[mythtv-users] A warning about Samsung HDDs

Dewey Smolka dsmolka at gmail.com
Sun Oct 30 19:22:45 EST 2005


Hey all.

I just wanted to post a very unpleasant experience as a warning to
anyone looking for storage.

I just had a Samsung HDD (my MBE's boot disk/recordings volume) come
to a literal screeching halt less than 30 days after I purchased it.
The part # is SP2514N (250GB, 7200rpm, 8M, PATA), and I bought it at
Microcenter -- it's an OEM drive, so it came without any packaging.
And I do mean it came to a screeching halt -- while I was watching the
football game, the unit started making some really unnerving sounds
and froze the system. When I tried to reboot, it wouldn't even get to
GRUB.

I still have no idea what happened, but can rule out a couple things.
It wasn't a heat issue as I had been regularly monitoring drive temps
since setting up my new rig. It generally ran at between 35 and 38 C,
and maxed out about 42 C.

The PSU is also new, and at 450 W shouldn't have any problem driving
my P4 2.5 with 3 HDDs.

I had thought Samsung drives were fairly solid, but this is the third
HDD of theirs that I've had fail on me in the last four months or so.
The oldest (an 80 GB ATA drive) was less than two years, the next
oldest (60 GB notebook drive) was barely a year although I blame that
one on overheating because the notebook's vid card was right next to
the HDD.

There was no indication from SMART that anything was amiss.

The bright side is that I didn't lose much, and nothing that's not
easily replacable or that I don't mind losing. I am also fortunate
that I saved the 20 GB HDD from my old MBE, and was able to swap it
into the new machine to access my music and video storage, which are
on Maxstor drives.

I know I can get the Samsung replaced, but it will still take me the
better part of a day to reinstall everything and redo the menus etc
how I had them before. This is not what I wanted to do this week.

If you're looking for an HDD, I'd have to recommend you avoid Samsung.


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