Western Digital Warranty : replace w/ USED HARD DRIVE!

[J Kester]

I purchased a NEW Western Digital 80GB HD on Jan 02, 2004 which
includes a one year manufacturer's warranty.

Approximately 4 weeks after purchase, this NEW hard drive showed signs
of failure and in 6 weeks my Operating System (WinXp) failed to boot
from this drive and I lost valuable data due to a hard drive failure
of this NEW hard drive.

I requested advance warranty replacement from Western Digital
expecting an exact duplicate replacement drive for the failed hard
drive.

Instead of a fresh, new, warranty replacement hard drive, Western
Digital sends me a used hard drive as a warranty replacement of a
failed hard drive that was purchased NEW, less than 6 weeks earlier.

Western Digital sent me a hard drive labeled "re-certified", which is
common knowledge to mean "USED", as in another "satisfied" customer
has previously returned it to Western Digital as a failed, bad hard
drive.

If I had originally purchased a "re-certified ; aka used" hard drive I
would not be bringing this issue to your attention; but, I bought a
"NEW" Western Digital hard drive that failed prematurely. This is NOT
RIGHT!

I expect Western Digital to provide me with an exact replacement of
the defective product I originally purchased (i.e. NEW, not
re-furbished!).

from WD ...
"In an effort to replace your drive as soon as possible, we replace
your defective drive with a refurbished drive. This is much faster
than repairing your defective drive and returning it back to you. Our
refurbished drives are rigorously tested and verified to function as
well as our new drives."

poster continued ...
I don't care how much testing/verification Western Digital may have
done on the used drive they sent me. It is still "USED" and failed
for another customer. There is no telling what was wrong with the
drive before, what Western Digital may have done to correct the defect
and most importantly, how long it may last before it fails again.

In absence of an acceptable (i.e. "NEW") warranty replacement, I will
accept the "re-furbished" hard drive Western Digital sent me, only if
Western Digital extends the warranty to a full three (3) years at no
cost to customer (they sell on www.WDC.com for $15.00).

To date, Western Digital has not provided an answer to my complaint.

This a great scam on the public by WD: sell them a NEW product at full
retail ; which has a high failure rate, then replace with prior
customers failed drive. At what point do they run out of used drives
to warrantry-replace. I guess we need an insurance actuarial to
predict that.

p.s. : Complaints/Reports have been filed with appropriate authorities
(i.e. BBB, Texas Atty. Gen., U.S. FTC.

I post for your information.

 

[Joe Hayes]

This is standard procedure with all hard drive manufacturers. You can
complain all you want, but it won't make any difference. They'll also tell
you that the majority of hard drives returned by consumers as defective are
actually not.

 

[CSS]

I purchased a NEW Western Digital 80GB HD on Jan 02, 2004 which
includes a one year manufacturer's warranty.

Approximately 4 weeks after purchase, this NEW hard drive showed signs
of failure and in 6 weeks my Operating System (WinXp) failed to boot
from this drive and I lost valuable data due to a hard drive failure
of this NEW hard drive.

I requested advance warranty replacement from Western Digital
expecting an exact duplicate replacement drive for the failed hard
drive.

Instead of a fresh, new, warranty replacement hard drive, Western
Digital sends me a used hard drive as a warranty replacement of a
failed hard drive that was purchased NEW, less than 6 weeks earlier.

Western Digital sent me a hard drive labeled "re-certified", which is
common knowledge to mean "USED", as in another "satisfied" customer
has previously returned it to Western Digital as a failed, bad hard
drive.

If I had originally purchased a "re-certified ; aka used" hard drive I
would not be bringing this issue to your attention; but, I bought a
"NEW" Western Digital hard drive that failed prematurely. This is NOT
RIGHT!

