SMART checks only do any good if the drive fails "gradually"--that is, starts having issues before it dies completely (for example, a rapidly increasing number of read errors--I've seen that happen). If the drive just goes "pop" (say, a capacitor blows suddenly), there's no warning to be had, which was probably your case.
Kinda like the "check engine" light in a car--sometimes it comes on and warns you that there's something going wrong, other times the car just stops and that's it. Far from perfect, but warning some of the time is better than warning none of the time.
I wouldn't necessarily go writing off all Samsung drives due to this one experience; I've had several (much) older ones in service for maybe 5 years without issue, but then I can say the same for any brand, Quantum included, and I've seen failures on IBM, Seagate, Maxtor, and WD drives (heck, I got a bad batch of Seagates once that had a failure rate of like 50%, though in that case fortunately it was gradual so SMART was helpful). Not to say that these Samsung F1 drives might not be unusually unreliable, but it's all statistics.
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