I purchased the Samsung F1 1TB OEM model from Newegg for $280 USD. Using HUTIL from Samsung, it reports that the Maintenance Cylinder is bad. I've RMA'd and gotten a 2nd one with the same problem.
Multiple people have reported to have 2-3 drives with this issue. Nobody has reported having a passing HUTIL test yet. Anybody here have one that passes the Self Test (does not Erase data)?
I only ran HUTIL because my first drive had issues formating that would result in BSOD but once formated, it appeared to run fine. The 2nd drive formated normally without problems but also has the error in HUTIL.
I know that it is normal for HDDs to have some surface defects and these are normally reallocated to the Maintenance Cylinder. The question is, if this drive does not have one, or at least not a functional one, what happens? Does the cluster/sector get marked as bad, data moved, and you just lose space? Or are you liable to have the OS try to write on the bad sector(s) again?
I worry because this I do plan to fill the drive with at least 700 GB of data right off the bat. Samsung hasn't gotten back to me by email & their phone support knew absolutely nothing about the product or HDDs in general. At this point, I'm 98% positive if I RMA for a replacement, it will have the same problem with the M.C. So it's either let it slide or get a Seagate - though, even discounting the speed difference, on paper, I like everything about the Samsung better.
Both drives report Reads of 90-96 MB/sec in HDTach 3.0.4.0 in both Short & Long Test though in case anybody was wondering.