5 hard drives tests results - the newest 2 TB F4EG HD204UI Samsung is not good enough

dragonfruit

There have been tested 5 hard drives using different tests (mainly surface access times tests):

1. Samsung HD204UI in Verbatim 2 TB 3.0 USB enclosure.
2. Samsung SP1614N
3. WDC WD6400AAKS
4. WDC WD1600BEVS
5. Seagate ST320410A

The tests results are in 149 files of the screenshots of these tests, available to download in this thread:
http://forum.hddguru.com/surface-test-hdds-t18575.html

1. Generally Samsung drives (even the new 2TB Samsung HD204UI) seem to have considerably poorer quality of the surface comparing to the 3 years old (or so) Western Digital WDC WD6400AAKS.

2. I would like to see similar tests, in particular of other brands and models of 2 TB hard drives. Please upload your tests results in that thread (click the link above).

3. I wonder why in some hard drives slower access times can bee seen aligning in some diagonal patterns (in HD204UI) and why in some other drives (in WDC WD1600BEVS) a checkered pattern appears (only from the second half of the scan) which "shape" changes regularly depending on the part of the disk surface scanned, while in some other drives no such regular patterns are present?

4. Why is there such a difference in SMART status health notification between various software for Samsung SP1614N (it is red for most of the tests in HDD Health and everything OK in HD Tune)? There is also a significant difference in MHDD scan result and HDDScan result for SP1614N.

5. BTW, it took ca. 31 h to test Samsung HD204UI in Verbatim 2 TB 3.0 USB enclosure on USB 2.0 port.

Hammyman

1 & 3) In short, who gives a toss? As long as it reads and writes data and doesn't lose or corrupt it, thats all that matters. AND IT WAS A SAMPLE OF ONE DRIVE, NOT SAMPLES OF MULTIPLE BATCHES OF THE SAME MODEL

4) Thats what happens when you use software. Motherboard temp monitoring software can also give wildly different readings.

5) And? Also if its connected to a USB2.0 port, it'll only run at 2.0 speeds won't it?

A shining example of a post written by someone who has no clue about what they're reading.

dragonfruit

Samsung customer service is rather not what you would expect:
http://forum.hddguru.com/verbatim-usb-external-with-samsung-f4eg-hd204ui-t18455-20.html#p124618

dragonfruit

Hammyman wrote: »

1 & 3) In short, who gives a toss? As long as it reads and writes data and doesn't lose or corrupt it, thats all that matters. AND IT WAS A SAMPLE OF ONE DRIVE, NOT SAMPLES OF MULTIPLE BATCHES OF THE SAME MODEL

Perhaps for you it is all that matters, but not for everyone. Some people are curious, some other are not. Those tests show what is the surface quality and hence also how fast and efficient they can work.

Hammyman wrote: »

5) And? Also if its connected to a USB2.0 port, it'll only run at 2.0 speeds won't it?

I do not claim otherwise. Just said how long it took and that's it. I thought that some people would like to know. You are apparently not amongst them.

Hammyman wrote: »

A shining example of a post written by someone who has no clue about what they're reading.

If you had a clue you would answer to the point no. 3 differently.

Hammyman

dragonfruit wrote: »

Perhaps for you it is all that matters, but not for everyone. Some people are curious, some other are not. Those tests show what is the surface quality and hence also how fast and efficient they can work.

Except it doesn't show that.
For 99.99999999&% of people whether the data integrity is still there is all that matters. Businesses routinely swap out hard drives by that time anyway so its a non-issue for them and as I said, only one hard drive from one batch, not even a few from one batch or different batches. Its just as likely they got a bad one as a good one.

Those tests show what is the surface quality and hence also how fast and efficient they can work.

Material quality of the platter isn't what matters as much as the magnetic quality as thats the thing that stores the data.

I do not claim otherwise. Just said how long it took and that's it.

Without any point of reference, how do you know if its good or bad? And as they tested the speed of a device in a USB3.0 caddy, they completely invalidated the test by using a USB 2.0 port.

If you had a clue you would answer to the point no. 3 differently.

