Another NAS advice thread...

[watercooled]

This turned out to be a very interesting thread, thanks everyone!

[CaptainCrash]

Ended up going for the 2TB F3 drive, was on Today Only for £90. Is there anything I should know about the drive, i.e anything like WD Greens where they were load/unloading the heads every few seconds eventually going over the specified max cycles?

One thing you should probably know about - apparently Samsung are no longer offering a direct manufacturer's warranty on OEM drives, so if anything goes wrong with it, you'll have no option but to argue the toss with the retailer you bought it from.

You still have your statutory rights under the SoGA of course, but if the drive fails, say, a year down the line, it might involve a good deal of hassle you'd rather avoid.

I've always been happy with Samsung drives in the past, but to be honest this is a dealbreaker as far as I'm concerned, given that Seagate and WD (as far as I'm aware) still offer at least a 3-year direct warranty on OEM drives.

[watercooled]

I ordered from Scan so I'm not too worried about that, also the price difference between Samsung and other MFR's drives is significant. According to warranty info on the Scan item page it says direct warranty and I can't find anything to the contrary on Samsung's warranty info page, where did you find out about that?

[jim]

It's not worth worrying about, Scan have always promised to fulfil the full 3 years of Samsung warranties when there have been issues with Samsung taking responsibility in the past.

[watercooled]

Thanks, that's nice to know.

[CaptainCrash]

I ordered from Scan so I'm not too worried about that, also the price difference between Samsung and other MFR's drives is significant. According to warranty info on the Scan item page it says direct warranty and I can't find anything to the contrary on Samsung's warranty info page, where did you find out about that?

I only found out about it yesterday, from a post on another forum (which has a mostly bluish hue). I did a bit of reading around, and it definitely seems to be the case... people have entered their OEM drive serial number into Samsung's warranty checker and been rewarded with: "Code 103 The product has been brought in from outside of this service region and cannot be serviced. Please contact your reseller or distributor."

Rexo also state that they won't accept OEM drives for warranty service.

It's not worth worrying about, Scan have always promised to fulfil the full 3 years of Samsung warranties when there have been issues with Samsung taking responsibility in the past.

Fair enough, and credit where it's due if they're prepared to honour it in all circumstances (Ebuyer and probably others offer something similar), but at the end of the day it seems to be a gesture of goodwill on the part of the retailer rather than a contractual obligation. Maybe I've just got cynical in my old age, but for the sake of a few quid extra I'd rather have it in black and white, to avoid any possible misunderstandings at a later date.

[jim]

Fair enough, and credit where it's due if they're prepared to honour it in all circumstances (Ebuyer and probably others offer something similar), but at the end of the day it seems to be a gesture of goodwill on the part of the retailer rather than a contractual obligation. Maybe I've just got cynical in my old age, but for the sake of a few quid extra I'd rather have it in black and white, to avoid any possible misunderstandings at a later date.

You're spot on - but Scan have said in black and white on this forum that they will honour it. Personally, I would consider that binding.

And let's face it, their reputation would be shot to hell if they back-tracked now.

But as I said, you're right, it is just a gesture of goodwill.

[Methanoid]

You're spot on - but Scan have said in black and white on this forum that they will honour it. Personally, I would consider that binding.

And let's face it, their reputation would be shot to hell if they back-tracked now.

But as I said, you're right, it is just a gesture of goodwill.

Do you have a link to that.. I suspect people might want to Bookmark it. Having said that I've never had RMA issues with Scan. Pretty good service IMHO

[jim]

Do you have a link to that.. I suspect people might want to Bookmark it. Having said that I've never had RMA issues with Scan. Pretty good service IMHO

Here are a few:

Bought one last week from scan, thought id check the warranty, says out of area.

Where did scan get these drives from if there not uk stock?

All stock will still have warranty as advertised by Scan in this case would be 36 months

Regards

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I think this was raised not so long ago for certain WD (or maybe seagate) models, Scan responded saying they will honour the warranties of drives not falling under direct manufacturer support.

I assume it will be the same for the other makes too in that situation?

It would indeed be the same for any make.

Wesley

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Hi,

I can confirm that SCAN will honour the full 3 year warranty provided with this drive.

Regards

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Ironically I didn't have any of those bookmarked despite the number of drives I have bought from them... guess you could call it blind faith .

That and I'd like to think that the Hexus.community would be my witness

[watercooled]

Most of the parts just arrived and I'm running a SMART surface scan on the HDD, any idea how long it takes on a 2TB HDD?

Edit: NVM it's done, took about 6-7 hours.

[watercooled]

I found the build log for that Black Dwarf project if anyone's interested, purely by accident actually - I clicked the 'Hosted by Modders inc' link at the top right of JonnyGuru.com and saw it on the front page anyway here's the link: http://www.modders-inc.com/modules.p...ewtopic&t=4210
I've just thought of one possible design flaw though - HDD MFRs recommend running drives flat or upright +/- a few degrees and not diagonally like they are in that NAS, it's a big subject for debate on lots of forums etc but I'd go with the MFR's recommendations personally.

[CaptainCrash]

I've just thought of one possible design flaw though - HDD MFRs recommend running drives flat or upright +/- a few degrees and not vertically like they are in that NAS, it's a big subject for debate on lots of forums etc but I'd go with the MFR's recommendations personally.

Where do they recommend that? As far as I know, HDD manufacturers are pretty much unanimous that it doesn't matter a jot which way drives are mounted...

Seagate: "All Seagate & Maxtor's internal hard drives can be fitted sideways or upside down. As long as they can not be moved during use and get enough cooling it is irrelevant in which direction they are mounted."

Western Digital: "The drive can be mounted sideways, on end, or even upside down as long as the mounting screws are used properly."

Most enterprise-class server cases mount drives vertically, and I doubt if they'd do so if there were any evidence that it was harmful.

[watercooled]

Sorry that was a typo, will correct now, I meant diagonally. I'm not entirely sure why but I was reading one particular forum a while ago and I remember a few of the members contacted MFRs and asked them about mounting positions and all said horizontally or vertically +/- a few degrees. I've read many theories as to why but not many of them are reasonable, maybe it's just a myth but I'm guessing there must be a reason MFRs recommend 90 degree angles.

Edit: This could be the forum where I read it: http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums...=178595#178595

[Azza]

This is a very interesting thread! Probably going to end up building a NAS over the summer for home.

What software have you ended up using watercooled?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is a very useful thread indeed!

[Salazaar]

Just thought I'd add my 2p...

I'm in the process of setting up a NAS at the moment, running FreeNAS on an old Dell P4 box (256mb of RDRAM, that old!). Just bought a SATA I adaptor (SATA II adaptors seem to be much more expensive and require a PCI-E interface, which my Dell box doesn't have) which FreeNAS seems to have accepted. Just waiting to get a nice fat HDD and we'll see how it goes.

I'm getting a Samsung Ecogreen F3 for my birthday, but I've got to decide whether to buy a second and RAID them up.

If anyone's interested I'll update when I get things in place.