditioner are not on the same breaker, but are electrically "close" to the breaker in my room. If one or two of them were running, and a 3rd flicked on, it could cause an under voltage to the point of rebooting the machine. During this time I experienced a number of problems including crashes and things.

I used some 20$ voltage regulators that would carry the voltage during the dip, and eventually switched to a 1500VA UPS power supply. I've also been putting down the cash for high quality corsair power supplies.

Since I've done that my hardware has been very solid. You might get a kill-a-watt and see if your voltages out of the wall are in spec.

Also, my 500GB samsung has been fine, and is a 24/7 drive in my file server. :)

Wibla
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Post by Wibla » Tue Oct 23, 2007 6:42 am

I had one Samsung PATA 300GB die on me... but I have 10 501LJ's running just fine for the last 6 months (one of which was salvaged from my external hdd)....

mandoman
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Post by mandoman » Tue Oct 23, 2007 9:37 am

Interitus wrote: I'm already gritting my teeth thinking about talking to Samsung about the 2004C. Its manufacture date is 6.2005. When I bought the drive it carried a 3 year warranty but now lists as 12 months on Samsung's site (another reason I went with Seagate this time, 12 months? Are you kidding?)
Is this true that Samsung only carries a 1 year warranty now?
I can't find this info on their website anywhere?

I'm most interested in the F1 1TB drive, but if the warranty
is only one year, I'm going Seagate instead...

halcyon
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Post by halcyon » Wed Oct 24, 2007 12:36 am

I really feel for you all with repeated Samsung (or other brand) HD failures.

To summarize, if you have already ruled out temps (have a direct out of the case airflow on them, and not too high ambient temp, tried the finger trick), then check:

1) Sourcing. All dead drives from the same seller? Try switching seller, if you can (not always possible)

2) PSU quality? 5V and 12V lines on startup and under heavy load? This might be a time to reconsider upgrading to a new (more silent?) PSU...

3) Mains electric quality? This can be nasty and server operators swear by good quality electricity. You need a better UPS to clean at least some of the crud, if you have constant bad mains quality. I had to record log of my own house mains quality for a week using a fairly expensive Fluke mains quality meter (harmonics, overvoltage, dips, etc). Then analyze the data in excel and find if there was something wrong. Really time consuming, but did eliminate one possibility for me.

Of course, swithing a brand / disk model goes without saying, but if those fail too, repeat steps 1-3 :(

I know that pinpointing errors like these are often more trial & error and there are no hard-direct rules to find the cause.

Best of luck with your new replacement drives!

andyb
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Post by andyb » Wed Oct 24, 2007 4:58 am

I just got my replacement HM080HI via next day delivery, again a very fast turn around. I found out this morning via their website that they had received my faulty drive and even told me the replacement drives serial number as well, along with an expected date of delivery (today).

Shame about the faulty drive, but at least in the UK their returns service cant be faulted in any way at all, or indeed improved upon.

Interitus wrote:

I'm already gritting my teeth thinking about talking to Samsung about the 2004C. Its manufacture date is 6.2005. When I bought the drive it carried a 3 year warranty but now lists as 12 months on Samsung's site (another reason I went with Seagate this time, 12 months? Are you kidding?)


Is this true that Samsung only carries a 1 year warranty now?
I can't find this info on their website anywhere?
3 Years in the UK for HDD's.

http://www.samsung.com/uk/support/warranty/


Andy

mandoman
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Post by mandoman » Wed Oct 24, 2007 11:24 am

mandoman wrote: Is this true that Samsung only carries a 1 year warranty now?
I can't find this info on their website anywhere?
For the US consumer product page, there is a flash
program where you enter in your model #. I tried a T series
drive and it says only 1 year warranty. There is no blanket warranty like in the UK for hdd's.

I could find nothing about warranty for business customers,
and nothing about the warranty on the F1 drive.

Ashex
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Post by Ashex » Sat Oct 27, 2007 6:36 pm

I have an HD300LJ that has been working flawlessly for me for about a little over a year now, Only drives I have every had that failed/sucked were Maxtors

speedlever
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Post by speedlever » Sun Oct 28, 2007 3:13 am

My HD321KJ has run flawlessly since I built the new computer back in March 2007.

Matter of fact, it is the coolest drive (of 3 in my system).