I expect Western Digital to provide me with an exact replacement of
the defective product I originally purchased (i.e. NEW, not
re-furbished!).

from WD ...
"In an effort to replace your drive as soon as possible, we replace
your defective drive with a refurbished drive. This is much faster
than repairing your defective drive and returning it back to you. Our
refurbished drives are rigorously tested and verified to function as
well as our new drives."

poster continued ...
I don't care how much testing/verification Western Digital may have
done on the used drive they sent me. It is still "USED" and failed
for another customer. There is no telling what was wrong with the
drive before, what Western Digital may have done to correct the defect
and most importantly, how long it may last before it fails again.

In absence of an acceptable (i.e. "NEW") warranty replacement, I will
accept the "re-furbished" hard drive Western Digital sent me, only if
Western Digital extends the warranty to a full three (3) years at no
cost to customer (they sell on www.WDC.com for $15.00).

To date, Western Digital has not provided an answer to my complaint.

This a great scam on the public by WD: sell them a NEW product at full
retail ; which has a high failure rate, then replace with prior
customers failed drive. At what point do they run out of used drives
to warrantry-replace. I guess we need an insurance actuarial to
predict that.

p.s. : Complaints/Reports have been filed with appropriate authorities
(i.e. BBB, Texas Atty. Gen., U.S. FTC.

I post for your information.

I'm well aware. I've had two new WD drives fail within a short period of
time with their "3 year warranty."
Both times, they send me a "replacement" with a 1 year warranty. Their 3
year warranty was, essentially, worthless to me.

One of the replacement starting acting up in just less than a year. Rather
than deal with WD again, I threw it out and bought a Samsung. Faster,
quieter, and (hopefully) more reliable (couldn't be less reliable, tho).

 

[Will Dormann]

This is also the policy with Maxtor.
Like it or not, that kind of policy seems to be pretty standard.


-WD

 

[J. Clarke]

I purchased a NEW Western Digital 80GB HD on Jan 02, 2004 which
includes a one year manufacturer's warranty.

Approximately 4 weeks after purchase, this NEW hard drive showed signs
of failure and in 6 weeks my Operating System (WinXp) failed to boot
from this drive and I lost valuable data due to a hard drive failure
of this NEW hard drive.

I requested advance warranty replacement from Western Digital
expecting an exact duplicate replacement drive for the failed hard
drive.

Instead of a fresh, new, warranty replacement hard drive, Western
Digital sends me a used hard drive as a warranty replacement of a
failed hard drive that was purchased NEW, less than 6 weeks earlier.

Western Digital sent me a hard drive labeled "re-certified", which is
common knowledge to mean "USED", as in another "satisfied" customer
has previously returned it to Western Digital as a failed, bad hard
drive.

If I had originally purchased a "re-certified ; aka used" hard drive I
would not be bringing this issue to your attention; but, I bought a
"NEW" Western Digital hard drive that failed prematurely. This is NOT
RIGHT!

I expect Western Digital to provide me with an exact replacement of
the defective product I originally purchased (i.e. NEW, not
re-furbished!).

from WD ...
"In an effort to replace your drive as soon as possible, we replace
your defective drive with a refurbished drive. This is much faster
than repairing your defective drive and returning it back to you. Our
refurbished drives are rigorously tested and verified to function as
well as our new drives."

poster continued ...
I don't care how much testing/verification Western Digital may have
done on the used drive they sent me. It is still "USED" and failed
for another customer. There is no telling what was wrong with the
drive before, what Western Digital may have done to correct the defect
and most importantly, how long it may last before it fails again.

In absence of an acceptable (i.e. "NEW") warranty replacement, I will
accept the "re-furbished" hard drive Western Digital sent me, only if
Western Digital extends the warranty to a full three (3) years at no
cost to customer (they sell on www.WDC.com for $15.00).

To date, Western Digital has not provided an answer to my complaint.

