Spinpoint F4 HD204UI 2TB 5400 RPM working good so far

Did you shut down your Duo before you pulled out the hard drive? It shouldn't be resynching. I shut down my Pro and did all the drives and put them back in. After that I booted it back up and no resynch and no loss of date.

and quit worrying about your Mum... you are a man! ;)

What a joke!

I've just managed to update one of my disks. Had to do it the mattseattle way, but a pc setup and open it up and pull out a sata cable from the writer.
It had an eSata port on the back of the machine, I thought that would do it. Connected my Icy box withe esata on it, up to the pc eSata port and nothing. How can that not work? Why wouldn't it find it that way?

Either way, I bit the bullet and opened the machine up, trying to not break the cleverly placed seal for warranty. Had the raving hump because I'd spent £10 on a poxy sata cable that was an external cable. That apparently I already had in the bottom of one of my boxes of wires. Not been using sata due to mac, so forgot I owned one. Must've come with the Icy box caddy.

And Maplin were shut as it was late, so I couldn't get an internal cable if I wanted to. All my cables weren't up to the job of an internal sata.
But upon opening the tower, I managed to rig the writers cable onto the hdd. There was just enough flex. And so managed to patch the 1st disk.

All that for about 3 second update. It actually took about 3/4 seconds. I had the right hump. The cost financially and stress involved, all for a poxy 4 second update.
Man, I feel like I've been done.

Put my disk back into the Duo, but it didn't seem to keep it's file system and the Duo is re-syncing it now. Another 12 hours.
At least I'll have the 2nd one done tomorrow.

Big thanks to mattseattle. You really helped me out with the details.
Just wished it hadn't cost me this much.
My Mums gonna kill me..........

LOL... you are quite welcome.

Yeah got it.

You are as mad as me.

Normal people don't do these kinda things I've come to realise.

So you use xp just for the purpose of the HP bootable thumb program. I take it, it wouldn't work well with Windows 7 and needed xp to manage the flashstick update stuff. That makes sense.

The WD's had trouble with the LCC's and needed patching with something. That's why I stayed away from them. I hoped I wouldn't have to do anything like that with the Samsungs. Chance I took. I was trying to make things easy for me...... Joke's on me.

Thanks for bothering to help me the last couple of days. You're answers tonight clarified things up for greatly. I'm the only person I know in my circles who tamper with IT like this. So to think anybody else is bothering to mess around like I have to, it doesn't make for great comprehension. But then I probably don't think about it either.

I know I should build myself a pc really, but I don't have the time right now. Maybe next year. I'll let you know about my cheap sata pc adventure. See how much I can get bashed in the credit cards for, just to sort out my poxy hdd's.
As I type this, I'm thinking 'my mums gonna kill me'. I'm 38 divorced, live on my own, have for the last 20 years and I'm worried what my mums gonna say.
There's something wrong there somewhere.
But she will go mad when she sees the new pc. Not something I can hide..............fancy being worried about what my mum's gonna say. I guess it's telling me I've had too much time off work.
Got to go to work.

The computer I bought just said this on the box:

500GB SATA hard drive
Store 333,000 photos, 142,000 songs or 263 hours of HD video and more

I took out the HD that had Win 7 on it and put in a spare HD I had and installed Win XP. After I was done with XP I just switched the hard disks out and put Win 7 in. It was the quickest way. If you have the thumb drive already created you can skip all that which sounds like you do. Just copy the samsung patch onto the thumb drive.

I think even the WD drives you had to do something patch wise with them. That is why I went ahead and bought a PC - just in case...

I hope this helps.
Cheers

Yeah, makes sense.

Without it explained like that, I'm presuming know-one would go to such lengths. But then I've got to take a look at where I'm posting. All the people that use this forum have to be as mad as me, or more some.

mattseattle wrote:
You need a PC that has a SATA controller in it.

.

I think I've got it now. Basically it's got to have a sata controller on the mother board. All new pc's come with sata hdd's in them, so therefore they must have sata connections on the mother board.
I didn't know the dvd writer that attached via sata could be used to connect a hdd though. (although google it and it's obvious)
I don't whether I don't know this, or have forgotten. I watched a dvd on how to build a pc a little while ago, which covered a lot of that stuff. Must've forgotten everything.

So if I go shopping and look for something similar, I should be able to disconnect the burner and connect my samsung hdd's?
With just a internal sata cable connection?
What should I look for regarding 'sata controller' on the spec or box? Some wording that'll tell me for sure?
Probably obvious, but I've given up here. No ego, need all the help I can get right now.