They employ different controllers. Really, it isn't rocket science to figure out why. It may be that one manufacturer chooses to employ a technique to write data to multiple platters to speed up read/write times.
Also The reason the shape changes is due to the fact the platter is round and rotates. I would totally expect the ones at the outer edge of the platter to be completely different to those at the inner edge simply due to the massive differences in speed of rotation at the different points, the inner edge ones being narrower than the outer.

A full explanation with pretty pictures for the idiots is in this article here:
http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_Tracks_and_Zones.html



I've been in the hardware side of computers for 27 years and am a qualified electronics engineer. Are you even 27 years old?

dragonfruit

Hammyman wrote: »

Material quality of the platter isn't what matters as much as the magnetic quality as thats the thing that stores the data.

Perhaps it shows magnetic quality, the latency times may represent that quality?
Anyway, how to interpret those maps and patterns?

Hammyman wrote: »

Without any point of reference, how do you know if its good or bad?

I have seen another test of HD204UI with MHDD (cannot find the forum where it was posted, now) I assume without enclosure, and he/she also said about the quality of the drive, and compared it (wihout showing the results, just said his other drives were better) to AFAIR WD drives, so there are at least two such tests showing more or less similar results.

Hammyman wrote: »

They employ different controllers. Really, it isn't rocket science to figure out why. It may be that one manufacturer chooses to employ a technique to write data to multiple platters to speed up read/write times.
Also The reason the shape changes is due to the fact the platter is round and rotates. I would totally expect the ones at the outer edge of the platter to be completely different to those at the inner edge simply due to the massive differences in speed of rotation at the different points, the inner edge ones being narrower than the outer.

Yes, but why it differes so grossly from drive to drive (some don't have these patterns at all, and others have).

Hammyman wrote: »

A full explanation with pretty pictures for the idiots is in this article here:
http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_Tracks_and_Zones.html

It says:

"Warning! The following article has been rated as MA and contains:

• Engineering language
• Mind violating knowledge
• HDD nudity"

I don't want my mind to be violated.

Hammyman wrote: »

I've been in the hardware side of computers for 27 years and am a qualified electronics engineer. Are you even 27 years old?

Good for you. I am not professionally into that.

Hammyman wrote: »

Are you even 27 years old?

Older, but does it matter? You seem to be quite agitated about those issues. Just accept that not all people are electronic engineers working with computer hardware. You would certainly not know enough from other areas of science.

dragonfruit

Ridiculous Samsung replies:
http://forum.hddguru.com/verbatim-usb-external-with-samsung-f4eg-hd204ui-t18455-20.html#p124735
http://forum.hddguru.com/verbatim-usb-external-with-samsung-f4eg-hd204ui-t18455-20.html#p124618

They claim that applying their patch won't change the firmware. LOL

John_Gray

"Rant about Samsung HDDs" would have been a better subject. Is it possible to change your initial post?

Are you familiar with the American phraseology, "I could care less"?

penrhyn

Dodgy hard drives killed off Alan Sugar's Amstrad computer business.

patman99

I've been running a pair of Samsung 300G/b drives for 3 years, no problems or errors yet.

Samsung c/s - Son's laptop had keyboard fault. Collected Monday, returned fixed Thursday.

As for HDD reliabilty, Hitachi - customer bought a Hitachi 500G/b drive which I fitted. Less than 1 year on, and the drive has failed. Nuff said.

dragonfruit

patman99 wrote: »

I've been running a pair of Samsung 300G/b drives for 3 years, no problems or errors yet.

Samsung c/s - Son's laptop had keyboard fault. Collected Monday, returned fixed Thursday.

As for HDD reliabilty, Hitachi - customer bought a Hitachi 500G/b drive which I fitted. Less than 1 year on, and the drive has failed. Nuff said.

Samsung was selling 2TB HD204UI and some other 1.5 or 1 TB model with a firmware bug, which was causing silent data loss. Samsung released a firmware patch tool, which doesn't change firmware number:
http://forum.hddguru.com/verbatim-usb-external-with-samsung-f4eg-hd204ui-t18455-20.html#p124618
http://forum.hddguru.com/verbatim-usb-external-with-samsung-f4eg-hd204ui-t18455-20.html#p124735