There was a recent deal at NewEgg on the SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 HD204UI 2TB 5400 RPM 32MB drives, so I decided to risk it as opposed to the other WD & Seagate 2tb drives. I installed them, upgraded the ReadyNAS firmware then did a factory reset. Disk 4 took most of an evening to resync, but finally finished. So far it's been running fine as I've been copying data off my old NV+ on to the new Ultra 4.The Ultra 4 is sitting in the bottom of my gun safe, so low heat is rather important to me and I thought a 5400 would be a better bet. So far I haven't seen any Temp1 above 140f or so and the HD's are usually at or under 100f, never seen one above 108f. I was worrried that the enclosed fireproof safe would end up retaining too much heat, but it's been 3 days now with no problems. When I have the safe open the drives are very quiet, not surprisingly closed you can't hear a thing at all.Will try and post later when I see how they hold up.

I keep wigging out weekly when I see an E-mail come in like "RAID event detected. (YourNAS)", but it's just the weekly scrub & integrity checks I have scheduled (always clean). No problems at all so far.Haven't seen the HD's pass 105 or so & temp1 over 140. Safe is a little warm when I open it, but not anywhere close to hot at all.Just saw they are going for $90 at NewEgg today with a coupon. http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1557278 I got mine for about $95.

I just purchased an Ultra 4 from Provantage and more Samsung F4 drives from NewEgg; eight in all. I just couldn't resist that low price either. I've been running two of the F4 drives as a hardware RAID1 arrays in a new PC and have been pleased with how cool and noise free they are. I plan to create a second software RAID1 array within OSX (its a dual boot Win7 x64/Hackintosh machine) and then load the remainder into the ReadyNAS for backing everything up. So glad to hear that you are having good luck with your drives. The 3-yr warranty and my past bad experience with a Samsung DLP TV made me think long and hard before going with their drives, but the reviews seem favorable and using them in RAID relieves most of my data loss worries should they die prematurely. It does make me nervous that they are not on Netgear's compatibility list. I don't see them listing drives that failed compatibility and/or are waiting to be tested, so it makes me wonder which category these fall into.

Just upgraded the two Spinpoint F3 HD103UI to two Spinpoint FD HD204UI in my ReadyNas Duo. Everything went as expected and the volume is now expanded. I upgraded the Firmware to RAIDiator 4.1.7-T60 first, then unplugged the first disk and replaced it with the new 2TB disk. Initialization and resynch too just over 14 hours. I then did the same with the second disk and this took the same length of time.Once the Volume was reported as Redundant, I rebooted the NAS from Frontview. Once it had started up again, it asked me to reboot to complete the Expansion. I rebooted a second time and just eight minutes later, the volume had been successfully expanded to 1859GB. :thumbsup:

Your disks are 4k sector disks so you should have backed up all data, verified backup is good, update to 4.1.7 T48 or later (already done this so need to do it again), done a System > Config Backup, factory default (http://www.readynas.com/forum/faq.php#How_do_I_reset_the_ReadyNAS_to_factory_default%3F), restore Config Backup, restore data from backup.Without alignment for 4k sectors you may have poor write performance.

Thanks mdgm. I'll do that this weekend. I should have read all of the release notes first.

Spinpoint F4 HD204UI 2TB 5400 RPM working good so far

160 Replies

Replies have been turned off for this discussion

Mutley1
Aspirant
Dec 11, 2010
mattseattle

I understand you're a mac user. How did you do it on a mac, when you get a min. I'm mac aswell.
mattseattle
Aspirant
Dec 12, 2010
I wasn't able to. I actually went out and bought a cheap PC and used it to upgrade the firmware on all my Samsung drives. I'll box it back up and give it to my father for a Christmas present. :D

Mutley wrote:
mattseattle

I understand you're a mac user. How did you do it on a mac, when you get a min. I'm mac aswell.
Mutley1
Aspirant
Dec 12, 2010
mattseattle

Man that's extreme, made me laugh. Things we have to do some time.

Well thanks for getting back, I can eliminate that one off of the list. Focus on XP and make thumb booter.
eco001
Aspirant
Dec 12, 2010
Mutley wrote:

Focus on XP and make thumb booter.

