Samsung Spinpoint F4EG HD204UI 2TB compatibility?

[Jastla]

In January I bought 2x f4 disks for my DS211J.
They work just fine.
I had no problem installing what so ever.

[salchez]

I have one strange problem here ... I bought DS211j several weeks ago and first I installed one Seagate 2TB HDD in bay1 with no problems, use it for about 2 weeks with no problems. Because this disk was not so reliable in the past (I had some strange clicks in my previous NAS) I decided to replace it with 2xSamsung F4 2TB models and put it to RAID1 configuration for data protection. Because in the store they had only 1 Samsung F4 (12.2010) on stock I bought only one first, I install it in bay2, DS recognize it with no problems, then I upgraded to RAID1 with no problems (it took several hours which is normal). I used this configuration for about one week, with no problems. Then I bought second Samsung F4 (02.2011) when stock was recovered. I removed Seagate from bay1 and put this new Samsung in it. I started DS, both HDDs recognized with no problems but Volume degraded ofcourse, I clicked "repair" and then it seems like everything will be just fine, but after about 15 minutes of copying from one drive to another DS starts to beep and under web managment I see that Volume was crashed
Not sure why, but then I tried to rebuild/repair previous working Volume (with Seagate + Samsung) but with no success, because when I have put "Samsung F4 (12.2010)" back in bay2 I can manage to get into "web managment", but when I have clicked "storage manager" I got something like "connection failed, check your network connection" error (network connection was working normally) so I cannot see and change anything under storage manager ... Then I tried to put "Samsung F4 (12.2010)" in bay2 and I can also get into "web managment" but under storage manager I got some "Partition table failed" (or something similar) on both drives, so that way I cannot repair Volume either ....
The only thing I managed to do to get my volume (even in degraded state) back is if I installed only the Seagate drive. So here is my question: How can I manage to make Samsung drives to work again, one by one? Will it work again If I connect both Samsung HDDs to computer and delete existing partitions (so that DS will see it like completely new drives)? Thanks for helping!

[jim_h]

I just bought 2 drives for my new DS411+. The F4 was one of the few options for 2TB that I wanted. Quiet with decent speed. The WD scared me and the Hitach seemed too hot. Some choices were a bit expensive.

Hopeful to have the DS411+ and drives set up by this weekend.

[xcopy]

I'm not sure what the problem is, but it may just be a bad drive, unrelated to the firmware issue we've been discussing.

All companies have a certain percentage of drives that will fail and you may have gotten one of those (the few mechanically bad ones). When you added the second samsung drive, did you do a format first?

Since the seagate drive works, try using the new samsung (02.2011) and see if you can build the array using it as the second drive. If it fails, you know you've got a bad drive and exchange it at the store for a new one.

[salchez]

I'm not sure what the problem is, but it may just be a bad drive, unrelated to the firmware issue we've been discussing.

All companies have a certain percentage of drives that will fail and you may have gotten one of those (the few mechanically bad ones). When you added the second samsung drive, did you do a format first?

Since the seagate drive works, try using the new Samsung (02.2011) and see if you can build the array using it as the second drive. If it fails, you know you've got a bad drive and exchange it at the store for a new one.

Hello!
I tried my luck and I deleted all partitions on both Samsung HDDs and I started all over again: I put Seagate in bay1 and Samsung (12.2010) in bay2. I did a repair and after about 8 hours of consistency check I had a fully working RAID1 volume. Then I removed Seagate drive from bay1 and put this Samsung (12.2010) instead (in bay1), in bay2 I installed the new Samsung (02.2011). Then again both drives recognized with no problems in DSM (Samsung (02.2011) as not-initialized HDD which is normal). Then I used repair function again and after of about 20-30 min I have received "Synology Internal disk 1 and 2 on NAS has crashed" error again So not luck apparentely ...
So how can I really confirm that this Samsung (02.2011) is faulty? I connected it to PC yesterday, deleted all partitions and created NTFS partition with no problem ... I don't want to send the drive back and then they will tell me that disk is flawless (in Windows) ... Thanks for help!

[yenots]

Just received my new DS211J yesterday, and popped in two fresh HD204UI drives dated 12/2010. No patches or updates were applied, and DSM3.0 from the included CD was used.