Speedfan 4.33 currently reports:
HD0 - 35*C (Seagate 7200.7 - 300 Gb IDE) Backup
HD1 - 33*C (WD 740ADFD - 74 Gb SATA) OS and programs
HD2 - 27*C (Samsung HD321KJ - 320 Gb SATA) Data

They are stacked in my Solo case and mounted with the soft grommets, not suspended:

WD on top
-space-
Samsung
Seagate

I have a couple of 92mm Nexus fans in front of them (in the Solo case).

bussoguy
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Post by bussoguy » Sun Oct 28, 2007 3:16 am

I have three SP2004C in RAID config over over 2 years. Quiet, error free
I love em.

Aanea
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Post by Aanea » Sun Oct 28, 2007 5:44 am

I have a SP2504C thats clicking, stops responding and occasionally causes blue screens (i think), passes checkdisk (with the occasional corrupted file aswell as samsungs dos based hdd utility. Havent "failed" yet tho, but ive started using my vista x64 (residing on another drive) instead.

Must say once you get used to vista its not THAT bad, stable so far although apart from some minor things its not as such an improvement.

Ashex
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Post by Ashex » Sun Oct 28, 2007 12:04 pm

Aanea wrote:I have a SP2504C thats clicking, stops responding and occasionally causes blue screens (i think), passes checkdisk (with the occasional corrupted file aswell as samsungs dos based hdd utility. Havent "failed" yet tho, but ive started using my vista x64 (residing on another drive) instead.

Your hard drive is failing and your still using it? :shock: RMA that sucker!

Interitus
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Post by Interitus » Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:36 pm

Well looks like I can't pin the problem on Samsung. Not that I wanted to, but I really wish that it was just a bad batch of drives.

Halcyon hit the problem. Turns out all of the outlets in the "office" of my apartment were fake grounded. Sorry I haven't posted back sooner, been hectic at work and trying to reinstall everything and get back to normal.

End result was a $600 bill to Newegg for parts replacements. I might get some of that back after I re-sell the 2 items I have coming back from RMA but it's negligible.

God what a nightmare. And now I'm stuck with this noisy annoying 7200.10.

Interitus 0 - Power Outlet 5 is your final score.

speedlever
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Post by speedlever » Mon Oct 29, 2007 3:22 am

Interitus wrote:...And now I'm stuck with this noisy annoying 7200.10.

Interitus 0 - Power Outlet 5 is your final score.
Sorry about your difficulties.

I'm sorta surprised that you find the 7200.10 noisy. I just installed one to replace a 7200.7 that failed (I think it was heat related issues in a Dell) and it is very quiet. Runs pretty warm, but so does the WD 3200AAKS I put in too. The Dell case is not setup to properly cool the drives and I'm gonna have to rig up some mod to help it out. The drives are running in the mid-50s *C and I think that's a little too warm to suit me.

IdontexistM8
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Post by IdontexistM8 » Mon Oct 29, 2007 3:54 am

I've had a couple of issues with laptop drives which I've got replaced but I'm still happy to use them. No probs so far with desktops which are all externally housed.

Touch wood etc.. :wink:

Interitus
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Post by Interitus » Fri Nov 02, 2007 4:54 am

speedlever wrote:
Interitus wrote:...And now I'm stuck with this noisy annoying 7200.10.

Interitus 0 - Power Outlet 5 is your final score.
Sorry about your difficulties.

I'm sorta surprised that you find the 7200.10 noisy. I just installed one to replace a 7200.7 that failed (I think it was heat related issues in a Dell) and it is very quiet. Runs pretty warm, but so does the WD 3200AAKS I put in too. The Dell case is not setup to properly cool the drives and I'm gonna have to rig up some mod to help it out. The drives are running in the mid-50s *C and I think that's a little too warm to suit me.
I've been tinkering trying to figure out why this drive is so noisy. I had my bad 400GB Sammy sitting in the drive housing of the P180 with the 7200.10 and it was pretty annoying. It's hard to describe the noise but it was kind of like a low droning and the seeks sounded like someone stuck a fork in a blender. I took the Sammy out the other day to send it in for repair and the droning stopped completely and seeks are much smoother. Odd how just taking the other drive out changed the sound signature. The Sammy wasn't even hooked up. I just left it in there so it stayed safe while I waited on repair authorization. It still can't hold a candle to the spinpoint though. Maybe I'm just Spinpoint spoiled.