Have you thought about asking the Apple store to do it for you? Maybe they'll do it for free. I don't have a mac, but the apple store service is legendary.
Mutley1
Aspirant
Dec 12, 2010
I'm not sure what you're referring to 'get the apple store to do it'.

But my experience is, normally they know no more than me. And normally less. I made the mistake of asking for assistance in a shop the other day, Uk version of RadioShack type of shop called 'maplin'. I needed clarification on the hdd dock I was thinking of purchasing. To end up walking out without having a row with one of the shop workers because his understanding of English language/grammar wasn' t up to par. Therefore, I'm asking a cretin. I went back after 15 minutes and managed to talk the manager into opening the box for clarification. I was right, assistant wrong.

Have you ever been into the Apple store and waded through the divs on the front desk. The people you need are at the back, and they've no reason to come out to anything other than apple related fixes or sales problems.
eco001
Aspirant
Dec 12, 2010
No, I've never been in one. My sister-in-law has an iPhone and a macbook tho, and she's always raving about her experiences there. I'm sure it can vary from store to store, tho. Wouldn't hurt to phone, tho. Let 'em know you're a dedicated apple user with a NAS and no obvious way to update your new hdd, but you have the utility in hand, etc. etc. They might give you an appt. so you can walk right in.
Mutley1
Aspirant
Dec 12, 2010
eco001

Yeah I do understand where you're coming from. But they're more than happy to tinker with something that they're familiar with. Especially the not so clever ones, it boosts their ego.
I shouldn't think a Netgear Nas, Samsung hdd and possibly a bootable flashdrive would come within their limits.

But it was worth a mention, thanks for your input.

I'll just tackle this on my XP laptop. But the thing's gone rogue on me. Can't enter the Bios to change boot order. Had this trouble just the other week, and managed to get into it. But can't today. I'm just copying some old Acronis image backups to sling a clean copy on the laptop. From there I should be able to enter the Bios no probs. Then onto the bootable flash stick etc, etc....

I really fed up with this poxy hdd upgrade now.

eco001. Your user name wouldn't be an acknowledgment to the foxy chick from DollHouse?
eco001
Aspirant
Dec 12, 2010
Mutley wrote:
eco001
eco001. Your user name wouldn't be an acknowledgment to the foxy chick from DollHouse?

I'm ashamed to admit I know who you're referring to, but no. lol My oldest daughter was into that series and caught it on Netflix instant watch through our Popcorn Hour. I've used the "eCo" username forever, that comes from a strong interest in ecology related things: gardening, orchids, ecotourism, etc. Some sites require more than 3 characters in the username, tho, hence the numerical tag.

Edit: Might your XP laptop already be set to boot from the CD? If so you could create a boot CD instead of the flash drive.
Mutley1
Aspirant
Dec 12, 2010
eco001

Ooh , good idea. I wouldn't have thought of that (brain working on half cylinders). Instructions I can just about follow at the minute, ideas I'm all out of.

Is it the same procedure as the boot usb? Or even easier as it's on cd?

I suppose I'd have to copy....oh sod it. I'm gonna do the restore of the XP I think anyway. It's too cluttered. I made some real good clean setup images back in the day. Last year in fact. I'll restore one of them, see if I can access Bios, or failing do the cd.

Is the cd booter easy to do? I've had a quick look at the usb bootable website/instructions. I guess it's the same, need Dos files to make it bootable and then copy the patch.exe file onto the cd via the program.

Any other suggestions I'm missing?

I was hoping you'd be just like the sexy fox from Dollhouse. Never mind, I took a shot.
mattseattle
Aspirant
Dec 12, 2010
LOL... yeah it was a tad extreme but it was actually cheaper to buy this cheap PC than it would've been to replace all my Samsung hard drives. At least now I have a PC I can use to upgrade the firmware of any future hard drives I may need to do. ;)

Forum Discussion

Spinpoint F4 HD204UI 2TB 5400 RPM working good so far

160 Replies

Related Content

netdata NT not working

Re: R7960P stops working

Streaming services not working

Orbi BK43 AC2200 intermittent working/not working

mDNS / Bonjour not working

NETGEAR Academy

ProSupport for Business