Thanks for getting back to me. I've come to the end of the road here with messing around. It's cost me too much money already. Should've gone with the WD caviars.

Let us know when you get a chance about the questions above. I'm going to bed to retarded once more.

Just thought of a question though. You said that you had no luck with Windows 7, which i presume come with the pc. You said you used XP. Did you just slap XP on the machine to accomplish the upgrade. Again probably obvious you did, but expecting know-one else would go to such lengths. So to clarify, you wiped windows 7 and replaced with xp? Does that make any difference as we're booting in Dos with the thumb drive?
I can't see what the difference would be in the Bios, as the Bios is the mother board isn't it? No OS used to open in Bios?
Let me know if this is making any sense as my brain is just swimming in all directions of IT right now. I think I might go and see Tron which is just being released over here and go for a total brain overload. Maybe I'll learn a thing or two.

Cheers mattseattle

The Samsung hard drive has to be connected via a SATA cable.. not via USB in a dock. I wished that would work but unfortunately it doesn't. If the tower only has an IDE connect for hard drives/cd rom then that won't work. You need a PC that has a SATA controller in it.

I found a cheap PC at Walmart that has a SATA controller. The internal HD and CDRom connects via SATA. I created the USB thumb drive with the DOS boot and the Samsung patch executable. I opened up the case and disconnected the CDRom as it was easiest to get to. I hooked up the Samsung HD to the SATA cable that was connected to the CDRom. After that I booted up via the USB thumb drive. On the PC I bought you just hold down the F12 as it boots and it lets you select how you want to boot - USB, CDRom, HD, Lan, etc. I chose the USB Thumbdrive. Up it came to the dos prompt. After that you just execute the Samsung patch and it searches for the Samsung hard drive.

I hope that helps some....

Ok People

This has got worse for me. I picked up the pc tower from my friend tonight. I was ready to go to Pc world and buy a cheap sata desktop, like mattseattle. Can't afford it but, worse case scenario I've got a sata pc. Credit cards, you gotta love em.
So my friend, says 'no, no, come around and pick up the pc tower, I've got a spare monitor too'.
So it's a toss up. Pcworld shut at 8 or round to mates to pick up free pc tower. Not a hard decision. Should save me £300-400.
Fires up the pc tower at his, usb flashstick fires up in dos. Great, takes it home.
Dell PcTower with xp IDE though.
Connects Samsung hdd via dock, sata cable to usb and Icybox to usb. Used all of those with same results.
Patch didn't work for me. I got Samsung info on screen, which ended in 'Unavailable for Non-SAMSUNG drive'.
Info showing that something within the patch worked, but unsuccessful.
If I actually disconnect the hdd altogether and run the patch it's still the same result on screen. So it's indicating no good for WD hdd in pctower.
So I'm thinking that this old xp pc tower can't read the samsung sata hdd via usb in dos for some reason. Will pick it up in Windows.
I've gone back to the Samsung patch page and it states '2. Please connect Target HDD to Primary / Mast.'
So I'm thinking that my problem is the old pc/motherboard/drivers in dos/sata via usb. Can't connect to Maser as IDE.

Please get back to me people with your input here as to what's wrong. And what I need.
By going and getting a desktop pc, do I have to connect the samsung hdd inside the tower to the primary/master bay?
Can it be done by sata port cable, and usb is defunct here? Or if pc is sata enabled, then connecting by usb is fine.
Do pc's actually come with sata yet?
I'm sure they do, but I've just googled it and found nada.

Someone give me a successful set up here, or something I can work with. It's now cost me 2 days money.

Mutley wrote:
I've just run the patch without the drive connected, achieving the same results I was getting with drive connected. Conclusion patch not reading the Samsung hard drive through usb connection.

It must be connected with SATA.

mattseattle

Ok, got it all running. Just tried it on one of my disks, but I don't think it worked.
I'm not actually getting a "confirmation of upgrade/update". I'm getting 'Unavailable for Non-Samsung drive".

To help me out here. Can you remember what it more or less said on the screen after completion successfully. I'm going to try again, different kit this time see what happens.

Also, how does one tell after if there's a difference? Does the firmware of the disk change?
Firmware I've got at the minute is 1AQ10001

And thanks for getting back to me so far.

update

I've just run the patch without the drive connected, achieving the same results I was getting with drive connected.
Conclusion patch not reading the Samsung hard drive through usb connection.