shamrin
Active Member
- Reaction score
- 48
- Location
- Lexington, Ky
RANT
OK, everyone has their "favourite" brand of hard drive, mine is Western Digital. I was reminded again today why I swore off Seagate.
I used to just buy WDs because I have had very good luck with them not failing and not being DOA, others mileage may vary. But the real difference comes at warranty time when you do have a problem.
Because of the drastic increase in drive prices since last October, I've carried a few Samsung and Hitachi drives when I could get them at good prices. This might save the customer $20 or $25 dollars which often makes a difference to them or even whether they decide to repair or replace. Today I had a six-month old Samsung (now owned by Seagate) laptop drive that I installed come back with the click of death. If this was a WD drive, I would go on their website, enter the details, enter a credit card number as collateral and 2 or 3 days later would have a new drive in hand (and a proper box to return the defective unit).
By contrast, the only choice I have from Seagate, according to their customer service department, is to pack-up the drive in my own-supplied packaging (but that must meet their fairly strict requirements, like static-free containers) ship the drive to them and wait 14 days for the replacement. Of course I have packaging here, I buy lots of drives but what normal consumer would have anti-static bags to use in packaging a drive? And 14-days turnaround? WTF?
I think there was a Google hard drive study a while back that suggested that they didn't see much difference in the reliability of brands of hard drives. This might have been a politically correct finding rather than a truthful one but at any rate, I think the real provable difference between the drive manufacturers is in how they support their product.
/RANT
OK, everyone has their "favourite" brand of hard drive, mine is Western Digital. I was reminded again today why I swore off Seagate.
I used to just buy WDs because I have had very good luck with them not failing and not being DOA, others mileage may vary. But the real difference comes at warranty time when you do have a problem.
Because of the drastic increase in drive prices since last October, I've carried a few Samsung and Hitachi drives when I could get them at good prices. This might save the customer $20 or $25 dollars which often makes a difference to them or even whether they decide to repair or replace. Today I had a six-month old Samsung (now owned by Seagate) laptop drive that I installed come back with the click of death. If this was a WD drive, I would go on their website, enter the details, enter a credit card number as collateral and 2 or 3 days later would have a new drive in hand (and a proper box to return the defective unit).
By contrast, the only choice I have from Seagate, according to their customer service department, is to pack-up the drive in my own-supplied packaging (but that must meet their fairly strict requirements, like static-free containers) ship the drive to them and wait 14 days for the replacement. Of course I have packaging here, I buy lots of drives but what normal consumer would have anti-static bags to use in packaging a drive? And 14-days turnaround? WTF?
I think there was a Google hard drive study a while back that suggested that they didn't see much difference in the reliability of brands of hard drives. This might have been a politically correct finding rather than a truthful one but at any rate, I think the real provable difference between the drive manufacturers is in how they support their product.
/RANT
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