Verbatim USB 3.0 external 2TB HD with a bug affected f/w of Samsung F4EG HD204UI

[drf]

Verbatim USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive 2TB has inside Samsung HD204UI (reported by the operating system Win XP).

 

1. That hard drive needs a firmware update, otherwise data might be lost according to Samsung:

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/faqView.do?b2b_bbs_msg_id=386

and smartmontools :

http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki/SamsungF4EGBadBlocks

 

However, it is not possible to apply Samsung firmware fix, because Samsung software (patch tool) does not recognize the drive, when it is in Verbatim USB enclosure.

 

I tried it even with USBASPI V2.20 MS-DOS Driver:

http://hddguru.com/software/2006.02.09-USBASPI-MS-DOS-Driver/

to no avail.

 

It is not possible to remove the hard drive from the enclosure in order to apply the fix, without loosing warranty, as there is "Warranty void if broken" sticker.

 

Is it safe to use smartmontools, HDDScan, MHDD and other disk diagnostic tools with this bug infested drive in such case?

 

HDDSCan can detect firmware no. so perhaps it is sending the ATA IDENTIFY DEVICE command triggering the bug to appear?

 

Is there any software, which would allow to update the firmware of the Samsung HD204UI hard drive without removing it from the enclosure?

 

Because of USB enclosure it is also not possible to use Samsung's diagnostic software: ESTOOL v. 3.01 and MHDD (with ASPI driver it can detect it, but says 'drive not ready'), although HDDScan was able to test the surface.

 

2. Verbatim in their Quick Start Guide says (in capital bold letters):

"Verbatim will not be liable for data loss or any incidental, consequential or special damages, however caused, for breach of warranties or otherwise."

 

However, I believe that Verbatim cannot deny its liability for data loss in this case, because Verbatim is selling a faulty product (with a known fault, which can be fixed only by firmware update or hard drive exchange to a newer revision), and Verbatim, so far, has not provided any solution.

 

3. Samsung HD204UI hard drive, as most of other 2 TB hard drives is built in Advanced Format:

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/productmodel.do?group=72&type=94&subtype=98&model_cd=552&tab=fea&ppmi=1219

 

This means that it needs to have partitions properly aligned, otherwise it might work considerably slower and cause other problems.

This is so because with the emulation of 512B sectors, there is the risk that a partition could be misaligned compared to the 4K physical sectors - where it would be unwittingly started in the middle of such a sector. As a result, the clusters of a file system on that partition would end up straddling 4K sectors, which would cause performance problems.

Verbatim is providing the drive pre-formatted to FAT 32. But have they aligned it properly?

I think they should warn their customers about that aligning problem (particularly if someone would like to change formatting for example to NTFS).

Partitioning the hard drive under Windows 7 should align it properly. But Verbatim could provide their customers with a special tool from Acronis and/or Paragon to align the partitions (like WD did).

 

You can read more about Advanced Format HDs and the alignment problem on those pages:

http://seagate.com/docs/pdf/whitepaper/tp613_transition_to_4k_sectors.pdf

http://consumer.media.seagate.com/2010/03/the-digital-den/4k-sector-hard-drive-primer/

http://seagate.com/docs/pdf/whitepaper/mb604_4k_transition_faq.pdf

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2888

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimmymay/archive/2009/05/08/disk-partition-alignment-sector-alignment-make-the-case-with-this-template.aspx

 

4. Last but not least: it is curious why warranty for Verbatim product is lasting only 2 years in Europe and in most of other parts of the world, while in USA warranty last 7 years:

http://www.verbatim.com/UserFiles/File/Hardware%20Limited%207-Year%20Warranty.pdf

http://www.verbatim.com/prod/hard-drives/desktop/usb-3.0/ ?

 

Why do they discriminate the rest of the world regarding warranty so grossly?

 

Verbatim Europe seems to be clueless regarding all those issues, no useful reply from them so far.

[drf]

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.