Totally agree. All modern HDDs are manufactured using almost same level of technology and probably by the same OEM factory. Arguing which brand is good is like talking about which AV software is the best. The discussion will go nowhere. Bottom line is, all HDDs will fail, at an uncertain time point. So your best bet is to have at least two EXTRA backups (a total of 3 copies) located in 3 physical HDDs, and preferably located in different physical locations. The brand of the HDD does not matter.
not true. im a warranty tech. they get replaced with whatever is available at the time. for a long while hitachi drives were in more limited supply during the wd takeover. this may be why you saw more seagate's. but they do not specifically replace any drive brand with any other. i have been handling lenovo stuff for about 5 years now. they simply pull the next in line from the warehouse.
Is true. I know what Ive RMA'd and I know what Ive gotten back from said RMA. Hitachi drive in > Seagate drive back. Every time. This is still happening to this day. I just RMA'd another Hitchi drive yesterday and got a Seagate back today.
again it just depends what they currently have. it is not at all intentional trust me, i handle warranty for lenovo all the time and have asked this question directly to my contacts. since wd bought them out (from what i was told anyway) the cost went up to oem's and this is a huge reason why many now do not ship them or wd drives. hitachi is still used in many new lenovo systems because they say they have a large qty of them for that purpose remaining. i also see a ton of toshiba drives come back from them for warranty but im sure we send out a LOT more drives on a weekly basis. we do direct warranty and have people bring in systems all the time. im talking anywhere between say 5-12 or more weekly. hitachi like toshiba used to be the 2 cheapest for oem's again from what i was told by my contacts at multiple companies (lenovo, hp, dell etc) not hitachi does not fall into that like they used to. since the wd takeover cost has gone up on them at least again from what i am told directly
zfactor what are your thoughts on recertified drives and have you heard of them being used in a new machine without the buyer being aware of it?
well a lot of the drives they send in return to us are refurbished. not always but we do get them often enough. many times they are great and i see them hold up for years. i personally would not buy one for my own systems though unless the savings is VERY substantial. being the cost usually between new and refurb is not that great if i was buying i would buy new. i have personally only ever seen in it happen once in a large brand machine i.e. dell, hp etc (unless the system is a factory refurb then they can and many times do come with refurb drives). imo i chalk that one off to a human error when it was assembled or the wrong part was pulled. where we do see it happen and sadly more often than you would think is a system someone bought from another computer shop that was built for them or in a "new" laptop bought from some local shops. i have even had new systems come in to us because the person is upset with the shop or wherever they bought it and i have seen refurb motherboards, hard drives, psu's its REALLY upsetting they do this and many times get away with it. just this week we had someone come in and we determined it was the psu. they had the invoice from a shop here so we figured no problem we deal with corsair and i know many guys there so an easy warranty for them. no. the psu installed was a refurb. we also found a refurb asrock mobo in there. the cust went back to them LIVID. the shop blamed us. the cust stood there while we opened the machine so they know that is not the case. so we ended up with a new cust and them calling their cc company and us getting the psu replaced for them anyway besides this you have no idea how many shops we have personally reported for selling systems with cracked win 7 (via modded bios or loader) and office 2007-2013, adobe ps, rosetta stone (a full install with 4 lang's for 50$ i dont think so), autocad, etc i have seen it all. i just reported the guy selling the rosetta stone's last week. i cant believe how often it happens. and i have actually tested this. where i had people bring in a xp or vista system to them and asked for a win 7 install. they were sold an install but with a fixed version and the shop walked away with the 50-100$. it sucks. i also have seen it happen with a few laptops here and there that came from wal mart, best buy, and even a couple from office depot. where someone bought a supposed new laptop and the cust bought the garbage "set up" (so the place was able to open it up) they sell from them and i have even found where it should have had an i7 and a 1tb drive with 8gb ram but when we got into it there was a i3 and a 500gb drive and say 2 or 4gb ram. it said right on the box what should be in it. and i have seen new drives replaced with refurb's here as well we ended up even helping the local police (most are friends of mine) catch one guy at a big box store locally who was doing this and then selling the pulled parts on ebay. lol i got a bit off topic, sorry this really hits a soar spot with me. but hope that answers your question.
I thought that there was a difference between recertified drives and refurbished drives. In your opinion is that not the case? This question came about because of someone I know who bought a new Win 8 laptop and the drive died. It was sent back and then returned to him. It failed again and when it was opened the drive was a recertified one although there was no mention of this in the cover letter that came when the laptop was returned.
They are the same, I think. And they do use these re-furbs quite often, even when your computer is still under warranty.
The main difference is that recertified hardware come with warranty while refurbished do not have a warranty. Usually companies claim that recertified products get quality tested before getting shipped but take these claims with a grain of salt. As for new machines/laptops/etc. the warranty covers the entire machine so even if a refurbished piece is used it is still covered from the warranty. Panagiotis
@stapp you are welcome. @zfactor Since you treat a lot of warranty replacements can you tell us if you noticed a difference in fail rates and DOAs based on the manufacturer country of the drives? It could be only my imagination but most of the drives (same models) that I had to return/replace where manufactured in China's facilities; hdd drives from Malaysia, Thailand and Philippines facilities seem more robust. Panagiotis
sorry what i meant was the set up they try to sell a customer when they buy a new system. like at office depot its 49$ they "tweak" and remove junk and add their own junk programs. then they install an av that many times is only a trial or maybe 6 months and stick you on auto renew. im not saying all places are like this but most of the big box stores are ripping people off when they sell this service.
stapp the major difference between the two normally is re-certified normally means it had been done at the manufacture of the drive and run down the same line as new ones to be brought back to spec physically and cosmetically. refurbished unless it states manufacture refurbished can mean it was repaired by anyone. that is a very important word to note "manufacture". i never buy products unless i know it was the actual company who refurbished the items. i have been burned by this before. fool me once etc... pandlouk i think the best way i can answer this is to say yes. but.... when you look at the amount of drives shipped that could also answer your question. for instance a specific model samsung drive can come from china, malaysia, and korea. i see by far less drives from korea come back and the most from china. but in reality there are many many more drives made and shipped from the china plants. so it could simply be that so many more are shipped from china we see more bad drives. but i can say many times in the past when we tested a specific drive with hddtune or similar (i remember this specifically with the samsung 3.5 1tb drives from a few years ago) the korea made version was indeed a faster drive almost every time in tests. it was a small margin but it was there. i also notice a lot more "quirks" from drives out of china. like head noises or sometimes other noises or vibrations etc. i personally feel the overall qc is far better in korea then it is in china. but china is catching up.
well most likely he was sent a re certified drive to replace his original. so when the first one was sent in the second would have been returned as recertified or refurbished depending on the company. this is very common in many industries that refurbished is used to replace new. happens every time with printers. you could buy a new epson and use your warranty within the first 2 weeks and they will send you a refurbished printer not a new one. this is their policy. i dont think the original was a refurbished drive most likely.
Ah, this whole discussion makes me glad I deal with Velocity Micro. I have had them send me a replacement board under warranty, and what they send is what you'd get if you went in and bought one retail. Never had a hard drive fail. Pete
just had a brand new client to us loose a TON of data running wd drives. this is a lawyers office and they are in a very bad place because of this. i have the failed drives now and will be bringing them to a freinds lab to try to recover what we can. the last IT they were using was an idiot and they did not even have any in place backup methods at all we have them back up and running but now have to attempt to recover data
