I've bought 4 of the 500Mb 501 drives that had such a great rep. well. bought 2 for a client install, raid array. 1 failed, and in order to keep the turnaround low, bought another one with the intention of rmaing the failing drive, forgot about it. 6 months later, the 2nd original drive also failed, and I couldn't lay my hands on the receipt so bought another drive. so 2 from 4. I bought a 1Tb F3 last weekend, though I actually wanted a WD or Seagate. First samsung I've bought in over 2 years. hopefully things have improved.
I have had 4 samsung 750Gb drives since they first came out 2 of them failed within 3 months. The other 2 have been running fine. Also running a 1TB drive no issues.
I've got: 2 F3EG : ordered 4/26/2010 and 6/28/2010 2 F4EG : ordered 11/12/2010 I've also got: 2 WD 1TB Black : ordered 2/9/2010 2 WD 750GB Black : ordered 11/29/2009 No Samsung failures but one C7 error (problem with the port, no data loss) in the 1TB Black, not a major issue but was RMAed for a new one
So my point still stands, while a failure rate of 4.3% ain't bad considering the beating the people here give them the real rate is likely to be below 1%.
1 1TB F3 working fine 1 500gb F3 working fine (fairly new) 2 750gb F1's now this is where the issue starts. 1 is still ticking along nicely, the other was sent away for replacement due to it starting to fail, I got a replacement which was fairly noisy and low and behold the damn thing died a disasterous death taking all my wifes photo's with it. Not impressed with samsung replacing a duff drive with an even duffer drive. Emailed them about the isue and to be quite honest they couldn't give a toss so now I have to shell out £300 to retrieve the data due to their incompitence. .....and to rub it in, the morning it died I was about to back the whole thing up
I have just install 1tb f3 last week, i am also concenrd about the noise and the life of the hard drive,. whines and cluncks and clicks all the time, though should be quite for a new desk.?
Honest opinion? They're cheap, fast and quiet. But my 160gig EIDE WD Caviar has outlasted them all and is still my OS drive even today on 7 Pro x64 after 6+ years. In that time I've had: 2x400gig (first failed within warranty and replaced, second outside it) 2x500gig (One RMA'd within warranty) 1x750gig (no problems so far, but noisy) 1xF1 (ok so far) 2xF3 (ok so far) I honestly think they're good value, but I don't think they last well compared to WD.
So all your wife's photos were on a single drive without a backup and they're the ones being incompetent? Sorry, but I don't get it. I've never had a problem with any of my 7 Samsung 1TB F1s, and I trust Samsung as much as any brand, but I would NEVER put important data on a single drive. Just because I don't think it's about to die, doesn't mean it won't! All my important data is always in at least two locations at any time (and my backup is Raid5) I'm glad you got the data back though, £300 doesn't sound too bad compared to losing them.
7 Samsung 1TB F1s (All about 3 years old) 4 In my freenas 2 In my PC 1 As a spare (was previously in the PC) No problems on any. I like Samsung drives, I've found them reliable over the years so were the first choice when I built my i7 920 rig (For which I bought all seven). I was badly burned by IBM drives years ago (No data loss due to backups - but lots of click of death) but I've yet to have any issue with a Samsung. But it'll happen one day, hence the need to take regular backups and use Raid5 on my nas. I wouldn't worry over Samsung drives, I don't think they're any more likely to fail than other brands.
Indeed I was incompotent for not backing it up but as I said it was on my to do list for that very morning (it was only 6 weeks old and most likely a refurb) I back my HDD up reguarly, sending out a knackered drive to replace a knackered drive, you don't think thats poor service ????
My HD160JJ 160GB has been used as an OS drive for the last 4 years with no problems, but it's pretty slow now! I've used an HD501LJ 500GB, F1 HD103UJ 1TB, and F3 HD203WI 2TB over the years for storage and they've all been fine.
I have 4 of them in 2 machines. Never had a single issue with any of them. I have had failures with Seagate drives, and Western Digital, but never had any issues with the Samsungs. What is giving you cause for concern? All makes of hard drive fail sometimes. If you ask this question re: Seagate, or WD, or any other make of drive, you'll always get people saying "Mine failed.. they're poo". What exactly do you hope to achieve with this thread? Unless you're polling thousands of people in a carefully measured survey you're just allowing those who've had a drive fail a little rant about how "crap" they are. I haven't had a failure of a samsung yet... but that doesn't mean they're no more or less reliable than WD IMO. I fully expect ALL my drives to fail at some point, which is why I have a back up policy.
Personally, I've had a much, much higher failure rate than reported in this thread. I guess it's just luck of the draw, and an unfortunate circumstance that I've had higher than average failures from my own drives. I've gotten in touch with an e-tailer and the RMA rates for Samsung drives overall are roughly 1%, which is perfectly acceptable really. Just wanted to get an enthusiast user sample.
No issue with Samsung, but pretty much every Seagate HDD I've had or my family have had has failed within a couple years or at least gone wrong enough that I have to reformat windows on them numerous times
