Hi everyone,
I've had an issue recently involving 2 P67 motherboards (MSI P67A-GD65 and Asus P8P67 Pro) and a Samsung F3 hard drive (HD502HJ) which used to work without a hitch.
I plugged it in a P67 SATA 3.0 (6Gb/s) port of the MSI motherboard and it only got recognized once every 4 or 5 boot ups. When I plugged it in a SATA 2.0 (3Gb/s) port, it worked fine.
I then returned the MSI motherboard for various reasons (including that I couldn't stand the amusement park-like BIOS), and got the Asus.
Since I thought that the MSI was to blame for not recognizing my hard drive most of the time, I tried to plug the HDD on one of the P67 SATA 6Gb/s port of the Asus.
As I switched the computer on, I heard what I thought was a rotating fan hitting a cable, it was rather loud. I turned off the computer, took a look around and saw nothing which would explain the noise. I started the computer up again, and same noise. Except that while I was listening for where it came from, it gradually went away, never to be heard again.
I then went into Windows (my primary drive is an SSD) and got prompted to format drive D. And guess what that was. That's right, my F3 HDD. At that point I thought that the SATA 6Gb/s port of the MSI motherboard had corrupted data on my hard drive. To be on the safe side though, I restarted the computer with the HDD on a SATA 3Gb/s port, but got the same outcome. I put my ear next to the drive while it was starting up and heard nothing suspicious : usual little whine of a Samsung HDD starting up, followed by acceleration of the platters, then seek noise from the heads going into action.
I tried using Recuva and another tool to analyze the contents of the hard drive, but after scanning at full speed, they found nothing, zilch! Wut??
Since it was already late, I decided to forget about it for the night, left the computer running with the hard drive plugged in.
Next morning, I noticed that the drive had disappeared from Windows Explorer (the "unformatted" D: drive) and went to look for it in Device Manager. Nothing there either. I rebooted the computer, still nothing. I then proceded to do a cold boot and this time POST took a good 10 seconds longer than usual, but then nothing in Windows. Did the same thing and went into BIOS instead of Windows, nothing there either.
Finally I decided to hot-plug the hard drive on SATA and see what happens. That triggered some kind of reaction, Windows looking for drivers, but the system became very sluggish. The drive appeared briefly in device manager, I got the prompt to format the partition, and then the drive disappeared again. Same thing happened on eSATA (JMicron controller) and USB (some other controller).
At that point I started to consider my Samsung F3 HDD to be dead. Thankfully I don't rely on single drives anymore for my important data, so I didn't lose anything which I cannot easily recover. Since I like to "tempt the devil" (french idiom), I now have a Samsung F2EG plugged in the very same SATA 6Gb/s port that allegedly killed the F3, but it's running fine.
Anyway, I was strolling around some (french) forums during the last 2 days and have met 2 people who reported very similar issues with Samsung F3 drives in the same conditions, although their drives didn't die.
This is why I'm sharing this with this forum, to see if it's just a very unlikely coincidence, or if other people have noticed what appears to be a potentially fatal incompatibility between Samsung F3 hard drives and the SATA 6Gb/s ports on the P67 chipset (or other series 60 chipsets).
Update: Just to be really clear, this issue has nothing to do with the problem recently reported by Intel, this one is with the 2 Intel SATA 3 (6Gb/s) ports, not the 4 Intel SATA 2 (3Gb/s) nor the Marvell or JMicron ports. No need to mention that you don't have trouble with a Samsung F3 HDD plugged into those.
Update 2: Apparently a firmware fix originally intended for the SB850 chipset also fixes this issue. You can get it here:
http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...bbs_msg_id=308
Case closed
I've had an issue recently involving 2 P67 motherboards (MSI P67A-GD65 and Asus P8P67 Pro) and a Samsung F3 hard drive (HD502HJ) which used to work without a hitch.
I plugged it in a P67 SATA 3.0 (6Gb/s) port of the MSI motherboard and it only got recognized once every 4 or 5 boot ups. When I plugged it in a SATA 2.0 (3Gb/s) port, it worked fine.
I then returned the MSI motherboard for various reasons (including that I couldn't stand the amusement park-like BIOS), and got the Asus.
Since I thought that the MSI was to blame for not recognizing my hard drive most of the time, I tried to plug the HDD on one of the P67 SATA 6Gb/s port of the Asus.
As I switched the computer on, I heard what I thought was a rotating fan hitting a cable, it was rather loud. I turned off the computer, took a look around and saw nothing which would explain the noise. I started the computer up again, and same noise. Except that while I was listening for where it came from, it gradually went away, never to be heard again.
I then went into Windows (my primary drive is an SSD) and got prompted to format drive D. And guess what that was. That's right, my F3 HDD. At that point I thought that the SATA 6Gb/s port of the MSI motherboard had corrupted data on my hard drive. To be on the safe side though, I restarted the computer with the HDD on a SATA 3Gb/s port, but got the same outcome. I put my ear next to the drive while it was starting up and heard nothing suspicious : usual little whine of a Samsung HDD starting up, followed by acceleration of the platters, then seek noise from the heads going into action.
I tried using Recuva and another tool to analyze the contents of the hard drive, but after scanning at full speed, they found nothing, zilch! Wut??
Since it was already late, I decided to forget about it for the night, left the computer running with the hard drive plugged in.
Next morning, I noticed that the drive had disappeared from Windows Explorer (the "unformatted" D: drive) and went to look for it in Device Manager. Nothing there either. I rebooted the computer, still nothing. I then proceded to do a cold boot and this time POST took a good 10 seconds longer than usual, but then nothing in Windows. Did the same thing and went into BIOS instead of Windows, nothing there either.
Finally I decided to hot-plug the hard drive on SATA and see what happens. That triggered some kind of reaction, Windows looking for drivers, but the system became very sluggish. The drive appeared briefly in device manager, I got the prompt to format the partition, and then the drive disappeared again. Same thing happened on eSATA (JMicron controller) and USB (some other controller).
At that point I started to consider my Samsung F3 HDD to be dead. Thankfully I don't rely on single drives anymore for my important data, so I didn't lose anything which I cannot easily recover. Since I like to "tempt the devil" (french idiom), I now have a Samsung F2EG plugged in the very same SATA 6Gb/s port that allegedly killed the F3, but it's running fine.
Anyway, I was strolling around some (french) forums during the last 2 days and have met 2 people who reported very similar issues with Samsung F3 drives in the same conditions, although their drives didn't die.
This is why I'm sharing this with this forum, to see if it's just a very unlikely coincidence, or if other people have noticed what appears to be a potentially fatal incompatibility between Samsung F3 hard drives and the SATA 6Gb/s ports on the P67 chipset (or other series 60 chipsets).
Update: Just to be really clear, this issue has nothing to do with the problem recently reported by Intel, this one is with the 2 Intel SATA 3 (6Gb/s) ports, not the 4 Intel SATA 2 (3Gb/s) nor the Marvell or JMicron ports. No need to mention that you don't have trouble with a Samsung F3 HDD plugged into those.
Update 2: Apparently a firmware fix originally intended for the SB850 chipset also fixes this issue. You can get it here:
http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...bbs_msg_id=308
Case closed
Last edited:
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