Hard drive failure

DME43

DME43

DME43

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Joined
4 Jul 2009
Posts
26
My friends PC, which I have built for him about 10 months ago, hard drive has packed up. When I went to see it tonight, it took a few restarts after bios to get it to go to the windows startup then the desktop, when we restarted it twice afterwards while going straight to the desktop then last time it packed up, BIOS giving us 'no boot device inserted'.
Gave a 'Pri Master hard disk: S.M.A.R.T Status BAD message' before i managed to start up windows and I disabled SMART with no effect.
brought it home and attached it to my PC and gave me the asus quickstart MB menu which is on his computer and I exit it and doesn't load up the drive or show anything on screen. I'm thinking the HDD is gone even though there is no odd noises coming from it. It can't be a software problem can it? I've heard from somewhere it is the control board which is fried.

also if I give it back under warranty (RMA?? whats that?) and something like this, out of his luck, happens again, will the replacement drive still be under warranty?
Can we just return it and ask for our money back?

cheers

BTW its a Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA-II 64MB

(sorry if its in the wrong place)
 
DME43 said:
will I still have the warranty on the new one just in case that one dies as well? And can I have my money back instead so I can buy a another drive of my choosing?
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You'll have the remainder of the warranty period left from the original drive.

You won't get your money back after 10 months.
 
Surveyor said:
You'll have the remainder of the warranty period left from the original drive.

You won't get your money back after 10 months.
Click to expand...

Is that correct? I would have thought if you have a replacement within the warranty period then they should start you with a fresh 12 month warranty.

would be a bit annoying if you RMA a HD with just 2 weeks left on warranty and then that one died.

I only say this as I bought a cheap laptop many months ago. A few of the keys started to stick, took it back to the shop and got a different model as a replacement and they gave me a brand new warranty of 12 months starting from that date I had the replacement.
 
Magic_x_uk said:
Is that correct? I would have thought if you have a replacement within the warranty period then they should start you with a fresh 12 month warranty.

would be a bit annoying if you RMA a HD with just 2 weeks left on warranty and then that one died.

I only say this as I bought a cheap laptop many months ago. A few of the keys started to stick, took it back to the shop and got a different model as a replacement and they gave me a brand new warranty of 12 months starting from that date I had the replacement.
Click to expand...

Legally all you're entitled to is the warranty remaining on the original product.

Companies can offer more if they wish.
 
Magic_x_uk said:
Is that correct? I would have thought if you have a replacement within the warranty period then they should start you with a fresh 12 month warranty.

would be a bit annoying if you RMA a HD with just 2 weeks left on warranty and then that one died.

I only say this as I bought a cheap laptop many months ago. A few of the keys started to stick, took it back to the shop and got a different model as a replacement and they gave me a brand new warranty of 12 months starting from that date I had the replacement.
Click to expand...

If that happened I'd be inclinded to contact WD, as I posted above, their RMA service is brilliant and I'm sure they'd help you out.

Luckily I haven't had to RMA a drive for a long time (touch wood) so I can't recall exactly what happened with my warranty, sorry.
 
HNR1 said:
Is it i've just had a 1tb black fail, gone off WD.
Click to expand...

Just had a Sammy 1TB spinpoint go on me as well after 1day..
Gave me blue screen and no boot...swopped old spinpoint in loaded W7 and all fine..
First Sammy ive had go faulty ...
How would go about RMA as it had all data on it it that i wouldnt want to show ie passwords and other stuff..
But now drive is not working to wipe.:confused:
 
DME43 said:
ok, do I go through WD's site? also why can I not get my money back??
Click to expand...

Because after that length of time the law only requires that the item be repaired or replaced.

You can't demand you money back.

If you were offered a refund as a goodwill gesture, or because the item couldn't be repaired or replaced, it would only be a partial refund as you've had 10 months use of the HDD.
 
ah thanks for the explanation.

Going through the RMA process at WD, theres advanced and standard. I wanted to choose advanced, but I'm worried it may become lost and I'm not sure if they will pay for recordered delivery.
also in standard, it says the following:
If your drive is not defective, but you have a defective accessory, please click here to request for an accessory replacement.
Click to expand...

if it really is my controller board, does this count as a accessory replacement? It looks easy to open it up and change it with a new one.
 
I don't know about WD, but I think if Seagate replace a drive under warranty you get either the remaining term of the original warranty or something like 3 months whichever is the greater (might not be 3, buy you get the idea). With regard to not wanting to send a drive back to the manufacturer from which your data could be recovered, this is perhaps something you need to think about when the drive is first put in place and consider using some encryption so that on it's own the data on the platters just appears as noise. I use TrueCrypt on a number of my systems to establish just that!
 
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