Samsung drives unreliable?

[greven79]

Hi

6 months ago I bought 4 Samsung 500GB sata drives and configured as a raid 5.

A few days back I had a drive failure. No problem, got a new drive on warranty and yesterday I replaced it. The raid started to rebuild and that was that, NOT.

In the middle of the rebuild andother drive reported the same errors (corrupt sectors). SO I'm screwed :crap:

The question is if the samsung drives ar unreliable? The probability of 2 drives failing within 6 hours exists but isn't very big.

SO what should I do?

Replace the latest failed one and restart with the raid ?

I should point out that these drives are in my fileserver that is running 24-7.

 

[timwhit]

If all four drives were part of one shipment it's very possible that your shipment was mishandled or poorly packed. Where did you purchase the drives?

I haven't read any reports of these drives being unreliable. I am currently running 3 of them with no problems. However, a sample of 3 or 4 drives is way too small to make any kind of judgment. There are other members here that have deployed these drives in much larger numbers without a large percentage of failure.

 

[ddrueding]

I have a larger number (more than 100 less than 200) of these drives deployed, and I haven't had any fail yet. It could be a bad batch, but I would be more suspicious of a power supply or heat issue. How confident are you in your other components and configuration?

 

[greven79]

I'm suspecting it's a heat issue.

My drives are fittet on top of eachother in the chassis. I do have a 120mm fan in front but this may not be enough.

What kind of power issues could possibly cause this?

 

[timwhit]

What kind of power issues could possibly cause this?

Bad power supply that isn't outputting reliable, clean power.

 

[Handruin]

Or power spikes could cause damage if you aren't on a UPS or surge suppressant system.

I've only deployed a handful of systems (5-7) with samsung drives and they are all still running in systems right now.

 

[Mercutio]

I deploy a couple hundred computers a year with Samsung hard disks. With, say, 1200 drives in service over the last six years, I've had to RMA nine of them.

 

[LiamC]

I'm suspecting it's a heat issue.

My drives are fittet on top of eachother in the chassis. I do have a 120mm fan in front but this may not be enough.

What kind of power issues could possibly cause this?

The google white paper on their storage sub-systems almost conclusively proved that heat isn't an issue with hard drives (within acceptable limits). It could just have been a bad batch (mishandled in transit) or bad power. Search these forums for posts by Tannin on hard drives and handling. You can't do anything about the shipping, but check out your power supply. Is the chassis capable of being moved/knocked over/severely bumped whilst drives are powered on?