Samsung F1 1TB Drives

[[R4A]Bigman]

RMA Number: 214159

After a lot of phone calls, I figured it might be better to try to answer all my questions in one place rather than having to explain my story every time I phone up. Obviously this is no slight on the customer service at Scan, just for my own benefit!

History
I bought 4x Samsung F1 1TB drives back in September 08, and I noticed a few unrecoverable read errors showing up in the Linux kernel which caused me to investigate.

I ran the SMART extended self-test using SmartMonTools (smartctl -t long /dev/sd*) on each of the drives, and all returned from the test logging Read Failures.

As per the Samsung instructions, I ran a random drive through the Samsung ESTOOL and this confirmed the errors. Thus I assumed that all were failed and attempted to send them back.

Due to the 'outside of warranty region' message on the Samsung website, after a drawn-out process with Samsung, I came back to Scan to get the warranty serviced via yourselves instead.

After doing some sort of SMART analysis (not sure exactly) and passing one of the disks through the Samsung ESTOOL you found the drives were not faulty and I got them back.


Now
Since I've had the drives back, I ran the SMART extended self-test again, to find the same issues being noted on all of the drives. I'm also in the process of running each and every disk through the Samsung ESTOOL (though you can appreciate this takes a very long time).

My drives
9419:
SMART Read error
ESTOOL Diagnostics - reported error
ESTOOL Low level formatted - completed without error
ESTOOL Diagnostics re-run - completed without error
SMART self-test re-run - completed without error

9414:
SMART Read error
ESTOOL Diagnostics - completed without error
SMART self-test re-run - failed
Zero-write the drive (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda)
SMART self-test re-run - completed without error

9409:
SMART Read error
ESTOOL Diagnostics - reported error
ESTOOL Low level formatted - completed without error
ESTOOL Diagnostics re-run - completed without error
SMART self-test re-run - completed without error

9406:
SMART Read error
ESTOOL Diagnostics - reported error
ESTOOL Low level formatted - reported error
ESTOOL Diagnostics - reported error


Questions
It sounds pretty cut and dry with 9406, that it is broken. Will I be able to have this returned under a new RMA number even though it has already been tested for faults once before?

9414 reported a SMART read error during its self test. Even though the drive has passed the Samsung ESTOOL, I still have a low confidence in its ability to perform and retain my data. I'm assuming the (consistent) SMART failures are not good enough for an RMA? Is there anything you can suggest which might resolve the SMART failures?
EDIT:- a zero-fill of the drive seems to have sorted this out.




Thanks for your time and help.

[rabbid]

do the estool diags done include the full surface scan?

[[R4A]Bigman]

As far as I am aware, that is what it is doing.

[[R4A]Bigman]

FYI to readers - Scan have dealt with this now and have given me a new RMA number.

Thanks again Scan for your continued excellent customer service