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iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

WD warrenty service

Anyone here have experience with the Western Digital RMA service? I'm thinking about sending a broken drive back to WD but I can't wait a year for the replacement. Should I bite the bullet and just buy a new drive in the mean time?

Note: I've got two other drives, but I there full of other data :-(

sputnik

Member

From: Canada

Registered: 2005-06-24

Posts: 98

Re: WD warrenty service

Not sure about Western Digital but i sent back a 80gb Maxtor once, got back a 120. Cant remember how long it took as it was a while back, maybe a month or two.

FUBAR

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2004-12-08

Posts: 1,029

Website

Re: WD warrenty service

Maxtor also offers a replacement drive to help you out while you're waiting for your disk. But it costs money, although Maxtor will refund most of it when you return their disk.

I don't know if WD has such a service.

[edit]
I read in a different thread your drive suffers from the click of death. If you need to access it one last time to get some important data off of it, you might want to drop the disk from a reasonable height (5-10cm, which is 2-4") onto your desk or another flat underground before putting it back into the computer. If it still clicks, gradually increase the height. A friend of mine has had good results with this.
The disk won't be fixed so make sure everything is ready for backup when you start the computer.
[/edit]

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byte

Member

From: Düsseldorf (DE)

Registered: 2006-05-01

Posts: 2,046

Re: WD warrenty service

I had once success to make such a drive spin up. Connected everything, switched the system on, drive began clicking and then gave it a light blow to the sides with a little hammer. Eventually it would spin up.

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iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: WD warrenty service

I got lucky and the place I bought the drive from just replaced it so that I wouldn't have to send off for warrenty service. I managed to almost all important files off the disk and kill my partition table before returning it. It wasn't really being used for critical files.

Thanks guys!

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: WD warrenty service

BTW, was this one of WD's budget 40 giggers?

T-Dawg

Forum Fellow

From: Charlotte, NC

Registered: 2005-01-29

Posts: 2,736

Re: WD warrenty service

They probably will allow you to keep the drive you have until you recieve the replacement after you pay for it in full. Once they recieve the old, they should refund you your money. I've done it with a Hewlet Packard computer I had a while back, I would imagine something similar would exist for WD.

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: WD warrenty service

BTW, was this one of WD's budget 40 giggers?

No, it was a 80GB version, but yes, it was the 2MB cache version. The replacement was the same model.