This a great scam on the public by WD: sell them a NEW product at full
retail ; which has a high failure rate, then replace with prior
customers failed drive. At what point do they run out of used drives
to warrantry-replace. I guess we need an insurance actuarial to
predict that.

p.s. : Complaints/Reports have been filed with appropriate authorities
(i.e. BBB, Texas Atty. Gen., U.S. FTC.

Complain all you want to--the drive manufacturers don't see how fixing your
drive and sending it back to you is different from fixing somebody else's
drive and sending it to you, then fixing your drive and sending it to
someone else, and I suspect that the BBB, the Texas Atty. Gen., and the FTC
will suffer from the same difficulty.

 

[J. Clarke]

I'm well aware. I've had two new WD drives fail within a short period of
time with their "3 year warranty."
Both times, they send me a "replacement" with a 1 year warranty. Their
3
year warranty was, essentially, worthless to me.

Uh, what leads you to believe that they would not have honored the original
3 year warranty if one of your replacements failed in that time?

One of the replacement starting acting up in just less than a year.
Rather
than deal with WD again, I threw it out and bought a Samsung. Faster,
quieter, and (hopefully) more reliable (couldn't be less reliable, tho).

Don't bet on its being more reliable.

And you have checked your power, cooling, etc of course.

 

[default]

I purchased a NEW Western Digital 80GB HD on Jan 02, 2004 which
includes a one year manufacturer's warranty.

Approximately 4 weeks after purchase, this NEW hard drive showed signs
of failure and in 6 weeks my Operating System (WinXp) failed to boot
from this drive and I lost valuable data due to a hard drive failure
of this NEW hard drive.

I requested advance warranty replacement from Western Digital
expecting an exact duplicate replacement drive for the failed hard
drive.

Instead of a fresh, new, warranty replacement hard drive, Western
Digital sends me a used hard drive as a warranty replacement of a
failed hard drive that was purchased NEW, less than 6 weeks earlier.

Western Digital sent me a hard drive labeled "re-certified", which is
common knowledge to mean "USED", as in another "satisfied" customer
has previously returned it to Western Digital as a failed, bad hard
drive.

If I had originally purchased a "re-certified ; aka used" hard drive I
would not be bringing this issue to your attention; but, I bought a
"NEW" Western Digital hard drive that failed prematurely. This is NOT
RIGHT!

I expect Western Digital to provide me with an exact replacement of
the defective product I originally purchased (i.e. NEW, not
re-furbished!).

from WD ...
"In an effort to replace your drive as soon as possible, we replace
your defective drive with a refurbished drive. This is much faster
than repairing your defective drive and returning it back to you. Our
refurbished drives are rigorously tested and verified to function as
well as our new drives."

poster continued ...
I don't care how much testing/verification Western Digital may have
done on the used drive they sent me. It is still "USED" and failed
for another customer. There is no telling what was wrong with the
drive before, what Western Digital may have done to correct the defect
and most importantly, how long it may last before it fails again.

In absence of an acceptable (i.e. "NEW") warranty replacement, I will
accept the "re-furbished" hard drive Western Digital sent me, only if
Western Digital extends the warranty to a full three (3) years at no
cost to customer (they sell on www.WDC.com for $15.00).

To date, Western Digital has not provided an answer to my complaint.

This a great scam on the public by WD: sell them a NEW product at full
retail ; which has a high failure rate, then replace with prior
customers failed drive. At what point do they run out of used drives
to warrantry-replace. I guess we need an insurance actuarial to
predict that.

p.s. : Complaints/Reports have been filed with appropriate authorities
(i.e. BBB, Texas Atty. Gen., U.S. FTC.

I post for your information.

I do believe that most of the manufacturers do get an inordinate
number of returned good drives - people not understanding what they
are doing or running into compatibility issues. If manufacturers did
honor all returned drives with new ones - they would expect consumers
to pay the additional cost, so when you bought a drive you'd also be
paying for a spare should you or someone else need it . . .

Would you gladly pay 50-100% more for a drive with the warranty the
way you want it?