On a side note, the 7200.10 has the dreaded AAK firmware. However my HD Tune and HD Tach results are on par with the better firmware drives so no complaints here. Average read is 61.3 and 149 burst (ICH8 is capped at SATA 150 I believe) One thing I did find odd about the Samsung is when I ran HD Tune and HD Tach on the drive it came up with 17.7ms random access. That seemed a lil high to me. The 7200.10 comes up 13ms.

Kaleid
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Repost from another topic..

Post by Kaleid » Thu Nov 15, 2007 9:15 am

I just started to have a clicking noise in my about 0.5 year old 501LJ.

Had to delete one file, seems one part of that area is unusable.

Will run a bunch of tests on the harddrive to determine if I can do something about it, but it looks like it's a warranty matter.

Luckily it seems to work in all other areas atm, so I'm currently backuping everything really important (awfully time consuming).

May switch back to Seagate's again, never had one fail on me. Good news is that .11 seems to be quieter model than the all too noisy .10. Performance is not top notch but it's alright.

Hopefully SPCR can review the 500, 750 and/or 1TB model.

Schlotkins
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Post by Schlotkins » Fri Nov 16, 2007 10:05 am

I've had 1 samsung fail after 3 years. The other is working fine. I have another in an external enclosure that seems fine as well.

In the past, I've had an IBM fail, a WD fail and a Maxtor fail. I guess that would put me down to Seagate. :)

beoba
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Post by beoba » Fri Nov 16, 2007 7:31 pm

I was thinking about getting four 500gb Spinpoint T's, but then noticed the high number of people on Newegg who report failures with their drives. I'm now looking into getting some equivalent 7200.11's instead, pending some more reviews.

My experience with everybody *but* Samsung so far:

Back in 2003 or so I got a 80-gig WD which benchmarked well on the review sites of the time. The one I received had a loud whine which overpowered the rest of my already loud case (to give you an idea: stock HSF on a 2100+, with a GF4 4200, and each of these with their own little whiny fans). I eventually replaced this drive with a barracuda IV, then supplemented it with another of the same model. Both of those drives have had nearly constant use since then and I've yet to lose anything on them.

I have a Powerbook from 2005 which has gone through two Hitachi drives; one failed in 6 months due to garbage bearings and was replaced under warranty. The second Hitachi then failed two years later due to the extreme load caused by transferring 4gb of files over 100mb ethernet, and was by then out of warranty with Apple. I'm now thinking that this was a blessing in disguise, as the powerbook is now equipped with a Seagate which has yet to give me any issues whatsoever.

So in summary:
WD = One loud drive, probably a fluke, but sufficiently crappy experience that I'll probably avoid them.
Hitachi = Two failed drives. Before these two I'd never had a drive fail on me. I tend to prefix "Hitachi" with an "S" these days.
Seagate = Three drives which haven't had any problems (A++++ WOULD BUY AGAIN)
Samsung = ??

IdontexistM8
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Post by IdontexistM8 » Sat Nov 17, 2007 10:10 am

An aside..but I wish people in such reviews would put the manufacturing dates..it would help to see if there's a pattern.

Well the two I've just bought are purely for backups and have a date of 2007.09. so we'll see how they go. Without doubt reading reports of failures is a concern but I'm not going to panic about it.

I would buy more Seagates if they were just a little quieter. My experience of WD and Hitachi is noisy or some other annoyance. For example, WD's RMA process requires shipping abroad from the UK.

Doing a quick tally I have currently over 15 Samsungs and less than 5 by other manufacturers..so they must have done something right. I've had issues with two laptop drives both RMA-d within warranty. Neither of which were complete failures, unlike the previous Toshibas I had.

So I would buy Samsung first and Seagate second. If I see proof that Seagate's a genuinely quieter than they were then I might switch because of the 5yr warranty over Samsung's 3.

IdontexistM8
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Post by IdontexistM8 » Tue Nov 27, 2007 7:47 am

Wouldn't you know it! My HD400LD PATA drive has started making some high pitched electrical whine noises so that'll be RMA-d this week. 2006.08 for anyone whose interested. I'm still keeping faith though. :lol:

Joe Public
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Post by Joe Public » Tue Nov 27, 2007 9:10 am

Got a 2 year old 80GB Spinpoint and it's sitting working happily away still.

Just bought a 500GB T166 to replace the whining 250GB WD drive in my main rig. I hope it'll last for years as well.

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