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Are Hard Disk Warranties Worthless?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the better-QA-on-refurbished-hardware dept.

1984 asks: "Earlier this year I returned a Hitachi 2.5" drive under warranty, and got back a replacement which died after a week or so of light use. More recently a Seagate 200GB desktop IDE disk flaked after a few months use, so I sent it off and received a replacement under warranty. The replacement wouldn't even format. So I RMAed that and got another dead replacement. All the replacement disks were 'refurbished', and I see many instances of similar problems with refurbished replacements when Googling. So I'm asking, what experience are people having with getting replacement disks that work, and continue to do so for something approaching the expected lifetime of the original drive? Are current warranties just a sham?"

6 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Lemon Law by joshetc · · Score: 4, Informative

    In some areas (of the USA) the "Lemon Law" applies to more than just automobiles. One thing it may apply to is computers and computer components. I'd check your local law and see if it applies, if it does then ask the company for a NEW replacement otherwise you'd like a full refund. If they don't oblige you can simply mention that law. (generally 3 faults requires them to give you a full refund or a completely new replacement)

    1. Re:Lemon Law by joshetc · · Score: 4, Informative

      Extremely sorry, I forgot to include a link.

  2. Seagate RMAs work for me by bullok · · Score: 5, Informative

    In the last 4 years or so, I've bought about 30 Seagate drives. Two died during the warranty period. In both cases, the RMA was quick and the replacement drives worked ok. One of the replacements was refurbished, the other was new.

    One of the failed drives was shipped via UPS, and the package was pretty roughed up. The drive worked initially, but failed within a week. I suspect that many failed drives haven't failed due to manufacturing defects, but due to abuse during shipping. Of course, this means that they should be using better packaging (and more conscientious shippers). I'd gladly pay a couple of extra bucks for a better shipping container (or better shipper) to avoid the occasional beat-up drive.

    1/15 does seem like a high failure rate to me, but it's a pretty small sample size, so my numbers alone don't mean much.

  3. Bad Power Supply by crow · · Score: 4, Informative

    From my experience, repeated drive failures are the result of a bad power supply or some other external factor. This doesn't include DOA drives, of course, but otherwise when your drives keep failing, you need to check the operating temperature and power supply.

    1. Re:Bad Power Supply by ivan256 · · Score: 4, Informative

      You hit the nail on the head.

      In the course of past jobs, I've probably returned about 200 drives under warranty (out of probably 4000-5000 drives installed). The failure rate for the replacement drives was never above average for the replacement drives with the exception of two models. One was an old Quantum low-end 3.5" model in the 2-4GB range that I can't remember the name of, and the other was the notorious version of the IBM deskstar. However in the deskstar case, the second round of replacements were a far superior drive, many of which I still have in use today.

      On the other hand, I have seen machines that seemed to eat hard drives for lunch, and in the end a few minutes with a scope always showed unstable voltage from the powersupply during bootup.

      Generaly I'd say my hard drive warranty experience has been positive; especially since, more often than not, I have received either faster or higher capacity drives as replacements.

  4. Cooling! by Psychofreak · · Score: 4, Informative

    You have a good point about cooling. I had terrible luck with a removeable disk drive. I had it replaced at least 3x. The company folded so I had no recourse. I concluded that the drive was overheating as the ejected cartridge would be untouchably hot. People now call me a little crazy about cooling. I atribute the very long life of my curent computer to it sounding like a vaccume cleaner with it's 7 fans. That's 2 regular case fans, two midgit fans in a HDD cooler, one slot fan against the video card, and two processor fansin a dual p-pro system(overclocked of course).

    As a side note the dorm I lived in would top 100F regularly. I saw this alone kill many classmates machines.
    Phil

    --
    Laugh, it's good for you!