A few weeks ago, one of my Hitachi 500GB SATA 1.5G drives started showing signs of failure, so I set out to find a reasonably priced replacement. The drive was to be connected to a PCI VT6421A SATA card.

I bought an unused SAMSUNG 502HJ SATA 3G drive, and connected it up. The drive was detected fine, but operation was slow and constantly hanging. Initially I came to the conclusion that it was because the drive was SATA 3G, and the VT6421 card is SATA 1.5G. Unfortunately, when I attach the 1.5G limit jumper to the drive is no longer detected by the VT6421 card.

I've since attached a 2.5" Hitachi SATA 3G drive to the same card and it works perfectly. I can't understand why the SAMSUNG drive is such a problem.

Thinking back, I recall having an issue with another SAMSUNG drive (Model 503HI). It wasn't my intention to buy another SAMSUNG drive, but this particular drive was branded DELL, and for some reason I was under the impression that it was a rebranded Seagate.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem with SAMSUNG drives could be? I don't want to go out and buy a Seagate or Western Digital drive and run into the same problem.

I've ruled out drivers an hardware as being the problem, since I've tried more than one card and all available drivers.

I'm really not sure what else it could be.

Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks. 😀