HeadsUP:SAMSUNGF4 HD204UI 2TB - $79!

wingfat

wingfat

Weaksauce
Joined
May 13, 2010
Messages
115
Friday November 12th 2010

I would not suggest anyone buy these SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 HD204UI 2TB drives for $79 at Newegg as last week they had them on sale for $89. Next week and the week after that they may fall again. :)

Really.. I just picked up another 5 as they sold out last week at $89. I was a bit disappointed as the drives literally disappeared from my shopping cart one by one before my eyes..who knew it was a good thing?

WF
 
They were on sale for $60 with free shipping a less than a week ago actually.
 
Blue Fox said:
They were on sale for $60 with free shipping a less than a week ago actually.
Click to expand...

I grabbed five since I figured I'll be a bit surprised if that price (especially for quantity) can be beat in some BF deal just a few weeks later.

Eh, watch it be $50/shipped, max of five...
 
Have we determined if these things work with WHS V1 yet? if so I'll be stocking up.
 
Blue Fox said:
It's a hard drive...why wouldn't it?
Click to expand...

4K sector "with 512 emulation".

WHS is known to have problems with the 4K drives. There is some question about these F4's though. As far as I know no one has been able to get any clear explanation from Samsung as to what exactly the hell is going on with these drives.
 
It is not that WHS will not work with 4KB physical / 512B emulation HDDs, just that the write performance may be lower than an equivalent 512B sector HDD. The biggest performance hit should come with 4KB random writes. It should have minimal effect on reads, and also should not be a big factor on large writes.
 
john4200 said:
The biggest performance hit should come with 4KB random writes.
Click to expand...

that's pretty significant because in my experience as well as everything i've read, since the biggest impact in terms of "noticeable performance" in real world use - everyday things like loading an O/S, launching apps, etc. - is with 4K random writes. that number is magical.

So someone wanting an F4 as their sole O/S drive would want to look elsewhere if SSD's also aren't of interest, but for media storage and if the prices keeping hitting absurd lows (granted they're temporary sales) they well have potential to become the next big defacto building block for people wanting to store lots of media.
 
Last edited:
odditory said:
So someone wanting an F4 as their sole O/S drive would want to look elsewhere if SSD's also aren't of interest, but for media storage and if the prices keeping hitting absurd lows (granted they're temporary sales) they well have potential to become the next big defacto building block for people wanting to store lots of media.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I would not recommend to use one as an OS drive for WHS, but otherwise, I think it should perform adequately.
 
john4200 said:
It is not that WHS will not work with 4KB physical / 512B emulation HDDs, just that the write performance may be lower than an equivalent 512B sector HDD. The biggest performance hit should come with 4KB random writes. It should have minimal effect on reads, and also should not be a big factor on large writes.
Click to expand...

As I understand it people have had issues with the newer WD Green drives. And not just performance issues. As far as I know these F4's are the only drives with the 512B emulation and they haven't been in the wild long enough, or people have been hesitant to use them because of problems with other 4K drives, to really know how they will work with WHS. Am I mistaken? Are there a reasonable number of people using these and seeing nothing more than decreased performance?
 
First of all, I'm not sure why you think the F4EG is the only drive with 512B sector emulation. The WD advanced format drives do the same thing. In fact, all 4KB physical sector drives use 512B sector emulation, at this time.

Second, I think you probably are mistaken. I cannot think of any reason why the drives would fail to work with any OS. As far as anything external to the drive can see, it is a normal block device with 512B blocks.

If you can reference specific problems that you are thinking of, then we could discuss the causes of those problems. My bet would be defective HDDs.
 
The OP forgot to mention you need to use promo code EMCZZZN33 to get the discount. Valid through 11/14 or until supplies run out presumably. If you need more than 5, just use a different email address to place the order, since it only lets you apply the code once per account. You can use same credit card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152245

And I say who cares that they were $60 a week ago - they're still a steal at $79 for 2TB. I'm thinking of buying a bunch just to serve as additional JBOD backup space for my Hitachi 2TB arrays. There's no such thing as "too many backups", amirite. Oh, and did I mention backups.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top