Seagate warranty, peturned products

[Abderrahman]

Hi everyone!

I want to ask about the Seagate warranty service
Well, I have an HDD, one of my RAID-0 HDDs, Seagate 320GB, that broke down, it's just 1 year old!!
I contacted the warranty, they asked me to send it, so that's what I did.
I read the PDF file talking about the subject, and... OMG the returned product is a "Certified Repaired HDD", so it's not new!!

After seeking in Google about it, many people said that the "Certified Repaired HDD" broke down again after 2-3 months of repairing!!!
Is that true? Has anyone tried the Seagate RMA?


Plus, is there any difference between the Malaysian, Thai and Chinese manufactured HDD from the same company, quality, age, reality, etc
e.g. Made in China Seagate & Made in Malaysia Seagate

 

[SomeJoe7777]

The certified repaired HD is not really a concern. It was assembled in a clean room and fully tested just like the retail drives, and still carries the balance of your warranty on the original drive. Thus, it too can be RMA'd if necessary.

I have not found any difference in the Seagate drives based on the manufacturing location.

 

[Abderrahman]

still carries the balance of your warranty on the original drive. Thus, it too can be RMA'd if necessary.

You say so, but the data on the array matters, you don't send an HDD to the RMA, then send it again after a while!!
Of course I'm not so rich to send the HDD on UPS with tracking, paying about 60$, every three months! That's the price of a 160GB HDD!

 

[mikeynavy1976]

I just went through the same thing as you. I had an Antec Power Supply fail and wipe out my motherboard and many peripherals (DVD writer and 2 hard drives). One of the hard drives was a Seagate Barracude 500GB. I sent it in for warranty replacement and they also sent me a refurbished drive. I'm only going to use it as a backup drive in an external enclosure now. Western Digital seems much better. The other drive was a WD Raptor 150GB. With their warranty service they take your credit card number as a deposit and mail you your replacement drive right away. When it arrives you simply stick your drive in the box and send it back. Your card only gets charged if you take over 30 days to return. I also can't see anything on the Raptor indicating it is refurbished. Seagate wanted $20 to ship the drive earlier. I decided to wait 2 weeks for them to receive my fried drive and receive the new one. I haven't heard of their refurbished drives failing and they are a reputable company so I hope there's nothing to worry about.

 

[Abderrahman]

Well Mikey, I am like you, just thinking the WD RMA is much better than Seagate's one
Sadly, Seagate's better performance than WD, but the WD is harder

Has the drive broken down? (The refurbished?)

 

[SomeJoe7777]

You say so, but the data on the array matters, you don't send an HDD to the RMA, then send it again after a while!!

You're running a RAID-0 with desktop drives. If the "data on the array matters" you need to address your problem there before you worry about Seagate's (or anyone else's) RMA practices.

 

[Abderrahman]

Dude, it's not about the array
I meant, if anyone else has a drive, and it breaks down every while, it's not just about the RMA, it's about the data too

 

[SomeJoe7777]

Dude, it's not about the array
I meant, if anyone else has a drive, and it breaks down every while, it's not just about the RMA, it's about the data too

Again, I believe your priorities are backwards.

You are the one that says that the "data on the array matters". OK, great. My question is, if that is how you feel, why are you running RAID-0, on desktop hard drives?

Hard drives fail periodically. That's a fact. It's up to you, the end user, to proactively have planned for this possibility.

Seagate owes you a functional hard drive for the duration of the warranty period. They have met and will continue to meet this responsibility by replacing any failed drive you have.

Why you feel that this arrangement is somehow unsatisfactory, I have yet to figure out. Nor have I figured out why you feel you are entitled to a hard drive that has a 0.0000 % chance of failure.

If your data is important enough that you cannot sustain a drive failure, you need to be running RAID-1, RAID-5, or RAID-6, and you need to be using high-reliability hard drives like the Barracuda ES.2, and you need a good backup system. Simply lamenting that you're owed a perfect, infinitely-lasting hard drive from Seagate is not a substitute for a disaster recovery plan. Unless I am missing your point, your position seems quite incongruous.

In all likelihood, however, this entire discussion is moot -- your replacement hard drive is highly unlikely to fail anytime soon.

 

[Abderrahman]

OK
Lets say I'm not running RAID-0, and I don't care about the data

As a company, and as a trusted manufacturer, why should your customers replace the HDD more than one time?!!

If Seagate says it's certified, why it breaks after three months? Would you be happy because the RMA is still running, no matter about how much time you will stay without HDD?
Forget about the Advance RMA, I can't use it since I'm out of USA

That's the point I'm originally inquiring about, and want you to understand:
If there's a manufacturing problem it's OK, but there mustn't manufacturing problem with a "Certified Repaired HDD"! Especially when this happens often!

 

[SomeJoe7777]

I understand your point, you're right that they should ship you a drive equal in quality to the original drive you had. Even though the replacement drive says "Certified Repaired HDD", I don't think that inherently implies that it's somehow of lower quality.

I have had Seagate replace drives for me before, and yes, they ship the "Certified Repaired HDD". I have not had one of these fail, to my knowledge. I believe them to be comparable in quality to my original drive.

In reality, I would wager they have approximately the same failure rate as any retail Seagate drive.

In theory, your original drive shouldn't have failed, but it did because there is a small failure rate. The replacement will also have a small failure rate, it is unavoidable. You would, however, have to be fairly unlucky to have both the original and the replacement fail on you. If it does happen, I would begin to look to environmental factors in your particular installation - i.e. bad power supply that is taking out the HDD, or cooling issue that is making it run too hot.

 

[Abderrahman]

Ya, I see your point too
Well, I looked into these factors before sending the HDD, but nothing is bad, neither the PSU nor the cooling system

But I understand you, thank you for your experience

 

[itadakimasu]

my experience w\ seagate has been good. The return process is super easy, and their 5 year warranty is nice because you know you can get your drive replaced easily if it dies.... your data probably not so much !

 

[Abderrahman]

I'm not caring to the lost data anymore, ya there's my 3-years collections, but it's OK, the Internet replaces everything
Just I'm sad because I lost about 8 GB of music

 

[faithLB]

at least u got a replacement drive
the warranty doesnt cover my problem!!
which sucks
its a five year warranty but i only had it a year and the usb connection came loose and went inside the drive when i plugged in the cable
nothing i could do anout it - i am pretty good at takin care of my belongings and that was NOT my fault
but Seagate sees it as making the warranty void
anyway - i would not suggest buying their products because since this happened to me I have been finding that 1 year is longer than a lot of people's hard drives lasted!
I wish I knew this sooner!!
so BEWARE!!

 

[PakTiger]

These days every digital or computing product have short life cycle no matter what ever you do. It seems all the manufacturers have reduce their quality.
However you can backup your data on CDRs or DVDs periodically. You can also make an Image of your operating system or entire Hard drive by using Seaget software Sea Tool.
Recently i go through the problem of HDD broke down fourth time in my 7 years of computing experience.
You can also use Ashampoo Burning Studio 6 software which is freeware to Easily create you backup CDRs or DVDs. You can also backup your movie and Music Collection in few simplest steps.
Have a Nice Day.
PakTiger