$79.99 shipped Spinpoint F4 2TB 5400 RPM 32MB Cache from Newegg w/ promo code

Remember, use the older version for WHS, but other then that these are great drives.
 
Love these drives in my NAS... have 2, I am going to wait until some 3 or 4TB drives start coming out :)
 
Low Roller said:
So I shouldn't flash the firmware when my new drive arrives?
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Good question. I hope he/she comes back and elaborates on this statement (I sent him/her a PM). He could be also referring to the earlier F3 version of this drive due to it using the older alignment methods. Plenty of people are using these F4 drives in their WHS1 boxes without issue, including myself. And they have been faster than the WD green drives for me. In for 2!

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1566067
 
I have an F3 2TB in my WHS and need more storage so I guess this F4 will be the first in the new series for me. I'm ok with this since the F3's and WD's EADS are hard to come by w/ comparable pricing at this point.


I was all ready to build a new WHS box for Vail, but since MS announced it was essentially neutering the new WHS version by removing Drive Extender, I have no desire to "upgrade." I'll be sticking with WHS V1 for the foreseeable future.
 
If you raid 0 two of these drives and use a third to backup the data, would the third single drive be a speed bottle neck since it can only transfer at half the speed of the raid 0 array?
 
solaris54 said:
Is this legit on flashing with new firmware? This is the first I have heard about it and not sure how reliable the person is on slickdeals about this.
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Honestly, I have no idea. But, I think it's true because the other references look legit.

I already have one 2TB F4 in my computer, and ordered a 2nd. There are so many small files on the drive, I have no idea if my current drive has lost data. I plan on flashing both drives though.
 
dejacky said:
If you raid 0 two of these drives and use a third to backup the data, would the third single drive be a speed bottle neck since it can only transfer at half the speed of the raid 0 array?
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Yes. Though I don't know why you'd use 2 of these in Raid 0. They're not performance drives. They're storage drives.

I'd suggest using two of the 1TB F3's if you're going to make a Raid 0.
 
Omegas said:
Remember, use the older version for WHS, but other then that these are great drives.
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I had seen reports from people with WHS that they were having similar problems with the F4's as they did with the WD EARS's. I'd also seen reports from others with WHS that they were NOT seeing problems. In my mind it was enough to not use them for WHS v1. The benefits of the F4 over the F3 was not enough to justify if the prices of the two were similar. I found F3's on TD for the same price as F4's (after Discover CB) to make it not worth getting the F4's.


YMMV
 
are these drives relaible? only 1tb drives had die are samsung f1 and seagate, and i own about 30+ 1tb drives
 
the drives have a problem when smart check and request for data come in at the same time. they wipe everything away.

The storage forum has some more details.
 
good drive. data loss is really slim if you use the old firmware. I wouldn't consider this a hot deal. This is pretty much its normal price.
 
I wouldn't consider this it's normal price, though it *has* hit this price a few times before. I'd say this is at least warm.
 
dejacky said:
If you raid 0 two of these drives and use a third to backup the data, would the third single drive be a speed bottle neck since it can only transfer at half the speed of the raid 0 array?
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That wouldn't work. You would have a 4TB array with a 2TB backup. You need to have 4 drives to make that sort of setup work. It's what's known as RAID 0+1.

If you want to use 3 drives, you should be doing RAID 5.
 
tony-kun said:
That wouldn't work. You would have a 4TB array with a 2TB backup. You need to have 4 drives to make that sort of setup work. It's what's known as RAID 0+1.

If you want to use 3 drives, you should be doing RAID 5.
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or raid 1e.

this HD204UI looks like a nice performing drive.
 
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has this firmware update been wiping the data at all?

I have two mirrored on my raid controller. I might try flashing then one at a time and see if the controller has to rebuild each time. What a pain in the ass that would be, and time consuming. I thought I would avoid the western digital wdidle3.exe crap by going with samsung but now I have to apply a fw update after all. :rolleyes:
 
Yes do a raid 5 with 3 drives, it works similar to a raid 0 as it stripes data on two drives but it has parity information on a 3rd drive.

Disk A Disk B Disk C
data a data a parity
parity data b data b
data c parity data c

this way if you lose a drive and replace it the data can be rebuilt from the parity, this is faster with a hardware controller for the parity bit calculation.

The 4 drive raid 0+1 (sometimes called Raid 10) would be more common as a stripe mirroring another stripe without parity calculation overhead.
 
got my 5. though have to say the newegg packing was not great. if I have any problems with the drives I will lame that. It was clamshell around each drive.. then wrapped in bubble wrap and that put in a box much bigger than the bubble wrap with a little bit of paper stuffing.
 
Same here! I got a 1TB F3 and this 2TB earlier this week, both came wrapped as described. The 1TB was in use for one day and took a dump last night. All it does now is make a clicking noise.... BS! I'm scared to put any thing valuable on the 2TB now. I'm leaning towards bad packaging for this RMA for sure.
 
What is it with Samsungs and requiring firmware updates? I've owned two hard drives that have ever required firmware updates for one issue or another, and they were both Samsungs.
 
I just received mine yesterday. The drive was wrapped in bubble wrap and packaged in foam peanuts.
It looked fine to me.

The 1TB F3 I ordered from Ewiz has me more concerned because they just had it in the plastic endpieces in a small box and the small box was placed into a larger box with some paper filler. There was no filler between the small & big boxes on one side. Hopefully the plastic endpieces dampened shock during shipping.
 
I haven't got around to flashing the firmware on mine yet. I have a mirrored pair (raid 1) on a controller. Like I said I will attempt to flash each separate. maybe if I'm lucky it won't wipe them and require a rebuild each time I put a flashed drive back on the controller. Two rebuilds (bascially copying entire drive over to the other of the pair each time) would suck.
 
sweet.. i was going to get this at Microcenter tomorrow, but I'd have to pay tax there - this is much better.
 
flashed the firmware.. will be installing drives soon. probably this weekend
 
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