Need help with sounding technical
GnomeWizardd
Member 4 LifeAkron, PA Icrontian
Replacing my hard drive and WD wants to know why i am asking for a replacement. I like to sound technical but all i can think of is the drive is no longer recognizable in dos or windows and crashes the Raid. Any hints??
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Sounds technical enough to me. Anymore and they might raise the :bs: on you.
Run the DLG Diagnostic tool and it will give you an error code.
If you can't get the test to run, just tell them the drive is so dead it can't even be tested.
Once you simply tell them you have checked jumpers and made sure they are correct, and that you know cable is good and working, adn whether or not BIOS recognizes it, simply tell them what is up and tell them to tell you how to zero in on further details they want checked.
Support often asks why to see what you have checked and to be able to see if zeroing in any further will probably fix for you at home. They do not have enough folks to refurb a lot of drives, so most RMAs get trashed if they know to trash them. Intel does this with motherboards also. The tech supports have to account for RMAs they authorize, and report why, so if you have a tech support guy say it is not a hookup or usage or compatibility issue, then unless your checks leave them something fixable-- like, for example, a HD needs to be zero-packed and that is likely to fix or confirm it is a total RMA-only situation after which confirmation they will simply RMA. They want to know enough to check off the trash or the refurb box with some confidence, or help you fix it if can.
The more you do, the more likely the next RMA will be taken seriously if there is a next one. they do track RMAs by cusotmer, and working with a tech and remembering who you worked with will let you have better followthrough next time. Once you get beyond the base why, what you tell them you have checked will tell them what to have doen next, or simply to RMA the thing now if certain problems exist.
A VERY noisy series of clicks in drive can be a head SCRAPING on media if the drive spins up, and it will vibrate some to palm of hand if you start up box and it does spin up even if you hear very little noise. No vibrate, DEAD drive, probable rotational motor and\or gearing failure.
If you known of and can tell them that the drive made high pitched or whistling noises first, bearings might have seized and caused a rotational motor failure.
When I want to quick DIAG a drive, I do this:
First, box gets powered down.
Second, drive is removed from box and placed on an antistat mat or an antistat bag, controller card side down. If need be a power extension is put on cable harness to reach drive out of box. I hook drive to farthest end of cable from motherboard connection and make sure no other HD is on cable. Then I see if the BIOS can find it. IF not, I tell HD mfr that embedded controller is dead. If it can, I proceed like this:
If I stick a floppy with a WD diag on and set BIOS to floppy boot, I use an older version oft eh WD utils that has an Ontrack util program subset on it. IF the util set can detect what model and what the parms of HD should be right, I tell it to quick check the drive. If that passes, I do along check. If that passes I stop-- and look at configuration and incompatibility issues. If either quick or long check fail I tell them that and result code, which I write down. This ontrack set can genm codes baced on hardware or sofware results, and the result code they can look up and tell 80-90% of time what is most likely wrong.
If I get a failure anywhere in that set of processes, the only thing I have had WD do is ask me to hook drive to a different cable and repeat what I did. 25-30% of time, I discover drive is not jumpered right or cable change fixed, and it took 5 min to make sure. Other 75% of time I get an immediate RMA OK.
If you tell me what you checked, I can tell you what I will say to WD under circumstances, I have RMA'd a few and they know I am usually right in my conclusions-- because the ones they opened up to check matched in damage what I said and I do talk to them on phone when major things and ask for help if need be.
So, if you have done all I outlined and nothing fixes or whows you how to fix, declare drive dead. Tell them what I have essentially stepped you through here, declare that done.
John D.
Accidently... cough cough cough... push it off the top your computer desk onto a carpeted surface.
Then you can honestly tell them that one day you turned it on and it made this god awful whiny screaming sound for a single second and now its dead as a toad in the road.
Tex
See what??? I saw that exact procedure work on the 15 RMAs I got WD to do.... And in fact, on the first, the engineer told me what to look for, and was on the phone for an hour, and not only cross-shipped but included a prepaid return shipping label. Of the rest, they were all cross-shipped. That is why I still by WD, and have bought over 200 of them over the years.
So laugh. From a youngster they do not expect tech talk. They want to know what was tried.
I can quick test an 80 GB in 5 minutes, from time I take it out of a box until test complete-- it runs on the outside of box, on an antistat mat, with a power cable extension, and a HD data cable that is 2 feet long. Or, it runs in one of my boxes in a tray. So, yes, it is inevitable that I try to help, using plain simple English.
BTW, with older Seagates(very much older), when they squealed, I lubed the spindles from outside, with 2 drops of HD lube oil. That fixed the squeaking squeal for 4 months on average. Ditto older WDs-- very much older HDs. Tea kettle to silence except for normal HD noises.
John D.
They will replace it no questions asked
Gobbles..