Samsung 2TB green drives defective firmware?

I still wonder if Samsung is even aware of the confusion this is all causing. But how could they not realize? Which leads me to think they don't care...

I do know I haven't bought another Sammy since this story broke.

I was planning to use some of them as boot drives, but now they'll just be stuck as static fileserver storage, with Teracopy used to make sure the data got on there okay to begin with.
 
I like to live dangerously, so I picked up two of these from Newegg for $80/each. I'll have to see if they're factory-updated or not when they come in.
 
Just the thread I was looking for. I'm going to read through it soon, but as someone with very little knowledge on the subject, can anyone give me a quick rundown? From the little bit I've read it sounds like a big mess, difficult update methods, not showing firmware updates, etc. That's the risk I took purchasing Samsung, mediocre customer support. Dare I say something like this would "never" happen with WD.

thanks!
 
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llmercll said:
Just the thread I was looking for. I'm going to read through it soon, but as someone with very little knowledge on the subject, can anyone give me a quick rundown? From the little bit I've read it sounds like a big mess, difficult update methods, not showing firmware updates, etc. That's the risk I took purchasing Samsung, mediocre customer support. Dare I say something like this would "never" happen with WD.

thanks!
Click to expand...

I'm in the same boat as you, except I haven't bought any drives yet and still deciding if I still want to get the HD204UI or WD20EARS.
 
Vauhs said:
I'm in the same boat as you, except I haven't bought any drives yet and still deciding if I still want to get the HD204UI or WD20EARS.
Click to expand...

I own both, and I've been using my WD20EARS 'til I have to just use the Sammys or not.

I've balked as I just know the moment I start using my Sammys, they're going to release and updated firmware with an actual new revision # in it, (for the most part) removing all doubt in the update dept.

Or, quite frankly, I'm going to just RMA them to Samsung. Samsung refuses, I'm going to talk to my CC company. But my previous experiences with Samsung RMAs is not so much hassle (there is no hassle), but their packing/shipping methods actually make Newegg look good.

And we all know how hard that is to do!
 
Honestly, the update is painless. Just run it with all the drives installed. It will only update the Samsung's.

I tried it with 50GB of data on each one and it was harmless.
 
I bought three Samsung F4s last fall for a new media server build. I wiped a old flash drive, set up Samsung's firmware, ESTools, but I also added on BIOS updates for 2 new motherboards. This setup works really well and has been very handy.

I'm not using it for anything else now in case I get another board or Samsung comes out with an updated firmware. Learning about aligning drives and crap, priceless....NOT :)
 
delvryboy said:
Honestly, the update is painless. Just run it with all the drives installed. It will only update the Samsung's.

I tried it with 50GB of data on each one and it was harmless.
Click to expand...

Painless/harmless or not, it means you either have to be certain that you've updated the drives before if you move them around, or bother with the whole update process again to make sure. PITA.

And since the firmware # stayed the same, when you buy new ones, you can't be sure if they're already been updated, so, same boat again.

It's not it being harmless, it's about whether or not it's actually updated, and whether or not you need to update. Having to go through the process on every future purchase of the drive is just dumb. You should be able to look at the sticker on the drive the moment you receive it and know. Or at minimum know when you plug it in.

The way Sammy's done it, you must update every one of them you ever buy to even try and be sure it's got the updated firmware. And even then, the only way to even be partly certain is to run a test that's not even supplied by Samsung that can only give you a negative positive that it has not been updated, but not a positive positive that it indeed has been updated.

Not very well thought out by Samsung.
 
Hm, just got a drive dated Dec 2010... wonder if they're patched yet?

I hope they release a patch for os x users
 
black_dante said:
Hm, just got a drive dated Dec 2010... wonder if they're patched yet?

I hope they release a patch for os x users
Click to expand...

I got a few with label date 2010-12. The displayed firmware version is the same, so no way to tell directly whether they were patched. It was faster for me to just apply the patch to them than to test them to see if they were unpatched.
 
