Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Hard drive RPMs and data speed.

[Alex Schuster <wonko@wonkology.org>]

Michael Mol writes:

> My point is that the numbers aren't what mattered here. My point is
> that SAMSUNG sold me a shoddy product, replaced it with another
> instance of the the same shoddy product, wouldn't replace it again,
> and never addressed a detailed technical report of a systemic problem
> in the same. Bad tech, bad customer service, and it looked like this
> was a more common scenario than among other manufacturers. All of it
> boiled down to a nasty case of being a bad candidate for spending time
> and money.

Samsung, uh? Here's my story of today. My fried just bought two external
USB drives. I wanted to know which brand the HD is, so I checked with
hdparm -I, and googled for SAMSUNG HD204UI. I found a story about a bug
which makes the drive sometimes forget to write a block when it is
attached to a SATA adapter in AHCI mode and when the ATA command
"IDENTIFY DEVICE" is sent (like in hdparm -I or when using the
smartmontools). There is a firmware patch for this, this is good. But on
the annoying side:

- You need to make a DOS boot floppy and copy the patch there. I don't
  know how exactly to do this, and I read about people using Linux who
  needed over an hour for this or even failed. Can't they just let me
  download an image I can boot from?

- It doesn't work over USB, so I would have to install the drive in a PC.

- The new firmware has exactly the same revision number. How stupid is
  this?? I cannot even find out whether the drives have the problem or
  not. Except by trying to reproduce the problem.

Here's a link to the but I described, but It's German only.
http://www.heise.de/ct/meldung/Firmware-Patch-fuer-Samsung-Festplatte-EcoGreen-F4-HD204UI-Update-1150154.html
I also read some angry comments about Samsung there. Question is, are
other manufacturers better? And wasn't Samsung Electronics bought by
Seagate anyway?


Any idea whether an external USB drive case might count as a SATA
controller in AHCI mode? I tried to trigger the bug, but that did not
happen, so I guess it's fine, at least when being in the USB case.

Another problem is that data access frequently stalls on her PC, like when
transferring data or doing a mke2fs. After a while, this message appears
in syslog, and the process continues for a while, until it happens again:

usb 1-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 7

Same problem with a GRML boot cd and on another USB port. Happens with
both drives. But it is fine on my PC. 

	Wonko