Toshiba P300 (2TB) - handling a potential warranty replacement

Wilk0 · 3 Jun 2019 at 17:51

Bought on ocuk around Nov 2016, installed July 2017 . Currently advertised warranty 2 years.
Observed: " Drive Warning: Yes | Reallocated Sector Count: 246 "
(this number of reallocated sectors has read above a hundred for several months I believe, but I never investigated, it has risen by 2 since I first emailed Toshiba support last week)
4k default allocated sector, drive used for videogames, some misc, and personally created images+videos. All personal data backed up with backblaze.
I never would have known these stats unless I ran HWinfo64 consistently.
I only have some understanding of the concern after researching on the internet. I can't find out for certain what the absolute disaster case for number of faulty sectors is, I'm running on the guess that around 5000 emergency sectors are reserved on the hard drive, and firmware will throw failure warnings when only 250 remain. crystaldisk info states that I'm at about 95% threshold 5% hence my guess/calculation.
I don't appear to have a reallocated sector on a single one of my other disk drives, all of which are different brands (WD, seagate, tosh), naturally my ssd (samsung) has suffered some lifespan ware (4%) as is their nature. Reviews of this drive online claim bad reliability, claim skyrocketing bad sector count soon after purchase, claim failure after just a year or two, DOA/RMA - in alarming quantity compared to reviews of more highly regarded drives.
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Asked Toshiba support whether this is to be concerned about | "please provide us with the serial number" | provided it | "Hello, This HDD is out of warranty. Do you have a copy of the invoice?"
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I do have an invoice. They haven't ask for any verification of the problem.
Questions: should I even bother pursuing a replacement? At this rate, the drive might die in completely reasonable time, unless it suddenly rapidly worsens. (pretty embarrassing compared to the 5y warranty on my WD and 10 year on Samsung)
Do I have any rights to refund or replacements.
I'm not a huge fan of the idea of switching my current drive for another, failure prone Toshiba p300 (Seagate 2TB Compute would likely be a nice alternative).
Thoughts? Never had an unreasonably failed hardware component in all my years, before.
Cheers.

Grimley · 3 Jun 2019 at 18:29

It's out of warranty, I wouldn't bother going down the road pursuing a replacement with Toshiba. If you succeeded, they will send you a recertified (refurbished) replacement (that happened with me & Western Digital while it WAS under warranty, I would assume toshibas warranty would be the same) Get what data off it while you can before it goes completely kaput & buy a new one with a longer Warranty.

pastymuncher · 3 Jun 2019 at 19:09

As above, it's out of warranty so get what you can off it before it dies. This is why I always advise people never to buy parts bit by bit or buy something just because it was a good price even though you won't be using it immediately. You wasted 8 months of it's warranty by not using it. If you had purchased it when you needed it in July 2017 it would still be in warranty.

Wilk0 · 4 Jun 2019 at 12:23

Grimley said:
It's out of warranty, I wouldn't bother going down the road pursuing a replacement with Toshiba. If you succeeded, they will send you a recertified (refurbished) replacement (that happened with me & Western Digital while it WAS under warranty, I would assume toshibas warranty would be the same) Get what data off it while you can before it goes completely kaput & buy a new one with a longer Warranty.

That's crooked about the refurbished replacement. Curious: did it last?
Western Digital does the 5 year warranties but for 2.5x the price (vastly vastly more than what my WD black cost interestingly). Good thing that I bought it when the prices were good (before the floods) I guess.

pastymuncher said:
As above, it's out of warranty so get what you can off it before it dies. This is why I always advise people never to buy parts bit by bit or buy something just because it was a good price even though you won't be using it immediately. You wasted 8 months of it's warranty by not using it. If you had purchased it when you needed it in July 2017 it would still be in warranty.

Thanks for that riveting and enriching insight.

Wilk0 · 4 Jun 2019 at 12:27

I'll probably let the Toshiba sit as a video game drive and shift everything personal onto another (seagate) drive which I already bought. Regardless of outcome, as response this recent discovery of Toshiba being regularly unreliable.

pastymuncher · 4 Jun 2019 at 13:00

Wilk0 said:
Thanks for that riveting and enriching insight.

With that attitude you won't get much help on here.

Grimley · 4 Jun 2019 at 18:57

Wilk0 said:
That's crooked about the refurbished replacement. Curious: did it last?

I kept it for backup purposes only when it came back & it still worked (abit very slowly) up until a few weeks ago when I scrapped it, it must've lasted about another 8-9 years despite being stuck in a drawer for most of that time & was switched on a dozen times more if that. Bearing in mind this is the only hard drive I've had to RMA in the 25 years or so dabbling in Computers.