SysteX said:
I can verify that even after a successful patch, you can continue to re-patch the drives after a reboot. The ONLY way (that I'm aware of) to functionally verify that the patch was successful is to use the SMART test (and even then, you can only really be certain when the test fails... you can never prove a positive hypothesis in this way).
Click to expand...

THANK YOU!

*sigh* I guess I wasted a bunch of time re-patching again several times, but at least now I know I've done all I can. I'm going to be very active on backing stuff up until Samsung comes out with a new firmware version - whenever that may be.
 
Tolyngee said:
I still wonder if Samsung is even aware of the confusion this is all causing. But how could they not realize? Which leads me to think they don't care...
Click to expand...

Samsung knows, but it's a total mess. US tech "support" didn't even know about the issue two weeks or so after the patch was released. The standard answer is "RMA". I did end up RMAing one drive (smart features not fully working) and spoke to the RMA center. It's a separate company from Samsung, but because of the utter lack of Samsung support, they end up giving tech support to people. They were actually helpful.

Out of desperation/frustration, I called Samsung Tech support again yesterday. I actually got someone who knew what was going on. They can't help because they are not getting any information from Samsung. However, there's now a "product specialist" for hard drives who can get in touch with the main office and hopefully can provide some answers. I explained how the fact the firmware version number doesn't change is causing a lot of problems. Supposedly, I am supposed to get some sort of reply before the end of the week and I will post when I do.

I've flashed firmware on hard drives (I still own a Seagate 7200.11...and it works fine!), optical drives, mp3 players, media players, stand-alone DVD/BD players and even guitar effects processors, I have NEVER had anything remotely as screwed up as this. I could have saved hours alone if they didn't require a DOS boot (and why does ESTools require DOS?). Neither WD nor Seagate require that for firmware updates. Same for Sony, Lite-On, Asus, etc. for ODD firmware updates. But to keep the same firmware version…that's just stupid and pure fail by Samsung. Until there’s either a new firmware update or revised patch with a new firmware version number, this issue won’t go away.
 
cant i put the exe in a usb and boot from usb?

or burn files(.exe) to a cd with imgburn?
 
Yes provided you have bootable freedos install on the usb stick.

Edit: If you don't download an iso. Burn that to a cd. Then boot off the cd and still put the .exe on the usb stick. When it is done booting change directory to the usb stick and run the firmware update from there.
 
I got a call from the Samsung RMA center regarding the verification issue. The reply they got from Samsung is that after a successful patch you will either get "download completed" followed by the serial number of the drive and then a "C:\" prompt, which is what I get, or "power off system after firmware flash successful" (or something like that). Power off by using the PC power button, but do not turn off or unplug the PSU. Once you are done patching, reset the bios if needed, plug in your other drives, etc. and boot as normal.

As others have mentioned, that's all you will get in terms of confirmation. The tech confirmed that you can run the patch repeatedly if you power off and reboot. I asked them to tell Samsung that there needs to be a different firmware version number after patching or a new firmware version released to avoid all this needless confusion. I have a feeling that Samsung probably won't do either even though it would be easy to modify the patch to give a different firmware number.:rolleyes:

I also asked how they flashed firmware (they do it for SSDs), and it ended up being the same process I used. I used the HP USB Flash Drive tool and Windows 98 boot files (found on Extreme Overclocking website) to create a USB DOS boot drive. I then put the unzipped patch file on the drive. Make sure you set the bios to "IDE" or "SATA" and not RAID or ACHI before you boot into DOS. I have an Asus board and they recommended I use the "compatable" legacy setting rather than "enhanced" "IDE" as well. BTW - maybe obvious, but I learned the hard way that not every USB Flash drive will work as a boot drive even if it's supposed to and functions normally in all other aspects. So if you're having trouble, try another flash drive.

You can patch without unplugging other drives from the motherboard (though it's recommended you do), and you can patch more than one drive at once (though again it's recommended you patch one at a time).