Likewise, I see your point. The drive failed in weeks, a new drive
seems more appropriate. Save the returned good drives for the one
year old returns . . .

I bought 2 - 20 GB drives from IBM one failed in four weeks and they
replaced it with a new one.

Don't buy another WD drive. Eventually the manufacturers will start
catching on when the bottom line drops.

I do take issue with the one year warranty - no one would be happy
with a drive that only lasts a year, too much time and effort and loss
associated with bad drives.

My latest drive was a Samsung with a three year warranty.

 

[Q]

I'm well aware. I've had two new WD drives fail within a short
period of time with their "3 year warranty."
Both times, they send me a "replacement" with a 1 year warranty.
Their 3 year warranty was, essentially, worthless to me.

If that's true, then I think it's totally unscrupulous for WD to adverstise
a 3 year warranty which essentially becomes diluted to being a 1 year if you
do take them up on warranty work. That's plain wrong...

 

[Rod Speed]

I do believe that most of the manufacturers do get an inordinate
number of returned good drives - people not understanding what they
are doing or running into compatibility issues. If manufacturers did
honor all returned drives with new ones - they would expect consumers
to pay the additional cost, so when you bought a drive you'd also be
paying for a spare should you or someone else need it . . .

Would you gladly pay 50-100% more for a drive with the warranty the
way you want it?

Likewise, I see your point. The drive failed in weeks, a new drive
seems more appropriate. Save the returned good drives for the one
year old returns . . .

I bought 2 - 20 GB drives from IBM one failed in four weeks and they
replaced it with a new one.

Don't buy another WD drive. Eventually the manufacturers
will start catching on when the bottom line drops.

Wanna bet ? The bottom line is affected by a lot
more than that so that will get lost in the noise.

I do take issue with the one year warranty - no one
would be happy with a drive that only lasts a year, too
much time and effort and loss associated with bad drives.

The point is that you end up paying for more than 1 year
of warranty even if the drive never fails before its discarded
as being to slow or small to be worth bothering with anymore.

You still have the hassle involved in replacing the drive under
warranty even if its under warranty and fails at say 2 years.

My latest drive was a Samsung with a three year warranty.

Sure, worth having if you dont pay any more for that.

 

[Tom Scales]

It's not true. The "new" drive gets the remainder of the original warranty.

Tom

 

[default]

snip

Wanna bet ? The bottom line is affected by a lot
more than that so that will get lost in the noise.

Admittedly I don't know all the things influencing a corporate
decision, but somewhere in there they have to do something that makes
money - and if their business is making and selling drives - it does
seem likely that they'd pay attention to what works. You figure
Western Digital is running an Enron operation?

You can fool some of the people some of the time; you can't fool all
of the people all of the time . . . a few hundred bad posts on
newsgroups probably offsets some of the marketing cost and effort.

The point is that you end up paying for more than 1 year
of warranty even if the drive never fails before its discarded
as being to slow or small to be worth bothering with anymore.

Forgive me, I don't think I'm following you with that statement. One
pays for more than one year of warranty, for a one year warranty?
Presumably one would still pay more for a three year warranty than one
year.

You still have the hassle involved in replacing the drive under
warranty even if its under warranty and fails at say 2 years.

The biggest problem is the hassle and data loss in my opinion. The
warranty is secondary compared to the hassle. I keep a file of
drivers and indispensable applications updated and burn that to CD
periodically. But it still takes me four hours or so to
partition/format/and reload.

Sure, worth having if you dont pay any more for that.

I don't know if it did cost more for the warranty. It was $10 more
than the other drives I was considering, but it uses less power (runs
much cooler) It is very quiet, can't hear it over the fans. Other
than the $10, I haven't seen a downside yet.

 

[Rod Speed]

Admittedly I don't know all the things influencing
a corporate decision, but somewhere in there
they have to do something that makes money

Yes, but the point is that they wont be able to see what
effect that particular policy has on the bottom line. It will
get swamped by all the other stuff that affects the profit.

