REVIEW: Samsung HM120JC
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There’s not much to say about this drive. It worked like it should have for 19 months, which is 7 months longer than the warranty. I have regular desktop hard drives of Samsung’s that are in 24/7 servers that have lasted longer. Seriously, WTF. This makes entry #2 for Samsung in the Brainwrecked Hall Of Shame.
It all started months ago when the laptop this drive was in would boot into Windows XP (which I installed onto partitions 1 and 2), but hang at the login prompt. Linux (located on partitions 3 & 4) wouldn’t boot at all. I thought it was due to over-heating, so I set the laptop aside until I could open it up for a dusting.
When I opened the CPU access panel, there wasn’t much dust to be found at all. I tried booting into Linux. No dice. I tried booting into Windows. Same problem as before. Wait a minute — if this was an over-heating problem, the booting problem would have been reversed. That is to say, the Linux boot would have succeeded but hung at the end and Windows wouldn’t have booted at all. Uh-oh.
I downloaded Samsung’s ES-Tool and was greeted with a slew of Error: LBA xxxxxxxxx messages when it came time for the read test. Damn it — $100 down the friggin’ drain. Thank god I have a file server to keep important files on. The warranty sucked, but this drive sucked harder.
Brian is discussing. 
Brian 12:02 pm on July 6, 2009 Permalink |
Found this article from a search about the warranty for an HM120JC.
After much research online (with mixed findings), the consensus has it that this drive more than likely has a 3-year warranty. My HM120JC had the same error as you just recently after 2 years and 8 months of use After filling out my information on their site, Samsung issued me an RMA number and I’ve sent out the drive for service. So I’ll see what happens (if they issue me a refurb replacement or not), but I thought this might be a heads up for you in case you wanted to try to see if you can get the drive replaced.
Brian 3:15 am on July 22, 2009 Permalink |
I left a comment here a few weeks ago or so regarding an RMA of this model drive after having it for over 2.5 years. Samsung has swapped my RMA’ed HDD with a refurbished one of the same model and capacity. If you still have yours, RMA it to get a working drive. Cheers!