That's pretty much it. Hope someone finds this helpful & thanks to all those who posted before. I'd still be trying to get these %@#$ drives patched without this thread.
 
Would this issue also case a raid card to see the disk as failed.

Here is my issue. I bought 4 of these drives from Newegg to put into my MacPro back on the 26th of December. When I installed them and connected them to the Mac Hardware Raid card three of them have been rock solid but I've had Newegg send me two replacements both of which my raid card keeps saying are bad. I have a seventh disk on the way and should be here today so I plan to flash the firmware before I install it into the Mac but from what I read this may not be the same issue.

The first three disk have been rock solid in the array.

Thanks,
Jason
 
goesto11 said:
I got a call from the Samsung RMA center regarding the verification issue. The reply they got from Samsung is that after a successful patch you will either get "download completed" followed by the serial number of the drive and then a "C:\" prompt, which is what I get, or "power off system after firmware flash successful" (or something like that). Power off by using the PC power button, but do not turn off or unplug the PSU. Once you are done patching, reset the bios if needed, plug in your other drives, etc. and boot as normal.

As others have mentioned, that's all you will get in terms of confirmation. The tech confirmed that you can run the patch repeatedly if you power off and reboot. I asked them to tell Samsung that there needs to be a different firmware version number after patching or a new firmware version released to avoid all this needless confusion. I have a feeling that Samsung probably won't do either even though it would be easy to modify the patch to give a different firmware number.:rolleyes:

I also asked how they flashed firmware (they do it for SSDs), and it ended up being the same process I used. I used the HP USB Flash Drive tool and Windows 98 boot files (found on Extreme Overclocking website) to create a USB DOS boot drive. I then put the unzipped patch file on the drive. Make sure you set the bios to "IDE" or "SATA" and not RAID or ACHI before you boot into DOS. I have an Asus board and they recommended I use the "compatable" legacy setting rather than "enhanced" "IDE" as well. BTW - maybe obvious, but I learned the hard way that not every USB Flash drive will work as a boot drive even if it's supposed to and functions normally in all other aspects. So if you're having trouble, try another flash drive.

You can patch without unplugging other drives from the motherboard (though it's recommended you do), and you can patch more than one drive at once (though again it's recommended you patch one at a time).

That's pretty much it. Hope someone finds this helpful & thanks to all those who posted before. I'd still be trying to get these %@#$ drives patched without this thread.
Click to expand...
I had no choice but to flash in ACHI, as no other setting would work.
 
i did my usb flash drive to work as a bootable usb..it created some files after enabling ms-dos and formating and then i just put the f4eg.exe inside the usb.
i put the samsung hdd as a primary-master and booted from usb[i had to choose usb as force fdd in bios configuration, cause at the first time when i was booting it said missing operating system]..
then it opened dos and i wrote f4eg.exe and it run and in the end it said it completed or somethng..i just closed the pc from power button and put back the other drives...

my question is did it work?
before i did the patch i had copied something in the drive and then on hd tune it said read error 28 and write error 1..
after i did the patch i thought it was ok so i copied files and then i open hd tune and it said read error 29 and write error 3 and also faulty program or something like that had also increased
last fotos of each set(1,2) are after the patch..so read and write errors continue..
first fotos of each set(1,2) are when i first put the drive on my pc.

1)

OACf3.png
y3kDY.png
gR9qw.png



2)
VtgIv.png
bm5Yz.png
WWEUl.png
YHFyU.png
 
drescherjm said:
I installed it on one of my drives in linux and it appears to work. Here is what I did.

I applied the fix on 1 drive using the grub boot disk method from the
following site:

http://idolinux.blogspot.com/2009/10/create-dos-boot-disk-for-cd-or-grub.html

Since http://www.fdos.org does not have the files mentioned in the
blog I had to find it here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.0/

After that I rebooted into free dos. I selected something like highmem
only in freedos and then ran the samsung executable 181550HD204UI.EXE.