- and if their business is making and selling drives - it
does seem likely that they'd pay attention to what works.

Yes, but my point is that they wont be able to see what
effect that particular policy choice has on the bottom line.

You figure Western Digital is running an Enron operation?

Nope, just that the bottom line is affected much more by
other stuff, particularly the price of the product and how
their product appeals to the mass market retaillers etc.

You can fool some of the people some of the time;
you can't fool all of the people all of the time . . .

Its not a question of 'fooling' anyone. With the very low failure
rates seen with hard drives, very few purchasers will have
ever had a hard drive fail and even less of those that have
will even be aware of that particular policy of WDs, and even
less will change their purchase decision based on that.

Even the utter debarcle seen with IBM's GXPs and their
atrocious approach to even admitting there was a problem
with those drives, had very little effect on their sales at all.
Even after that produced a full class action suit.

a few hundred bad posts on newsgroups

You wont even see tens of bad posts.

And only a tiny subset of PC users
ever read newsgroups and a microscopic
percentage of those read this particular group.

probably offsets some of the marketing cost and effort.

Nope, fraid not.

Even the full class action seen over IBM GXPs had very
little if any effect on the number of those drives purchased.

Forgive me, I don't think I'm following you with that statement. One
pays for more than one year of warranty, for a one year warranty?

You pay more for a drive with a 3 year warranty than
you do for the same drive with a 1 year warranty.

Because with a 3 year warranty, you are effectively
paying for the cost of the drives returned in years 2
and 3 even if not a single drive ever fails in years 2
and 3, and all the returns are just user stupidity.

Presumably one would still pay more
for a three year warranty than one year.

Corse you do.

The biggest problem is the hassle and data loss in my opinion.

Yes, tho there is no data loss if you're properly backed up.

The warranty is secondary compared to the hassle.
Yes.

I keep a file of drivers and indispensable applications
updated and burn that to CD periodically. But it still
takes me four hours or so to partition/format/and reload.

It doesnt take me that long bit its still a hell of a lot longer
than with the failure of say a keyboard or a monitor etc.

I don't know if it did cost more for the warranty.

Corse it does.

It was $10 more than the other drives I was
considering, but it uses less power (runs much cooler)

It is very quiet, can't hear it over the fans.

Yeah, lovely drives. I had to check carefully
that it was actually spinning up its so quiet.

And when I later upgraded the rest of the system,
I discovered the other day after a mains failure that
It isnt even possible to hear if the entire system is even
running. And thats with no covers on the case at all.

Other than the $10, I haven't seen a downside yet.

Me neither.

The main downside I see with Samsung drives is that
quite a few of the major sellers of computer hardware
dont sell them so they can be more hassle to find.

Not much more tho since I always buy online and can
always find someone flogging the drive I want to buy.

That likely does mean that I do pay a small
excess because its unlikely to be the cheapest
drive available at that particular size tho.

No big deal, I like the lack of hassles when
using them and the fact that they are so quiet.

The 3 year warranty is a useful bonus tho I have
only ever had one drive failure with any manufacturer.

 

[CSS]

It's not true. The "new" drive gets the remainder of the original warranty.

If you think that's the case, try entering the S/N of the replacement drive
on WD's website to get an RMA for a replacement. You'll see that the
replacement drive's warranty is one year from the date it was sent to you.
If you're out of that one-year period, you get no RMA.

My experience with WD drives has been so bad over the past three years that
they couldn't pay me to use their products. The hassle with data loss and
reinstalling apps is not worth the slightly lower price over a better brand.
Besides, WD drives are noisy, to boot. And yes, i know what I'm doing as
far as install, cooling, etc. I've got about 20 years PC experience over
dozens of machines at home and work, including acting as my department's PC
Support for two years. I never had hard disk problems like I've had with WD
in the recent past.

