Need help with behcmark for Samsung HD204UI.

Z

Zaraky

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 12, 2010
Messages
117
Alright, I just ordered 5 Samsung F4 Spinpoint last friday because all my hard drive were full. Now, hopefully I hope I got 5 clean HD but I'm such a noob that I can't seem to get it right in benchmark,,,

Benchmark Tool have right now is HDtune 4.6 and CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1.

I'm on a 3 year old system which has...
MB:Asus P5W64 ws pro
CPU: DualCore Intel Core 2 Duo E6700, 2666 MHz
Memory: Corsair XMS2 CM2X1024-6400
Power Supply = Antec Truepower Trio 650w TP3-650
Windows HD: WDC WD3200KS-00PFB0
GPU: Geforce GTX 8800

I have no idea if my power supply can hold 5 of these drive with ym system but I doubt it. I bought them in advance since I'm about to buy a new system once they fix the sandy bridge chipset and motherboard.

So to continue..I just hope you guy can help me go through this process to be sure my 5 HD are alright and in good condition before the 30day limit to send them back.

I have done a full format with 4k sector using the windows 7 disk management, on 2 drive so far. I can seem to get good result from one but the other one is half the number of the other one... which is weird.

Anyway, If you need screenshot of CDM/HDtune ill upload them everytime...

I hope I'm not asking for too much. thank in advance for the help!
 
Post up the screenshots.

And search this sub-forum for the Samsung F4 firmware update. Apparently you need that for the Samsung drives.
 
Spin up current for recent HDDs is only about 16W, where older 7200rpm drives can use up to 35W. So power restrictions have been relaxed, you should not have big problems with just 5 modern samsung disks.

CrystalDiskMark is good, also try AS SSD since it tells you what driver is in use and also whether the partition is properly aligned, which is very important for these 4K sector harddrives.
 
Alright I did benchmark 3 time, for each drive and each test. Just to try and be more accurate. Maybe it was useless in the end I don't know.

Drive 1: SS1
HDtune benchmark

HDtune Benchmark with AAM set to 128 and disabled

HDtune File Benchmark

CDM Benchmark

Drive 2: SS2HDtune Benchmark

Hdtune Benchmark with AAM set to 128 and disabled

HDtune File Benchmark

CDM Benchmark

As for AS SSD, it seem to be only for SSD but I'll try it. So far it's taking 20min for the 4k writing test and going at 1.02mb/s.. I'll post the AS SSD benchmark once it's done.

Danny, as for the firmware, I'm aware I have to flash them bt the problem is I'm unable to set up a USB key to run dos and flash them. I tried multiple program to set up a key and nothing work.
 
As far as the firmware goes this is what I did, Jayman took my post and made it much better.

I ran the ESTools 3.01v (IIRC) before and it failed. Then did the patch and it passed. Did this for both of my drives and same results. I'd suggest running this, it takes a long time though, the 1st tests only take a few minutes, then you have to input YES (IIRC) into it and then it takes many hours, 8 for me on my P4 backup machine so could use my main PC.

I also used Windows 7 Disk Management to format both of my Samsungs and AS SSD said both times that it wasn't aligned after doing this. So did Paragon Alignment Tool, don't understand why it didn't do them right. I also tried another hard drive I reformatted and that was out of alignment too.
 
Zarrra: you do not need to run the AS SSD benchmark, just run the program and you should see directly the driver in use and alignment (OK or BAD). If you use bad alignment on the drives that is something you have to fix. Creating normal partitions with Windows 7 should give you aligned partitions, but not using other utilities like cloning apps; those often give you a BADLY aligned partition that ruins your speeds on anything but an old 512-byte sector harddrive.
 
Ahh! Oh well I ran it anyway before going to bed,


AS SSD Benchmark 1.6.4067.34354
------------------------------
Name: SAMSUNG HD204UI ATA Device
Firmware: 1AQ10001
Controller: intelide
Offset: 1024 K - OK
Size: 1863.01 GB
Date: 2/26/2011 12:52:02 PM
------------------------------
Sequential:
------------------------------
Read: 126.38 MB/s
Write: 110.95 MB/s
------------------------------
4K:
------------------------------
Read: 0.30 MB/s
Write: 1.02 MB/s
------------------------------
4K-64Threads:
------------------------------
Read: 0.28 MB/s
Write: 0.53 MB/s
------------------------------
Access Times:
------------------------------
Read: -.--- ms
Write: 0.000 ms
------------------------------
Score:
------------------------------
Read: 13
Write: 13
Total: 32
------------------------------

Guess that's why the score is bad haha
 
I updated the firmware following SB1 link. 2 of the 5 are updated right now... but obviously he firmware number aren't changing so I can't figure out if they're really updated or not. AS SSD and HDtune say the firmware are 1AQ10001

HDtune say that the harddrive are in 512 bytes sector. guess that's normal?

