In the past I used to purchase WD or Hitachi drives exclusively for my custom NAS. This time I’ve decided to give Seagate a chance so I bought a 18TB Seagate IronWolf Pro HDD (ST18000NT001) drive but unfortunatelly it wasn’t working from day 1 (when I connected the drive it started to make a strange sound and seemingly couldn’t start spinning).
I returned it to the manufacturer and they told me “As a result of mechanical damage (impact), the magnetic head unit was misaligned. As a result, the hard drive does not come into readiness. It is advisable to refuse warranty service.” and they returned it to me without even trying to repair it. No money and no working HDD…
There aren’t many local repair shops where I live but those that I tried contacting - when they learn that manufacturer dismissed it because of “… magnetic head unit was misaligned” they “hang up” on me.
If there is someone with a more in-depth knowledge of hard-drives in general here and/or Seagate drives specifically - is there really nothing that can be done and this $400-600 drive is now just an e-waste?
Is there no way to return it to the seller for refund, since it was clearly mishandled by them and never worked? Decent platforms like amazon or ebay should allow that even in the us
no local repair shop is going to repair a hard drive.
these aren’t things you unscrew and fuck about with in a typical workshop - they’re precision equipment with very tight tolerances; a smoke particle is larger than the space between the heads and the platte, some drives are helium filled, etc.
If you can’t RMA to either the OEM or the seller - or make a claim with the freight company unfortunately you’re boned.
If you bought via credit card and have purchase protection included wth your card as a service, that may be an option to check into.
You’re right, even if I get it running somehow I probably still won’t trust it with my data even in RAID1. I complained to the seller, they sent the drive to manufacturer, manufacturer dismissed it and returned it to the seller → seller returned it to me.
I then complained to the shipping company but they said that I should’ve ‘checked the drive’ prior to accepting it although it’s not clear to me how can I check a hard-drive at postal office since they won’t allow me to put it into extrnal drive enclosure to actually test it. The only thing I can verify is whether shipping box is in a good condition.
I guess this post is just me trying to cope with the loss of money/HDD. Thank you for your reply anyway! =(
They (seller) refused to accept it back. They showed me a video of a guy wrapping HDD for shipping and they (from what I see) handled it like it’s a potato rather than a fragile ~$500 product but the seller said it was wrapped/packaged well enough but they will take it into account and try to package things better in the future (which don’t help me). Again, I think this post is just me trying to cope with the loss of money/HDD. Thank you for your reply!
Where did you buy it from/through?
If it was eBay you just start a refund regardless of what the seller thinks. “No returns accepted” does not mean what it sounds like. There’s still 30 days refund protection, they are just declaring they don’t want the defective item back when you refund.
If you paid via credit card, do a chargeback.
Make sure to leave a bad review if you can, explaining their bullshit. If no place is available, name and shame them here so it can show up in a search.
Your big mistake was trying to send it somewhere else to have it looked at, which burns time. If you buy something defective from someone, they are who you make take responsibility first and foremost.
