Raptor woes..
Well, looks like one of my trusty WD360's has bit the dust. I started getting really stange hardlocks, and long pauses during the raid-bios posting. I finally split the drives up, and sure enough, only one was exhibiting the problems, and the other was fine. I ran the WD data lifeguard tool, and it can not even complete a '5 minute' quick test on the drive after 30 minutes. No strange noises or anything unusual from the drive, so I'm not sure wth happened there. I cant even finish a chkdsk /r on the drive, without the system hardlocking.
No problem I thought, these raptors have 5 year warrenties. I followed the 'online warranty check' from WD's website, and it tells me that my drive is 'Out of region' from which it was originally shipped, and I am not eligable for replacement. WTF is that, I bought it from a local computer shop in Canada. I put USA in the field as well, to see if it was possibly shipped to the US, and it has the same message. The shop tells me I have to deal with WD, and WD tells me to take it up with the shop. I have a ticket open with them to protest a bit, but they have not contacted me back yet. Expensive paperweight. Cost me about $175cdn/ea when they first came out over a year ago.
Anyone have any thoughts?
I'm using a single WD360, which is fast enough for me, but the drive is filling up quickly, and 36gb is too small for my apps/os. I dont want to pay the heft price of replacement raptors, especially considering the crapola I have dealt with so far. If I do have to shell out some $, anyone have any other thoughts? I'd likely sell the other raptor to help cover the costs.
No problem I thought, these raptors have 5 year warrenties. I followed the 'online warranty check' from WD's website, and it tells me that my drive is 'Out of region' from which it was originally shipped, and I am not eligable for replacement. WTF is that, I bought it from a local computer shop in Canada. I put USA in the field as well, to see if it was possibly shipped to the US, and it has the same message. The shop tells me I have to deal with WD, and WD tells me to take it up with the shop. I have a ticket open with them to protest a bit, but they have not contacted me back yet. Expensive paperweight. Cost me about $175cdn/ea when they first came out over a year ago.
Anyone have any thoughts?
I'm using a single WD360, which is fast enough for me, but the drive is filling up quickly, and 36gb is too small for my apps/os. I dont want to pay the heft price of replacement raptors, especially considering the crapola I have dealt with so far. If I do have to shell out some $, anyone have any other thoughts? I'd likely sell the other raptor to help cover the costs.
0
Comments
I really don't like that policy. I am an end user, why should it matter if WD shipped the friggin drive to Taiwan after being manufactured. Bottom line is that I bought the drive from a retailer here, and I have a sales receipt to prove it. I strongly doubt I will ever purchase another western digital product.
I tried being persistant, but got nowhere. I may try the local shop once more, but I don't feel too positive, as their customer service is not their strong point
If this retailer didn't say they were reselling gray-market drives and they did say they were covered by the 5 year WD warrantee, then I would say you have a pretty good case against them in small claims court or whatever you call it in the big frozen North.
If nothing else, report those bastards to your version of the BBB about them selling gray-market goods. After all, they are taking food out of proper Canadian's mouths by selling that overseas stuff.
PS:
Print your reply from WD and take it to the reseller.
I paid a pretty standard price for these drives (about $163CDN in January/04). They CLEARLY state that I am covered by a 5year manu. Warranty on the sales receipt. I called again today to give the shop an earfull, but they couldn't do much. This time I got the name and phone # for the big-manager at their main location. I'm going to give him a call tomorrow morning and see what happens. I'm hoping that I can get something worked out with him.
I agree, if this does not get resolved, I will certainly be doing some following up.
I have to bring the drive back to one of their locations, and they'll be sending it to Taiwan. Turn around time = 1 month minimum. I told him that I didn't think that was reasonable considering I should have been able to send it to WD, and have a 1-2 week turn around time, but he wouldn't budge. I guess I should just be happy that I'm not going to be out the cash, and be patient. Could be worse I suppose.
Note to the wise: Manufacturer's warranties don't always apply, be weary of smaller computer shops with good prices.
Back to raid-ville
I wish I had done. A year later and I still haven't had my replacement 9800xt from ASUS
I was working away on my PC last night when all of a sudden I got a nasty hardlock. At first I thought it was the dreaded cold bug, but I heard a faint clicking noise coming from my PC.. Not only that, but I could hear one of my drives spinning up and down repeatedly. It seemed to recover after a moment or two. Within 30 seconds, I got another hardlock and the system did not recover. The system now refuses to boot outright. No windows loading screen.. nothing. Just a constant spinup and down and a click. Amazing that the drive went from working perfectly fine to being a brick in 30 seconds.
Thankfully, I've been saving all of my important data on my secondary drive, which was just fine. I've also been performing regular data backups to my server. Unfortunatly, I haden't ghosted my array for almost 6 months, so I'm going to be starting over from an unfavorable position.
Now I get the fun experience of dealing with the above again
I'm curious to see if it is my replacement drive that croaked or my other original from 2004 that was not replaced. I'm going to run some tests on them individually and find out. My storage drive tested fine last night. I am glad to have a five year warranty regardless
Wish me luck.
He did just one mistake letting the ID code be displayed on the picture, so when I punched it in at Hitachi's site,
it displayed that I should return it to the local retailer for RMA.
Well I didn't buy the hard disk.
So I'll guess that when buying hard disks, check the warranty time on the manufactures web site.
Raptor information:
Western Digital Silently Updates Raptor Series
New Raptors Released!!
Good luck Lemon.
Sorry to say, but Western Digital is slow in progress.
The latest SATA HDD drives only supports SATA 150 MB/s.
Even if no HDD can transfer data at sustained rate over 150 MB/s, there is no reason whatsoever to hold back.
Without competition they don't have to work hard. :thumbsdow :thumbsdow :thumbsdow
I'm using the DFI ones as well. It is my fault though, In my effort to acheive clean cable mgmt, I took some corners a little too sharply and it pulled the insulation out of the plug. I'll see if I can take a picture of it a bit later..
EDIT: Here is a pic.. It doesn't look that bad, but all of the drives work fine so long as I dont use that cable