That said, my WD experiences have made me religous about backing up. To the
point I have a separate drive on my system dedicated solely to backups,
Using Acronis TrueImage 7, I do full backups once a week and incrementals
every night. My backup drive is a WD 200 gig (a replacement for the
brand-new 200 gig that developed a high-pitched whine after a week of
operation). I replaced it 11-03 and a warranty check shows the warranty
expires 11-04.

 

[Richard Saunders]

I had Hitachi 7K250 drive fail within a week, and they replaced it
with a brand new drive, so it really must have died. I don't see why
getting a used drive as a replacement is a big problem, if it has
identical performance, and will have the same useful life-span.
Docking the warranty, if it is true, would be worthy of complaint.

I think people need to understand that buying hard drives is a
crapshoot, because they are mechanical devices. I'm guessing there is
1-5% failure rate in the first month. The error rate would have to be
much higher to be objectionable, like with the IBM GXP Desktars,

http://www.sheller.com/PDF/2004.01.09_Maximum_P1.pdf

I can't imagine that one manufacturer would differ that much from
another, enough to make a difference to an end user who buys a drive
once every few years. Think of it this way, all other things being
equal, which do you prefer, a drive from manufacturer A whose drives
fail 1 out of 100 times, or a drive from manufacturer B whose drives
fail 2 out of 100 times. Now, imagine you don't know the failure
rates of A and B. Does the difference really matter?

The only thing you should do as standard practice is to keep a full
backup of your data during the first few months of using your new
drive. You should have a full backup anyway.

Rich

OT: P.S. To all the posters, when you reply in a newsgroup, can you
put your reply at the top of the email, and the quoted text at the
bottom? Better yet, remove the parts of the quoted message that are
not relevant. This makes it so much easier to read the messages.

 

[default]

On Wed, 17 Mar 2004 06:49:38 GMT, Richard Saunders

snips

OT: P.S. To all the posters, when you reply in a newsgroup, can you
put your reply at the top of the email, and the quoted text at the
bottom? Better yet, remove the parts of the quoted message that are
not relevant. This makes it so much easier to read the messages.

I'm with you there Richard. Personally I've just been trying to
conform to the norm when posting.

Some groups really fuss you out if you top post - reasons given are:
"easier to follow the thread," or "it is like your words are more
important than anyone else."

Top posting is easier to read, and I can remember the thread, and who
is so insecure that they worry about where someone posts on use net -
but if storage is like the mp3 groups you're bound to draw flames.

Incidentally after being soundly flamed for that opinion already, I
read several usenet FAQ's and sure enough, most advocate bottom
posting, (for the easier to follow the thread reason). Then on the
engineering and scientific groups - they seem totally unconcerned
where one posts and most/many use the top.

Let the flames begin . . .

 

[Phred]

On Wed, 17 Mar 2004 06:49:38 GMT, Richard Saunders

snips

I'm with you there Richard. Personally I've just been trying to
conform to the norm when posting.
Some groups really fuss you out if you top post - reasons given are:
"easier to follow the thread," or "it is like your words are more
important than anyone else."

Top posting is easier to read, and I can remember the thread, and who
is so insecure that they worry about where someone posts on use net -
but if storage is like the mp3 groups you're bound to draw flames.

To be tediously picky, he did say "reply" and "of the email", so maybe
it wasn't meant as an opinion on top/bottom posting of *followups*?

But, that said, I'm becoming a fan of top posting too, especially as I
usually check out newsgroups once/day and it's a lot quicker to skim
through the discussion if it's all at the top. But there's the
proviso here that the discussion is just one issue. If it's a more
"analytical" response to an argument, or an answer to a technical
problem or something similar, then the "embedded" approach is far more
useful in order to see things in proper context.

Incidentally after being soundly flamed for that opinion already, I
read several usenet FAQ's and sure enough, most advocate bottom
posting, (for the easier to follow the thread reason). Then on the
engineering and scientific groups - they seem totally unconcerned
where one posts and most/many use the top.

