Samsung disk diagnostic is useless garbage

[Anne Onime]

Some used Samsung disks fell my way, so I wanted to test
them. I downloaded their diagnostics utility, and it give
an error "out of interrupt stacks"
I tried different versions of DOS on the floppy, still
same bug.
Seagate's Seatools has never given me trouble.
WD's equivalent utility is an annoying piece of shit,
but at least it runs more than 10 seconds without crashing.
Why can't Samsung get this right?
Until this, I regarded them as makers of good products.

 

[JW]

WD's equivalent utility is an annoying piece of shit,

Let me guess: When you run the full test, it first wants to run it's quick
test (which is no big deal) but then you have to come back and hit a @$!%
key to continue on to the full test?

 

[Arno]

Some used Samsung disks fell my way, so I wanted to test
them. I downloaded their diagnostics utility, and it give
an error "out of interrupt stacks"
I tried different versions of DOS on the floppy, still
same bug.
Seagate's Seatools has never given me trouble.
WD's equivalent utility is an annoying piece of shit,
but at least it runs more than 10 seconds without crashing.
Why can't Samsung get this right?
Until this, I regarded them as makers of good products.

Use a standard SMART tool, the Samsung (and other utilities)
just run SMART selftests anyways.

Arno

 

[Mike S.]

Some used Samsung disks fell my way, so I wanted to test
them. I downloaded their diagnostics utility, and it give
an error "out of interrupt stacks"
I tried different versions of DOS on the floppy, still
same bug.

Whew. Distant memories of CONFIG.SYS entries for FILES=xxx and
STACKS=yyy,zzz You could probaly fix it that way, but frankly
I'd use a more general tool like HDAT (www.hdat2.com).

 

[GMAN]

Whew. Distant memories of CONFIG.SYS entries for FILES=xxx and
STACKS=yyy,zzz You could probaly fix it that way, but frankly
I'd use a more general tool like HDAT (www.hdat2.com).

Does that even support NTFS?

 

[Franc Zabkar]

Does that even support NTFS?

The OP wants to test the drive, not the file system.

- Franc Zabkar

 

[GMAN]

The OP wants to test the drive, not the file system.

- Franc Zabkar

I understand, but that program also in addition to Drive level testing, it
does File Level testing and so if the OP accidentally uses that portion of
the program, wont it run the risk of messing with his file system? It sure
isnt a very modern program if it doesnt support NTFS.

BTW, does anyone know of an app that will look into a drives G-List and allow
you to move the bad sectors from there to the P-List of a drive???

 

[GMAN]

Does that even support NTFS?

Hey, after researching this program, it may actually help me fix a specific
Hitachi drive i have. Thanks!!!

 

[Arno]

BTW, does anyone know of an app that will look into a drives
G-List and allow you to move the bad sectors from there to
the P-List of a drive???

What lists? Modern drives have opaque defect management and
do not expose defects unless they do not have any other choice.
The exposed defects will be reallocated as well as soon as they
get written.

Arno

 

[larry moe 'n curly]

Some used Samsung disks fell my way, so I wanted to test
them. I downloaded their diagnostics utility, and it give
an error "out of interrupt stacks"
I tried different versions of DOS on the floppy, still
same bug.
Seagate's Seatools has never given me trouble.
WD's equivalent utility is an annoying piece of shit,
but at least it runs more than 10 seconds without crashing.
Why can't Samsung get this right?
Until this, I regarded them as makers of good products.

I found that the only reliable utility from Samsung is EStools, but
the only reason you'll ever need it is if you need to switch one of
their SATA drives from 3.0gigabytes/second maximum speed to 1.5Gbps,
for compatibility with old or buggy controllers. Otherwise the
generic tools will do.

HDDguru.com, a site about drive repair, has some downloads and forums.