Samsung HD204UI (2TB F4EG) disk vs smart

Some of you already know this, but I thought it warrants a reminder
(I did not know...).

For the last month I was chasing a problem with my new RAID where a
large number of mismatches was reported in my weekly scrub.
I confirmed that I really had some data corruption.

I managed to not lose critical data but it surely was an uneasy period.
I commissioned new disks, new controller, and moved from f13 to f14
around the same time.

In the end the problem turned out to be the disks. It seems that these
popular (cheap) disks have a firmware bug that causes bad writes if a
specific smart command is issued at the right (wrong) time.

There is a fw fix but I found it not widely advertised. It can be found
here
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/faqView.do?b2b_bb s_msg_id=386
Unfortunately it does *not* change the fw revision so you will not know
if your disk has the patch applied or not. I just applied it and so far
so good. My fw rev was (and still is) 1AQ10001.

FYI

--
Eyal Lebedinsky (eyal@eyal.emu.id.au)
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Re: Samsung HD204UI (2TB F4EG) disk vs smart

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On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:40:59 +1100
Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:

> In the end the problem turned out to be the disks. It seems that these
> popular (cheap) disks have a firmware bug that causes bad writes if a
> specific smart command is issued at the right (wrong) time.
>=20
> There is a fw fix but I found it not widely advertised. It can be found
> here
> http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/faqView.do?b2b_bb s_msg_id=
=3D386
> Unfortunately it does *not* change the fw revision so you will not know
> if your disk has the patch applied or not. I just applied it and so far
> so good. My fw rev was (and still is) 1AQ10001.

You are right. Here is the most comprehensive documentation on this issue:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki/SamsungF 4EGBadBlocks

--=20
With respect,
Roman

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