Let the flames begin . . .

Phhttt... ;-)


Cheers, Phred.

 

[Rod Speed]

I had Hitachi 7K250 drive fail within a week, and they replaced it
with a brand new drive, so it really must have died. I don't see why
getting a used drive as a replacement is a big problem, if it has
identical performance, and will have the same useful life-span.

That last is the big question mark. Presumably at
least some of the used drives have an intermittent
fault that wasnt visible once it showed up back at the
factory and got shipped out again to another sucker.

When the failure of a hard drive is such a damned nuisance
even if you're fully backed up, thats not very satisfactory at all.

I think they should ship a brand new drive as the replacement
at least when the original drive fails within a month or few of
first use, just effectively to make the customer feel better
about the damned nuisance drive failure always is.

Docking the warranty, if it is true, would be worthy of complaint.

In fact that flouts the law in most first world countrys.

I think people need to understand that buying hard drives
is a crapshoot, because they are mechanical devices.

They do mostly understand that. Doesnt
make them feel any better when one dies tho.

I'm guessing there is 1-5% failure rate in the first month.

Yes, you're guessing.

The error rate would have to be much higher to
be objectionable, like with the IBM GXP Desktars,
http://www.sheller.com/PDF/2004.01.09_Maximum_P1.pdf

Crap, even that 1-5% failure rate is a damned nuisance
that will often see many avoid that manufacturer in future.

I can't imagine that one manufacturer
would differ that much from another,

They do actually. There are always duds around. Which particular
manufacturer is currently getting fanged in the arse does vary tho.

The only sensible way to handle that inevitability is to always
cross ship the replacement and to ship the customer a brand
new drive, and wear that fact that even with a 5% return rate,
that that wont have much effect on the bottom line and is the
best way to attempt to make the customer feel better when
you've just dudded them with a dud drive in the first place.

enough to make a difference to an end
user who buys a drive once every few years.

Sure, but that just means that you can afford to do whatever
it takes to make that customer feel better when it happens.

Think of it this way, all other things being equal,
which do you prefer, a drive from manufacturer
A whose drives fail 1 out of 100 times, or a drive from
manufacturer B whose drives fail 2 out of 100 times.

Obviously the first with half the failure rate if everything else is equal.

Now, imagine you don't know the failure rates
of A and B. Does the difference really matter?

Anyone with any sense would avoid the model thats currently
failing at a high rate like the IBM GXPs or the Fujitsu MPGs.

In fact anyone who isnt a desperate pov would just replace
one of those drive BEFORE it fails, because the alternative,
backups at a high rate with a known dud model makes no sense.

The only thing you should do as standard practice is to keep
a full backup of your data during the first few months of using
your new drive. You should have a full backup anyway.

Yes, but the real world is that most dont do that.

OT: P.S. To all the posters, when you reply in a newsgroup, can
you put your reply at the top of the email, and the quoted text at the
bottom? Better yet, remove the parts of the quoted message that
are not relevant. This makes it so much easier to read the messages.

You're never gunna have any effect on most
who will continue to post how they prefer to post.

You get to like that or lump it.

 

[Rod Speed]

Do you always do things the way goons demand they be done ?

 

[default]

No generally I do whatever helps the flow of information - It is no
big deal to me.

Do you always do things the way goons demand they be done ?

No generally I do whatever helps the flow of information - It is no
big deal to me.

I do seem to have a knack for irritating you no matter where I post.

 

[Richard Saunders]

I realize everyone is using different newsreaders. I'm using Mozilla,
which is a mouse-driven, threaded, and paneled reader. I just don't
like scrolling through three miles of quoted previous replies to read
a one-line response to the last sentence of the most recent reply.
That is borderline trolling to me--the sender bears no weight of the
gaffe. Otherwise, whether it's top, middle, or bottom doesn't really
matter.