Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Hard drive RPMs and data speed.

[Michael Mol]

On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 3:41 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann
<volkerarmin@××××××××××.com> wrote:
> Am Donnerstag 27 Oktober 2011, 15:17:45 schrieb Michael Mol:
>> On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 2:52 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann
>>
>> <volkerarmin@××××××××××.com> wrote:
>> > Am Donnerstag 27 Oktober 2011, 13:51:47 schrieb Michael Mol:
>> >> Just don't buy a SAMSUNG drive. I know, I know, everyone has their pet
>> >> "Don't Buy Hard Drives Made By $x" experience.
>> >>
>> >> Here's mine.
>> >>
>> >> I bought a 1TB SAMSUNG drive for cheap from Newegg at a Black Friday
>> >> sale a couple years ago. It failed on me. Around the same time, I
>> >> identified some flaws in the firmware which I considered severe[2].
>> >  Model=SAMSUNG MMCRE64G5MXP-0VB, FwRev=VBM1901Q, SerialNo=S0FDNEAZ600013
>> >  Model=SAMSUNG HD502IJ, FwRev=1AA01109, SerialNo=S13TJDWQ346413
>> >  Model=SAMSUNG HD753LJ, FwRev=1AA01113, SerialNo=S13UJ1CQB07158
>> >  Model=SAMSUNG HD502HJ, FwRev=1AJ100E5, SerialNo=S20BJDWS913888
>> >  Model=SAMSUNG HD103SJ, FwRev=1AJ10001, SerialNo=S246JD1Z910209
>> >  Model=SAMSUNG HD103SJ, FwRev=1AJ100E5, SerialNo=S246JDWSA20722
>> >
>> > Oh, yeah it was THAT 2tb drive with the smart bug.
>> >
>> > Which was solved with an easy to do firmware update.
>>
>> I checked at the time. There was no firmware update, and, to my
>> knowledge, there never was for the drive model that failed on me.
>> Shortly after my second drive failed, Newegg discontinued selling
>> model. (The most I remember about the model number can be expressed as
>> a regex: HD10.*UI. I don't remember the firmware revision.
>>
>> It was the combination of historical problems, personal incidental
>> experience and terrible customer service that led me to swear off
>> SAMSUNG drives. Take away any one of those issues from my experiences
>> at the time, and I'd consider buying another drive from them.
>>
>> You've got six working drives of various sizes, models and firmware
>> revisions. Good for you. I've got a still-functional 40GB IBM
>> DeathStar. (It's not powered up right now, but it never failed on me
>> after five years of use.)
>
> and I had 5 death stars failing on me.

My point is that the numbers aren't what mattered here. My point is
that SAMSUNG sold me a shoddy product, replaced it with another
instance of the the same shoddy product, wouldn't replace it again,
and never addressed a detailed technical report of a systemic problem
in the same. Bad tech, bad customer service, and it looked like this
was a more common scenario than among other manufacturers. All of it
boiled down to a nasty case of being a bad candidate for spending time
and money.

Did IBM refuse to replace your failing drives? Did you include
detailed technical information that should have allowed them to
resolve issues leading to those drives' failures? For me, SAMSUNG's
behavior in the customer service department indicated that I wasn't
likely to get good service in the future, and the rapidly-failing
drives (combined with my analysis of the SMART output and the history
of SMART problems with SAMSUNG drives) indicated to me that I'd need
to use that customer service department in the future if I bought more
of their drives.

So you've got six working drives, and a drive that works now that you
patched the firmware. Congrats on choosing a model for which a
firmware patch was made available (unless that was just luck...).
Also, good luck if you have a failing drive that was sent to you by
RMA. It's been a few years; if you're lucky, they may have cleaned up
their act.

-- 
:wq