Despite all SMART values being way above thresholds my internal 500 GB Samsung was giving up on me which I realized when I suddenly couldn’t copy over a file to my external Samsung Spinpoint F DT USB backup disc. A deep scan with Samsung’s ES Tool revealed several defective LBAs so I cloned the entire disc to said external to swap them. When I booted up my machine the new disc wasn’t detected by my board’s VIA 8237 RAID controller revealing the flaw I’d overlooked so far:
SATA interface speed cannot be switched to 1.5 Gb/s!
Apart from SATA’s touted backwards and forwards compatibility which should ensure operating a 3.0 drive on a 1.5 connector the manual on Samsung’s product page explicitely mentions a SATA 1.5 Gb/s Speed Limit Jumper setting to avoid speed negotiation issues on older motherboards. The manual however depicts 8 jumper pins whereas the HD753LJ has only 4 (!) none combination of which does any good.
So I tried both patch downloads mentioned in the FAQ to set the speed via software on a friend’s PC whose motherboard can stomach 3.0 devices attached to it. Curiously enough both tools do not show the current setting so to verify patch results you gotta boot ES Tool again. 3 boot CDs, how’s that for convience?
Of course applying the patches did not work as confirmed by Samsung support the next day. I’d tried to contact them by mail but their German support form did not list my drive model so I had to call the hotline which failed to call me back. When I called again the next day the droid on the phone had no explanation on why manual and support form where out of date nor what the 4 jumper pins are supposedly used for (since they are not used for master/slave or 32 GB clip settings anymore).
Samsung – what’s the (Spin)point?
Update, August 6th
I’ve just read on a german forum that only after using the second tool on Samsung’s FAQ page ES-Tool 2.11 would get a new option ‘Set Max UDMA’ which at last would allow adjusting interface speed (‘process’ ). Can anyone please confirm that with a comment. I’ve already sold my Samsung and got a WD but I’d really like to know if Samsung tried to fix this flaw.
Update, November 4th
Since I’d sold my drive to a friend I was able to test it again yesterday at his computer and now it worked for me too! I was able to switch SATA speed setting by doing it as Ken Cowin suggested: set to 3.0 GB in SSpeed instead of 1.5! It appears whoever coded the tool accidentally labeled the routines the wrong way cause after using SSpeed I could verify (and even change) speed with ES Tools and option ‘Set Max UDMA’.
November 20, 2009 at 3:53 am |
Yo i got the same prob with my Samsung HD753LJ SATA HDD 750 GB but 2 things are really odd.1st in the bios it only shows 131gb but its a 750gb i got it off a friend that told me he set it down so it could work on his old pc.How can i get the 750gb back? iv tried switching it a couple of times from 1.5 to 3.0 and back but still kinda screws me in HSTools i cant set the umda it hangs or kicks me back out 2 dos.Otherwise the harddrive works fine,drag n drop install everything just 131gb im so frustrated.I think once as i tried 2 erase the drive it said somthing bout SA out of stacks and a service code=AJ36 can anybody help or has whitnessed the same?
November 20, 2009 at 9:59 am |
AFAIK drive size is independent of SATA speed setting. Have you checked Samsung’s ES Tool for a drive size setting? Checked in another friend’s PC that can handle larger sizes what your drive shows up as there? If there’s no BIOS update for your mainboard it just won’t detect more than that, I’m afraid.
November 23, 2009 at 11:11 am
If you can’t get your BIOS to recognize your HDD, you could try asking for help at http://www.wimsbios.com/forum/my-hard-drive-isn-t-recognized-f26.html, maybe there is a patched BIOS available.
Wim
February 16, 2009 at 11:36 pm |
Thank’s a lot, the procedure works really fine.
I had the same issue with a HD502HI and VIA8237 controller. Updating the BIOS and so on was without any effect. After following your instruction the drive was detected by the controller and is running well.
I was in contact with Samsung support for two times cause of this problem, -> save your time and let them sleep.
February 12, 2009 at 6:19 pm |
D’oh! Why don’t you try yourself? Obviously the tool’s functions has mixed up labels. So 1.5 -> 3.0 is 3.0 -> 1.5 and the other way round. If you set it now to 1.5 it should be 3.0 and not work in a board that supports only 1.5.
February 12, 2009 at 6:03 pm |
shure but will it really switch to 3.0 since it did not when I used it the first time it actually switched to 1.5 even when selecting 1.5 -> 3.0
February 12, 2009 at 7:02 am |
On a board that can handle 3.0 you can of course switch back to the higher speed with the same tools.
February 11, 2009 at 6:13 pm |
WOW!!!!
This really worked out! I selected the WRONG 1.5 -> 3.0 and now my Spinpoint F1 320 Gb works on my Asrock K7VT4A Pro.
But what if I upgrade to SataII board will the drive be stuck @ 1.5. I´m asking because doing 1.5 – 3.0 again might not work since it switched my drive from 3.0 to 1.5. Or is it a kind of “toggle” Mode?
January 21, 2009 at 3:51 pm |
Nice this one worked for you. But on my board the drive would not even show up in the BIOS.
January 20, 2009 at 10:20 am |
OK, after having the same problem as you guys, i followed all instructions i found on the problem. I am using an older foxconn motherboard 945G series. I followed Kens tutorial at first with no success, not saying it was wrong, but it didn’t work for me. I struggled for a week before i decided to buy an external enclosure for it to run through USB, as another site had suggested. Still no success in the caddy. By now my head is spinning, so i thought the drive was faulted, so i made a return request on Ebuyer, and had to phone them. Boy am i pleased i did. The nice tech chap ran me through some questions and i explained it all. It shows up in bios, and when windows boots it installs the device driver, but no drive appears. So he said, click start, go to computer and right click and press manage, this opens up a drive manager, in there you should see the hard drive, right click on the drive which should be unallocated space and format, simple as that. If you can’t format, restart your system and follow the steps again, that’s how i did it. Apparently this drive has an issue with older chipsets where the drive installs but does not initialise. That’s all it was for me, so maybe anyone out there who is still having problems can combine this with kens tutorial and hopefully you will sort it out. Thanks for all the info, helpful or not.