Built the Synology Hybrid Raid overnight without a problem. Created some folders, transferred some files, and everything looks fine. That's a relief!

Afterwards I went ahead and applied the spinup patch, but I don't think it was really needed. I'll probably make the jump to DSM3.1 beta after things settle in for a day or two.

Fingers crossed...

[mark]

You might want to try running checkdisk (chkdsk) under windows.

[xcopy]

I'm not sure what the problem is, but it may just be a bad drive, unrelated to the firmware issue we've been discussing.

All companies have a certain percentage of drives that will fail and you may have gotten one of those (the few mechanically bad ones). When you added the second samsung drive, did you do a format first?

Since the seagate drive works, try using the new Samsung (02.2011) and see if you can build the array using it as the second drive. If it fails, you know you've got a bad drive and exchange it at the store for a new one.

Hello!
I tried my luck and I deleted all partitions on both Samsung HDDs and I started all over again: I put Seagate in bay1 and Samsung (12.2010) in bay2. I did a repair and after about 8 hours of consistency check I had a fully working RAID1 volume. Then I removed Seagate drive from bay1 and put this Samsung (12.2010) instead (in bay1), in bay2 I installed the new Samsung (02.2011). Then again both drives recognized with no problems in DSM (Samsung (02.2011) as not-initialized HDD which is normal). Then I used repair function again and after of about 20-30 min I have received "Synology Internal disk 1 and 2 on NAS has crashed" error again So not luck apparentely ...
So how can I really confirm that this Samsung (02.2011) is faulty? I connected it to PC yesterday, deleted all partitions and created NTFS partition with no problem ... I don't want to send the drive back and then they will tell me that disk is flawless (in Windows) ... Thanks for help!

you didn't follow my suggestion, which was to use the seagate as the base, and then add the SECOND samsung (02.2011). You already know that the first samsung works, but if there's a problem with the second one while it's installed with the seagate, you pretty much know the drive is bad.

Before you do any more tests, did you load the Synology's F4 update? Do that before doing anything else...

Anyway, I wouldn't waste much time fighting it. I had two Samsung disks fail within the first day, so if you got a bad one just return it while you can and get another one. There's lots of bad samsung disks to go around, but those mfg'd after 12.2010 should be better.. No guarantee on that though....

[salchez]

You might want to try running checkdisk (chkdsk) under windows.

Already did that, chkdsk did not find any problems/errors on this HDD ...

I'm not sure what the problem is, but it may just be a bad drive, unrelated to the firmware issue we've been discussing.

All companies have a certain percentage of drives that will fail and you may have gotten one of those (the few mechanically bad ones). When you added the second samsung drive, did you do a format first?

Since the seagate drive works, try using the new Samsung (02.2011) and see if you can build the array using it as the second drive. If it fails, you know you've got a bad drive and exchange it at the store for a new one.

Hello!
I tried my luck and I deleted all partitions on both Samsung HDDs and I started all over again: I put Seagate in bay1 and Samsung (12.2010) in bay2. I did a repair and after about 8 hours of consistency check I had a fully working RAID1 volume. Then I removed Seagate drive from bay1 and put this Samsung (12.2010) instead (in bay1), in bay2 I installed the new Samsung (02.2011). Then again both drives recognized with no problems in DSM (Samsung (02.2011) as not-initialized HDD which is normal). Then I used repair function again and after of about 20-30 min I have received "Synology Internal disk 1 and 2 on NAS has crashed" error again So not luck apparentely ...
So how can I really confirm that this Samsung (02.2011) is faulty? I connected it to PC yesterday, deleted all partitions and created NTFS partition with no problem ... I don't want to send the drive back and then they will tell me that disk is flawless (in Windows) ... Thanks for help!

you didn't follow my suggestion, which was to use the seagate as the base, and then add the SECOND samsung (02.2011). You already know that the first samsung works, but if there's a problem with the second one while it's installed with the seagate, you pretty much know the drive is bad.

Before you do any more tests, did you load the Synology's F4 update? Do that before doing anything else...

Anyway, I wouldn't waste much time fighting it. I had two Samsung disks fail within the first day, so if you got a bad one just return it while you can and get another one. There's lots of bad samsung disks to go around, but those mfg'd after 12.2010 should be better.. No guarantee on that though....