Both of my Hard Drive aren't recognized as Advanced format Disk by the ES TOOL from samsung.
 
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Your speeds look great, though you connected to an IDE controller; unlike AHCI. The only good would be that the Samsung F4 firmware bug doesn't activate in IDE mode only in AHCI mode in combination with a SMART abort request. But AHCI might give you slightly higher speeds (and hot-plug functionality).

So i don't see a problem based on these benchmarks. Your alignment is good so 4K or not shouldn't have a problem, and you sequential speeds are in excess of 100MB/s. All looks fine!
 
That is somewhat odd.

Could you check the SMART data with HDTune (Health tab) ? If you see UDMA_CRC_ERROR_COUNT have a raw data value higher than zero, then that could mean you have cabling errors causing the slowness.

You're not using anything on that disk while running the benchmark right? I can see 2GB is in use on the disk.
 
Hmm... that's one thing I can't find... I have no idea what SMART is and can't find it anywhere in HDtune haha.

As for the 2gb, no both drive are empty... which is weird.

Health tab copied.


HD Tune Pro: SAMSUNG HD204UI Health

ID Current Worst ThresholdData Status
(01) Raw Read Error Rate 100 100 51 0 ok
(02) Throughput Performance 252 252 0 0 ok
(03) Spin Up Time 68 68 25 9861 ok
(04) Start/Stop Count 100 100 0 7 ok
(05) Reallocated Sector Count 252 252 10 0 ok
(07) Seek Error Rate 252 252 51 0 ok
(08) Seek Time Performance 252 252 15 0 ok
(09) Power On Hours Count 100 100 0 70 ok
(0A) Spin Retry Count 252 252 51 0 ok
(0B) Calibration Retry Count 252 252 0 0 ok
(0C) Power Cycle Count 100 100 0 7 ok
(B5) Program Fail Count 100 100 0 764946 ok
(BF) G-sense Error Rate 252 252 0 0 ok
(C0) Unsafe Shutdown Count 252 252 0 0 ok
(C2) Temperature 64 64 0 1572898 ok
(C3) Hardware ECC Recovered 100 100 0 0 ok
(C4) Reallocated Event Count 252 252 0 0 ok
(C5) Current Pending Sector 252 252 0 0 ok
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable 252 252 0 0 ok
(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count 200 200 0 0 ok
(C8) Write Error Rate 100 100 0 253 ok
(DF) Load/Unload Retry Count 252 252 0 0 ok
(E1) Load/Unload Cycle Count 100 100 0 8 ok

Health Status : ok
 
That's the SMART information you just posted. :)

It looks good though, so no problem can be seen here, no problem with your cables.
 
I switched into AHCI, actually fought my way through all theupdate ect! But I won!! Now... the speed on my HD are hitting 140+ and are stable most of the time unless I do a load of stuff.

The only problem I have is, on every drive , after doing enchmark, i it ssay they have 2-3GB of used space while there is nothing on the drive at all.. What I'm suspose to do to gain these space back?

Here is a screenshot showing the problem. Is this normal?
 
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If you do not care what is on the drive format it to get rid of whatever is taking up the 2 to 3 GB. That was something that was written by you running some application. If you enabled view hidden and system files you would probably see some file on the drive.
 
The hidden folder/file view is alrdy actived and there is still nothing showing up. The drive are formated in NTFS so maybe that's why but I really don't know.
 
Guess that's it huh. Should I reformat to FAT or stick with NTFS if they're going to be sued as storage?
 
I would stick with NTFS. The MFT will get used you just do not have a lot of control what gets pushed into that.
 
Alright then. thank for the help. Seem like I was lucky and got 5 working drive in one batch, *cheer*.

Is there other test I should run beside Hdtune, CDM, HDDscan to be 100% drive going to last ?
 
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