Hi, the Samsung MP0402H is a new hard-disk with very good
characteristics (on the paper): 2,5" 9,5 mm / 40 GB / 5400 rpm / ATA-7 /
8 MB cache.
I have the possibility to buy this HD at a very low price.
I would like to known some opinions. Is is reliable ? Stable ?
A lot of friends/colleagues says that Samsung's drives are very bad and
not reliable. Is it true ?
Thank for every answer.

"Andrea" <and-NOSPAM-bin@super-eva.it> wrote in message
news:c4rebe$ghq$1@newsreader.mailgate.org...
Hi,

I haven't used their laptop drives, but I recently purchased one of the
160GB 3.5" drives (SP1614N). It was very quiet while it lasted, but it died
after about a week, with continuous "clicking". While trying to figure out
the problem, I found a couple of others with the same problem. Luckily, I
bought it locally, so I just took it back and got a refund.

I would've really liked to get another Samsung drive a try. It was really
quiet, and at a great price. But after spending the amount of time that I
did with it trying to get it to work, I just didn't feel it was worth it,
plus having to constantly worry if the drive was going to 'go south', so I
just went out and got a Seagate Barracuda (which I find to be equally quiet)
instead.

The Seagate was initially running somewhat hot (44C, under load), but after
re-positioning it and re-arranging my case, has been been running at 30-32C,
and flawless thus far, and I don't think about it anymore ...

Jim

"Mark M" <MarkM_csiphsCANT_RECEIVE_MAIL@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:94C483689E1E73A75@130.133.1.4...

Mark,

As I indicated, I generally like the Samsung, but the original poster was
asking for opinions. I understand that some (maybe a lot) of people have
had good experience with them (did a lot of research before buying it), but,
just in my case, what finally decided it in the end was when I found some
posts on Google groups that described exactly the problem I encountered.

The other part was the way the problem occurred.

I had just about done loading all of my stuff to the drive, which took
hours, and the drive was working fine. I then rebooted, and got the
clicking, and BIOS wouldn't even see the drive anymore. After trying to
check connections, trying Samsung's HDUTIL (which couldn't detect the drive
either), etc., I powered down for the night, hoping that it'd revive the
next day, but no luck.

What scared me about this whole incident was that if it wasn't for the fact
that I still had my files on my original drive, the Samsung gave me no
opportunity to recover anything from it. Prior to it starting to click, I
was monitoring it quite diligently using both HDUTIL and Pathmark, and
nothing in the SMART showed indication of any potential problems.

Again, this is just reflecting my personal experience, and YMMV...

Jim