Hello guys, this is my first post here, so forgive me if this post was supposed to go to Software section of the forum.

I've got a Samsung HM641JI 2.5" 640GB HDD which works fine, but due to some unfortunate luck, i managed to get BAD SMART status on it since i connected it via questionable USB to SATA cable (JMicron based) to a front USB port on my PC case.

I suspect that the front port caused HDD (SMART) to go bonkers and to register too many read errors which caused SMART to mark the HDD as BAD due to 01 Read Error Rate parameter. HDD always had some issues afterwards when connected to that certain port while it works fine on motherboard USB ports, even with the mentioned cable which makes it even more suspicious that the port was to blame.

The HDD works absolutely fine, i use it for testing and other non-important stuff and i'm pretty sure it works just fine but the BAD status annoys me so i would like to reflash the firmware.

The questions i have are as follows:

1. Can you point me out to the compatible software (and ideally steps on how-to) with which i can flash the firmware?
2. Is FW written on the Samsung HDDs important for firmware version that needs to be flashed (in this case it's 2AJ10003), or i can safely flash firmware 2AJ10002 or 2AJ10001 (these firmware are available)? I'm asking this because there might be something Samsung specific which i might not know.
3. HDD is currently in a Realtek RTL9201R based external case, is it a must to connect this HDD directly to the motherboard for firmware flashing?

Attachment provides more info about the HDD.

"Flashing" the firmware doesn't work the way you think it does. It's not a phone.
Usually, when you upgrade the FW on a HDD the SMART data remains; it's not "reset" or removed.

You'd need to clear the SMART values in the FW to accomplish what you want, and that cannot be done with consumer grade tools (you'd need PC3000 for example).

See: https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=19645

Thanks for the info WebClaw, i was misinformed then.

I guess it's best that this HDD stays as-is.

I can't see how a USB-SATA bridge could affect the SMART read error rate attribute. If there was a comms problem, I would think it would show up in the UDMA CRC Error Count, but that is 0.

I notice that the write error rate is non-zero as well.

The G-sense error rate is very high, and the free-fall protection attribute is non-zero. This suggests that the drive was abused.

However, the strangest thing is that the Worst values for Total Host Reads and Writes are less than the Current values. That seems impossible.

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