WD rep?

Deus Ex

Deus Ex

Deus Ex

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Had a big problem with a week old Western Digital drive bought from another retailer, does anyone know if any reps lurk about here? I know there are some for other firms
 
RMA will be easy as long as its not an OEM drive. However if its a week old i'd contact the retailer for a brand new replacement as anything from WD will be a recertified drive.
 
Justintime said:
RMA will be easy as long as its not an OEM drive. However if its a week old i'd contact the retailer for a brand new replacement as anything from WD will be a recertified drive.
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This. Recently RMA'd a red drive and service was good. Got a recertified drive as a replacement. However, as it's a weelk old the retailer, depending who they are is the best bet. Make sure if you do rma you keep proof of postage and delivery.
 
WD RMA has always been exemplary for me. Bought a Black 320 gig laptop drive from fleabay which was DOA, and had a brand spanking new one through RMA in 5 days.
Superb!
 
Won't be brand new, its a recertified drive and will say that somewhere.

Been RMA'ing with WD for 15yrs and know for at least the last 10yrs its all been recert drives. Only manufacturer I ever got new drives from was Samsung, even got 10 1tb replacements from an RMA of 10 750Gb 2.5" spinpoints from Rexo as they did not have stock of 750s. Of course since Samsung are Seagate now it'll all be dodgy recertified drives that meet Seagates QC, which is basically lets wipe SMART data from another RMA and send a drive with a new label and hope for the best, not buying any Seagates unless a gun is held to my head, RMA'ed 37 drives this year and 19 Recerts did not last a month..
 
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Well lads, I was going to wait till I spoke to WD on monday, on the off chance posting my troubles caused prejudice, but lets just say, it was almost a brown underwear moment, my ****ing 2 day old hard drive caught fire next to my SSD and two samsung drives.

I've had several dozen hard drives, mostly samsungs till seagate bought them and this has never ****ing happened before, I was ******** myself, I pulled every plug out, ran down the stairs with my case and outside , by then it had gone out.

usp5934kh

www.postimg.org/image/usp5934kh
It gets worse...

I had two striped and loyal samsung 1tb f1s, so I had bought the western digital 2tb drive to transfer data across on my old mobo + cpu because the raid array wouldnt work on the new 4670k + z87. I was then going to back up my crucial data onto one of the samsungs and use the other for torrents/swap file. I'd already formatted and mailed my previous spare disk to a sibling for him to use. So I had just one copy. its gone now.

I would like WD to get the data back, surely since only the pcb looks damaged it should be easy. The main things I'm ****ed about are:
-Pictures, especially of my now deceased labradors
-Work, I have three four years of medical school notes
-I'd built up an (anonymised) casebook of about 150 patients I had interviewed and examined over the last year, thats also gone

I'm also unprepared for them to thus use the disc as a refurb.

Also, the bloody things burnt my samsung, although touch wood, only cosmetic, its definitely made its 3 year warranty worthless and destroyed resale value.

Any tips on proceeding appreciated.
 
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Forgot to add, since they could have burnt my house down (I had it running all night before it burnt up this morning), burning there house/factory/RMA centre is a reasonable suggestion, but would sadly have too many consequences;)
 
At best WD will point you to a data retrieval company at significant cost (which you can probably find by yourself). They will replace the burnt drive with a refurb, tell you that you should have backed up your data, and call the Samsung incidental damage not covered by their warranty.
 
I suspect thats probably accurate, which is damn ridiculous. Once i've hit up WD I will see what the South american retailer I bought it from says.
 
How about buying an identical WD drive and swapping the circuit board over to try and recover the data? It's probably the cheapest option. You could then maybe return the new drive under DSR.

I have used this method before and it worked for me and I believe it is one of the first things a data retrieval company would try.
 
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Deleted member 2277 said:
How about buying an identical WD drive and swapping the circuit board over to try and recover the data? It's probably the cheapest option. You could then maybe return the new drive under DSR.
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Is the board easy to replace? If WD are not helpful I may ask Amazon if they can open up drives till they find one. I did have a look, but couldnt find anyone selling a pcb entitled 2060-771945-000 rev P1
 
Deleted member 2277 said:
How about buying an identical WD drive and swapping the circuit board over to try and recover the data? It's probably the cheapest option. You could then maybe return the new drive under DSR.

I have used this method before and it worked for me and I believe it is one of the first things a data retrieval company would try.
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That tends not to work on modern drives. The firmware on the platters is matched to the circuit boards. I've even seen recent drives with glue seals on the circuit boards so you can't detach them without breaking warranty and alerting the sellers that you swapped circuit boards.
 
Steampunk said:
That tends not to work on modern drives. The firmware on the platters is matched to the circuit boards. I've even seen recent drives with glue seals on the circuit boards so you can't detach them without breaking warranty and alerting the sellers that you swapped circuit boards.
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Yeah, I also read I'd have to break out the soldering kit I dont have and transfer an eeprom from the old pcb to the enw, unless it was contained in another chip in which case it was impossible. just very annoyed with WD.
 
Deus Ex said:
Yeah, I also read I'd have to break out the soldering kit I dont have and transfer an eeprom from the old pcb to the enw, unless it was contained in another chip in which case it was impossible. just very annoyed with WD.
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If the data is seriously important, irreplaceable and without backups, then get a few quotes from data retrieval companies. You might just have to bite the bullet and pay out a few hundred pounds to get the data back.
 
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Swapping a circuit board on a WD drive


What model number is your drive?
 
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