It found my 1 samsung F4 attached to the current machine (I have 2
others on a different box) and patched it. The firmware revision # did
not change however. That will be annoying as users can't tell they
have the bad firmware from the good..

I then ran the "How to reproduce" 3 times from the smartctl website
and I was not able to trigger this bug with the new firmware.
Click to expand...

Frustrating as hell... So I already have a grub USB drive, but since there is no ISO or img boot utility I have to get freedos. But you have to embed the executable in the freedos mount to have it viewable within freedos. But then the tutorial is for linux system, so i have to install cygwin... I'm determined to get this working now though!
 
Justintoxicated said:
Frustrating as hell... So I already have a grub USB drive, but since there is no ISO or img boot utility I have to get freedos. But you have to embed the executable in the freedos mount to have it viewable within freedos. But then the tutorial is for linux system, so i have to install cygwin... I'm determined to get this working now though!
Click to expand...

Why not do it the easy way? Use UNetbootin to create a bootable FreeDOS USB flash drive, copy the F4EG.EXE file to the flash drive root directory, boot from the flash drive, once in FreeDOS type C: and then F4EG.EXE to update the firmware.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
 
john4200 said:
Why not do it the easy way? Use UNetbootin to create a bootable FreeDOS USB flash drive, copy the F4EG.EXE file to the flash drive root directory, boot from the flash drive, once in FreeDOS type C: and then F4EG.EXE to update the firmware.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
Click to expand...

I didn't want to wipe all the work I have put into creating my custom USB drive with a bunch of utilities. And I don't have another drive laying around :(

Wait a min I was playing with that program and it needs a freedos iso, shit theres an ISO, life is easy once again :)
 
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Justintoxicated said:
I didn't want to wipe all the work I have put into creating my custom USB drive with a bunch of utilities. And I don't have another drive laying around :(
Click to expand...

With USB drives ~$5 lately on Newegg for a 4GBer, and $19 for a 16GBer, I just bought one that will dedicated to being bootable for doing Samsung firmware updates.

IMO - we should really be able to bill Samsung for this.
 
Tolyngee said:
With USB drives ~$5 lately on Newegg for a 4GBer, and $19 for a 16GBer, I just bought one that will dedicated to being bootable for doing Samsung firmware updates.

IMO - we should really be able to bill Samsung for this.
Click to expand...

lol, this was way easier than I was making it out to be. Simple mistake early on was not letting me change to drive C:. I already had freedos on there too...

Just build your typical multi purpose GRUB drive load free dos with Himem only, then you can change drives fine and runt he fix.

For most people they can just use a utility to create a bootable free dos. However if you interested in making a custom multi use USB drive I wrote this up for my work.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11491285/GRUB_USB_DRIVE.pdf

Yea, theres a couple typos.

You can append your own bootable iso's and img's imply by appending to the menu.lst file.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One question though, do I need to use the align tool, before putting this in my WHS disk pool?

I opened the alignment tool an its telling me that the 2TB drive is not an advanced format disk. But it is clearly marked on the disk that it is!

I'm thinking about downloading XP mode for my win7 x64 and trying to run the program through the VM. Anyone having this same issue? I can't run advanced format without performance issues in WHS.
 
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So I installed virtual PC and have an XP VM running. I was hoping that running the Samsung alignment tool in an XP VM would allow me to change the partition alignment. However the drive does not show up. How do I configure the drive to show up under virtual PC? If this does not work I guess I will need to return the drive to newegg on monday and give up on using more than 1TB drives.
 
drescherjm said:
Can't you partition the disk in windows7, vista or via a linux livecd?
Click to expand...

Yes, but it will align it for win7. Thats what the alignment tool is supposed to let you fix, only it does not work and shows the 2TB drive is not an advanced format drive.

SamsungAlignmentTool.PNG
 
You want it aligned for Windows 7. That will be proper alignment for any operating system.
 
That is not correct, WHS and XP do not fully support advanced format drives,
Click to expand...

