Samsung HD204UI/Z4 2tb drive failure?

[Shaolin_K]

It may also be worth noting that, despite having my contact number, I didn't have any missed calls yesterday.

Will I be informed of an approximate time for collection on the day?

[rabbid]

Has anyone else ran the full diagnostics on their drives and found similar results, or do I have a duff drive?
Thanks

I wish I could, the one I received today (F4 2TB) sits there clicking and isnt recognised at bootup
Did they buy their controllers from ibm/hitachi? although those sounded somewhat sicker when it happened.
Ho hum, off to raise an OLQ then...

[Shaolin_K]

I wish I could, the one I received today (F4 2TB) sits there clicking and isnt recognised at bootup
Did they buy their controllers from ibm/hitachi? although those sounded somewhat sicker when it happened.
Ho hum, off to raise an OLQ then...

That reminds me - when I first booted my PC with this drive, there was quite a disturbing click at the start, but never thought much of it as:

1. It runs and never replicated itself
2. Performed near to other benchmarks without any data on

Unfortunately, with the number of write errors constantly increasing with test data written onto the drive, I had not option but to RMA, because it could go 'pop' any day.

The errors I had all point towards a disk surface and/or read/write heads starting to fail.

[Shaolin_K]

Can you provide an update please?

I've been advised no collection has been made yet. Nor have I had any notification from Scan nor DPD re. scheduled collection.

[Shaolin_K]

Still no update?

[Shaolin_K]

Well, I guess they're not collecting today?

Very, very disappointing service from Scan / DPD - not what I've come to expect from past dealings.

[Mark@SCAN]

Hi,

Please accept my apologies on behalf of DPD for the missed/failed collections.

I have sent you an e-mail with a number of suggestions, please reply directly to this e-mail with your preffered option.

Regards

[Shaolin_K]

Hi,

Please accept my apologies on behalf of DPD for the missed/failed collections.

I have sent you an e-mail with a number of suggestions, please reply directly to this e-mail with your preffered option.

Regards

Thanks Mark. I undertsand things could go wrong - it's just frustrating.

I can't access my personal email at work. Would it be poosible for you to copy the email & PM it to me here at Hexus?

Thanks

[Shaolin_K]

Hi Mark

Could you confirm a re-booked collection has been scheduled please?

Thanks

[Shaolin_K]

Hi Mark

I've been advised DPD hasn't collected yet. Could you confirm they are definately going to collect?

No point in me tracking it and doesn't appear on their radar till collection.

[Shaolin_K]

They still haven't collected.

They've only got upto 5pm.

Where do we go from here if they do not collect today?

[Shaolin_K]

Any more news from DPD yet Mark?

This is fast becoming a joke.

EDIT
This is one of the reasons I've tried to satisfy myself that there is indeed a problem with the drive before requesting an RMA - in terms of the inconvenience caused by sending the drive back:

1. myself, or
2. arranging the wait for collection

I was also hesitant as I don't want to be hit with the no fault found fee.

If I provided you photos and screenshots (showing drive's serial number) and faults reports in SMART, could you elevate to management to decide if you could despatch a new drive out (considering DPD has delivered twice successfully to me, but for some reason has failed on 3 attempted collections), then collect the RMA drive at the same time?

The longer I wait for this issue to be resolved, the cheaper the drive's getting.

[vimes]

Have you ran CrystalDiskInfo on the drive to see if the SMART information agrees with your other findings...?

I have read this posted on Neweggs page from another customer of these drives...

Other Thoughts: Bought 6 drives together. Ran Samsung's drive diagnostic (ESTOOL v3.01p) on all the drives out of the box and 5/6 drives failed with the same error (Ram Error, Service Code AJ41) after doing a full surface scan even though the error has nothing to do with bad sectors. However, if I skip the surface scan, they all pass the ram test so I'm not sure if this is a bug in ESTOOL or the drives. Still, doesn't really make me feel confident to use these drives. It would be great if someone from Samsung could chime in on the issue. My drives are serial number:

S2H7J1CZ918495
S2H7J1CZ918486
S2H7J1CZ918482
S2H7J1AZA14578
S2H7J1AZA14581
S2H7J1AZA14580

My F4 2TB Samsung drive will fail also with a AJ41 error. But I do not know if it is a problem or not..?

[Shaolin_K]

Yes, I've ran CDI and the SMART info reported the same as HDSenitel. They both showed the drive's serial number, but I've used the latter to capture screenshots as it illustrates the timeline of when the write errors have occurred. As mention, the more data I've copied to the HD204UI, the more write errors developed over time. It also developed RAW read errors and had a couple G-Sense errors.

I also used ESTool v3.01p on my HD203WI, passes FULL diag test without a problem. No write errors at all.

As you can imagine, I wasn't comfortable with long-term use of the HD204UI. I'd performed extensive tests to try convince myself maybe the diagnostic program was at fault and to avoid the hassle of RMAing, but with more data written on, the error rates increased. I may have kept the drive had it not been the constantly increasing error rates and developing faults.

Would others keep the drive with the above in mind?

[Shaolin_K]

Have you ran CrystalDiskInfo on the drive to see if the SMART information agrees with your other findings...?

I have read this posted on Neweggs page from another customer of these drives...



My F4 2TB Samsung drive will fail also with a AJ41 error. But I do not know if it is a problem or not..?

Does you drive show any errors in SMART - could you post up a screenshot?

[vimes]

The image below would indicate that there has been 1 raw read error...(?)

[IMG]

In all other diagnostics my drive passes with flying colours.

In a Polish forum I read this through Google translator...


http://translate.google.com/translat...7.html&act=url

IIRC I have read other posts that have suggested using another SATA port on the motherboard might help...?



BTW I have run all the extensive test using SeaTools for Windows on my other drive which is a Seagate and it passes all of them and yet for the last 2 years HD Tune Pro has shown the following...



the drive is constantly in use each and every day and has never failed at all. Take a look at the error rate if you think that 1 or 2 is bad for the Samsung and spin retry count - scary eh..?!