Samsung 2 TB, eco-5400 rpm

LunarMist

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No! I already have too many 1-2TB drives lying around. :D I will be spending about $125 next week just to buy boxes for them.:colors:
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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That might have been the issue that people were complaining about when I was looking in to buying a bunch of 5400rpm 1.5 or 2TB drives.

I have 3x 2TB and 4x 1.5TB Samsung drives sitting around, and 2x Seagate 2TB. I want to do something with them but somehow that collection of drives does not give me any kind of warm fuzzies.

On the other hand, an array built on 12x 1.5TB Barracudas (last year's firmware boondoggle) has been rock solid for me.
 

LunarMist

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Wait for a firmware update and avoid reading the SMART data while writing data to them?

I'm not using the hdpharman or other funk tools. In that case it should not happen in casual use, correct?
 

Stereodude

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I'm not using the hdpharman or other funk tools. In that case it should not happen in casual use, correct?
I would think it should be pretty rare in normal use. I have only one 2TB F4 in use and I everything copied to it is verified (read back & compared) which would catch it.
 

Handruin

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Can I just say how completely freaking obnoxious it is that so many flash utilities still need DOS.

Most of my students, people taking classes to obtain Microsoft Professional Certifications, would buy a new drive before they'd do something in DOS.

Last time I tried one of their diagnostic tools which needed DOS, it wouldn't work for some unknown reason. I can't imagine I'd have any better luck with this. I also don't have a floppy drive to boot from or a USB pen drive...meh.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I have a FreeDOS boot CD but I haven't had any luck making a working pen drive boot to DOS. Hiren's Boot Disk has a pen drive version, but I don't know if that's clean enough to use for BIOS flashing purposes.

I do have a USB floppy drive, but every time I plug the thing in I feel like I'm giving up as a tech.
 

Stereodude

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I've been able to make a USB flash drive boot to DOS. It wasn't very hard as I recall. I used the HP tool.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I've been able to make a USB flash drive boot to DOS. It wasn't very hard as I recall. I used the HP tool.

As I recall, that didn't work when I tried it. As I recall the PC acted like there was no drive present and when straight on to trying a network boot.
 

Stereodude

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They don't work on all motherboards. I've had a mixed bag of results trying to boot from USB devices on various systems. Older systems that claim USB device boot capability seem to be the most problematic whereas new ones work well.
 

BingBangBop

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I've been able to make a USB flash drive boot to DOS. It wasn't very hard as I recall. I used the HP tool.

I tried that HP tool just once! It killed my flash drive making it totally non-formated and non-formattable. I just swore never again...
 

LunarMist

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I've used HPUSBFW.EXE many times with no problems, including just yesterday in fact.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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They don't work on all motherboards.

I was working with a drive that I've used to boot before and I was working with an Intel branded board.

Booting from pen drives is definitely inconsistent. My ancient-ass Thinkpad 560 can boot from USB but I've found Gateway desktops that won't detect my TrueImage boot drive.
 

Stereodude

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I've used HPUSBFW.EXE many times with no problems, including just yesterday in fact.
I tried it yesterday on two different laptops and found the Windows version uncooperative. In both systems it incorrectly identified the flash drive that was plugged in. For example, the flash drive was a 256MB Sandisk Cruzer Mini (old school). It was assigned D:. However, the HP program showed it as "Sandisk Cruzer Mini Z:\ 100MB" Z: is my 100MB RAMdisk on that system. In the other it was the Z:\ pagefile partition that confused it. I didn't try the program to see which drive it would really format and configure though.

However, the DOS / command line version (HPUSBF.EXE) worked fine. :scratch:
 

LunarMist

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No. I don't have any way to boot DOS to a computer with too much RAM.
 

LunarMist

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I tried it yesterday on two different laptops and found the Windows version uncooperative. In both systems it incorrectly identified the flash drive that was plugged in. For example, the flash drive was a 256MB Sandisk Cruzer Mini (old school). It was assigned D:. However, the HP program showed it as "Sandisk Cruzer Mini Z:\ 100MB" Z: is my 100MB RAMdisk on that system. In the other it was the Z:\ pagefile partition that confused it. I didn't try the program to see which drive it would really format and configure though.

However, the DOS / command line version (HPUSBF.EXE) worked fine. :scratch:

I have not had a problem with Windows version 2.0.6.0 in ~6 computers and they all have a RAMDisk. I have not tried it with Win 7 yet, if that is a potential source of the problem.
 

jtr1962

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Back on topic, has anyone tried this yet?

I personally have not. I do a verify on everything written to the one I have in use (as an external backup drive) so I know I haven't had any problem with data loss, though I will probably apply the fix soon if I don't read any horror stories.
I tried but unfortunately my M/B is so old that any SATA drives can't be seen in native DOS mode.
 

Stereodude

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I tried but unfortunately my M/B is so old that any SATA drives can't be seen in native DOS mode.
Odd, I wouldn't think any SATA controller in AHCI or RAID mode could be seen in a native DOS mode. :scratch:

FWIW, I just did the update on both of my HD204UI drives. I left the BIOS in RAID mode (did not change it to IDE), booted from a USB drive with Windows XP's DOS files on it. It found the drive on the ATI SB700 controller and updated it. I then powered off and repeated the process with the 2nd HD204UI (still in an eSATA enclosure). That also worked without any sort of issue.
 

LunarMist

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Maybe for some, but I have a 2003 computer that boots from USB.
 

LunarMist

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They are back to $80 at the Egg. I have no confidence in the Samsung drives until the firmware is fixed. I wonder how long that would take. :dunno:
 

LunarMist

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The price goes down and back up like the Duncan yo-yo. :crnval:
 
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