They do not need to have any special support for the drive. All you need is each partition needs to start on a sector that is divisible by 8. This is what vista, windows 7 and the alignment tool all do by default.
 
drescherjm said:
They do not need to have any special support for the drive. All you need is each partition needs to start on a sector that is divisible by 8. This is what vista, windows 7 and the alignment tool all do by default.
Click to expand...

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1036263370&postcount=9

I don't want to rely on the drives emulation which may lag out when streaming media (5400 RPM drives in WHS already seem to have this problem sometimes without having to run the emulation). What I want to do is actually use 512k sectors.
 
That is what I said. Just create a partition that has a starting sector that divisible by 8 and you will be fine. Vista and Windows7 start on 2048 which is divisible by 8. Then use this partition table in the older os. The problem with XP, WHS and older operating systems is they start on sector 63 as default which is not divisible by 8. 64 is and this is why some drives have a jumper that physically offsets its sectors to make sector 63 be sector 64 on the media. Its best not to use this jumper and just create the partition table correctly from the start.
 
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drescherjm said:
That is what I said. Just create a partition that has a starting sector that divisible by 8 and you will be fine. Vista and Windows7 start on 2048 which is divisible by 8. Then use this partition table in the older os. The problem with XP, WHS and older operating systems is they start on sector 63 as default which is not divisible by 8. 64 is and this is why some drives have a jumper that physically offsets its sectors to make sector 63 be sector 64 on the media. Its best not to use this jumper and just create the partition table correctly from the start.
Click to expand...

I'm trying to install this in a WHS system and cannot get it to work properly. From what I understand I need to do is re-align the partition to start at 63, (and get rid of the 4k sectors for 512kb ones?), I cannot seem to find a way to do this. When I pug the drive into the WHS Server and go to computer management it says the drive is Unreadable.

Unreadable.PNG


I ran teh Samsung alignment tool and it does not even identify the drive :(
 
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Are you selecting basic disk on windows 7 and not letting it upgrade to dynamic. Also you need regular partitions and not GUID or GPT partitions.

BTW, the VM solution probably does not work because the VM does not pass the drive directly to the guest OS. The only way to make that work is to use the method that assigns your sata controller
 
Justintoxicated said:
I'm trying to install this in a WHS system and cannot get it to work properly. From what I understand I need to do is re-align the partition to start at 63, (and get rid of the 4k sectors for 512kb ones?), I cannot seem to find a way to do this. When I pug the drive into the WHS Server and go to computer management it says the drive is Unreadable.

Unreadable.PNG


I ran teh Samsung alignment tool and it does not even identify the drive :(
Click to expand...

Can't you right click on this partition and format it?
 
Justintoxicated said:
I'm trying to install this in a WHS system and cannot get it to work properly. From what I understand I need to do is re-align the partition to start at 63, (and get rid of the 4k sectors for 512kb ones?),
Click to expand...

Starting at 63 is wrong. You can not do that with any software. 63 is okay if you have a hardware jumper that makes sector 63 be sector 64 on the media but software does not do this. The alignment tool just creates an aligned partition table for those who do not own a windows 7, vista or could figure out linux. I am sure there are more options to create partitions.

Starting at true sector 63 would be unaligned. None of the alignment tools change the sectors from 4K to 512. And in any case the drive reports 512 byte sectors (so do WDC 4K drives that I have as well) for all operating systems even ones that can handle true 4K sectors. However it still will always use 4K sectors, hence the need to partition the drive such that the starting sector of the first partition is divisible by 8.
 
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Upon reboot it seems to be working. I think is is very deceiving that the Samsung Align tool does not detect the drive as an advanced format drive!

My Server is now overfull with drives :( This drive is sitting sitting on the bottom of the case, resting on some thumb screws I screwed into the bottom of it.

I'm still not understanding what all the alignment issues are that people are discussing then. Was it the fact that if I had partitioned this drive using WHS it would have set the offset to 63? Is that what is going on or am I still not understanding the issue correctly?
 
If you delete the whole partition table (I know it will make it unaligned) will it let you create a new partition?
 
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