Your opinion about Samsung MP0402H hard-disk

[Andrea]

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.

 

[Ohaya]

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.

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]

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.

Don't know about the M series. But the 3.5 inch P80 series are
just fine.

In general Samsung make relatively quiet & cool drives. Their
performance has not always absolutely top-notch but they are
not far behind and they are catching up fast.

I buy Samsung as a first choice.

 

[Mark M]

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 ...

I too use Barracudas (as a second choice to Samsung) but they do
run a bit too warm for my liking.

Maybe you just had a one-off bad experience with the Samsung.

My next hard drive will probably be a Samsung P80 160GB like the
last one I got and like the one you mentioned.

Have a look in here
http://www.storagereview.com/map/lm.cgi/survey_login

 

[Ohaya]

I too use Barracudas (as a second choice to Samsung) but they do
run a bit too warm for my liking.

Maybe you just had a one-off bad experience with the Samsung.

My next hard drive will probably be a Samsung P80 160GB like the
last one I got and like the one you mentioned.

Have a look in here
http://www.storagereview.com/map/lm.cgi/survey_login

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