I didn't follow you suggestion yet, because I have data on this Seagate (which is the only drive which hasn't failed yet in DS) and if Samsung (02.2011) is bad I did not wan't to destroy the data on Seagate drive ... So now I'm just repairing the volume again with Seagate+Samsung (12.2010) and then when all the data will be safe on Samsung (12.2010), I'll try Seagate+Samsung (02.2011). I'm also running a diagnostic test with Samsung ESTOOL right now to see if this tool will hopefully find some problems on this HDD so I can prove my statements when returning/replacing this HDD ...
I loaded Synology's update previously on I don't remember exactly wich drive, but on Seagate I have DSM 3.0-1379 so this apparently confirms that I have this F4 update installed (because the latest DSM for DS211j is actually 3.0-1354)...

EDIT: ESTOOL also found no problems with this HDD

[salchez]

Afrer third successful repair of RAID1 volume with Seagate+Samsung (12.2010) I have now installed Samsung (02.2011) in bay2 and I kept the Seagate in bay1 as source drive and repeated the volume repair process. Now is about about 40% of completed consistency parity check and (after about three hours later) still no crash ... In both attempts of repairing a volume with both Samsung HDDs installed I received volume crash in first 30 minutes of repairning process, so now it looks like it will finish the repair process normally (but lets wait until finish) .... But this opens another question: if both Samsung drives worked normally when using it in pair with Seagate drive, why the h*ll I cannot make it work both together in the same time??

[mrvertigo73]

Thanks to Harry Potter for the idiot's guide to updating firmware for the Samsung F4 - I've got both my drives updated to the latest firmware now, and the Synology DS211j recognised both of them and is just doing it's stuff to set up a Synology Hybrid RAID

Thanks HP

[salchez]

Consistency parity check has just completed with Seagate+Samsung (02.2011), surprisingly with no problems ... So this Samsung (02.2011) is aparentely also flawless, just won't work together with another Samsung (12.2010)
Anyway, with all data safe on Seagate I removed this drive and put Samsung (02.2011) in bay1 and second Samsung in bay2. Started up DS and I got degraded volume and "system partition failed" (or something similar) on bay1. I fixed this in a matter of seconds using "Store Manager > HDD Managment > Repair", so the Disk 1 received status Normal and Disk2 status Initialized. Then I started a repair volume process again and now I can just wait and hope, again ...

[salchez]

Consistency parity check has just completed with Seagate+Samsung (02.2011), surprisingly with no problems ... So this Samsung (02.2011) is aparentely also flawless, just won't work together with another Samsung (12.2010)
Anyway, with all data safe on Seagate I removed this drive and put Samsung (02.2011) in bay1 and second Samsung in bay2. Started up DS and I got degraded volume and "system partition failed" (or something similar) on bay1. I fixed this in a matter of seconds using "Store Manager > HDD Managment > Repair", so the Disk 1 received status Normal and Disk2 status Initialized. Then I started a repair volume process again and now I can just wait and hope, again ...

.... surprisingly now I have a fully working RAID1 volume with both Samsung HDDs installed. Don't know exactly why it works now, maybe it has something to do with in which bays are disk installed, before that (when I received crashed volumes) I had always Samsung (2010.12) in bay1 and the newer Samsung in bay2. Now (when it worked) I had Samsung (2010.12) in bay2 ... Or maybe it has somothing to do with rapairing partition table before repairing volume ... I really don't know ... Anyway, I'm glad that it now works, I hope it will stay that way for a long time ... Thanks for all your help!

[mark]

Well, I think the operating system (Linux and DSM) is installed on disk 1 (bay 1). When you are going
to swap disks, you might have problems with the partition tables.

[salchez]

Well, I think the operating system (Linux and DSM) is installed on disk 1 (bay 1). When you are going
to swap disks, you might have problems with the partition tables.

Not exactly. AFAIK with RAID1 both HDDs are identical copies or if you prefer, they are clones. For example if you have two HDDs in RAID1, then you remove Disk1 and you put the Disk2 in bay1, you should have fully working DS, of course with degraded volume ...