IBM harddrives

[handrail]

my IBM hdd crashed last week. i did all their recommended Disk Fitness Tests and they all came out saying that the disk was faulty. it was making all the usual failure clicks to begin with. figuring i would have to RMA the thing anyway, i erased it only to find that it worked just fine after the deletion. there was no way to save the data anyway, so i'm not too pissed about having to erase it all. most of it was backed-up.

what i am pissed about (and why i am starting this thread) is that IBM, now merged with Hitachi, will not advance RMA hard drives. meaning, if you have one of their drives crash while still under warranty, they will not send you a new one until you send in the defective one. this may not seem like a big deal, but one would need to wait 14 working days (as quoted from their customer service) until you receive your new one. Maxtor, on the other hand, WILL advance RMA a hdd if you call them and tell them that none of their diagnostic tools saved the disk. Maxtor sent out a replacement drive in a matter of days.

i did fire off a letter to their customer service and to Hitachi's credit they called me back and offered to speed up the process as much as possible and said that if it is a business hdd, they would do an advance RMA. my complaint was that IBM is supposed to be so customer oriented yet they don't offer this fairly common service.

just think twice before you buy your next hdd is all i am trying to say with this short novella i have composed.

thanks for reading.

[Kurtis]

IBM sucks anyway. Maxtor, Seagate, WD, those are the people to buy from.

[Brian]

Heh, kinda funny. IBM is all about making things simple for ppl. Ironic?

That sucks though man, I know how you feel. I've been down that road a few times that left me with no computer to use for weeks. One time a cap blew on my mobo, but thanks to TCWO.com It took 2 weeks to send mine and get a new one back.

Another time, it was a HD i got from my dad's work (back in the day of 2 gig HDs) and it crapped out with a bunch of my programming stuff on there. That wasn't fun at all. Losing all your hard work.

[Brian]

Yeah, I have used HDs from all of those companies. Currently Seagate and Maxtor. Never had a problem with any.

[knucks]

i never had problems with WD. ever. although some people say they suck.

[handrail]

i have a maxtor drive that is 2 years old and has survived being shipped to my little brother while he was in school, then out to seattle after he graduated, then back to me in virginia just recently. it has run great.

that IBM POS is only a year and a half old. i'm just going to get a new maxtor and use the IBM for redundancy back-up.

the letter i sent them was great. here it is in it's entirety:



I am writing to express my disappointment in your failure to offer advanced RMA service on hard drive products. My IBM Deskstar drive recently crashed and is currently unreadable. Now I not only have to
wait for the defective drive to reach your offices, I must also wait for your
offices to process the return and send out the replacement. Had I known that IBMs "unmatched customer service" meant, in reality, that the customers service themselves, I would have bought another Maxtor drive. My RMA will be sent shortly, but I doubt that I will again risk placing any important data on the replacement hard drive. Perhaps
it will make a nice paperweight or balance that short table leg in my
kitchen.


not too mean, but with just enough vinegar to get them to call me. :D

[Kurtis]

loolol nice email man. :P that will get attention :P

[brbubba]

I thought Deskstars were the drives that were dying left and right before IBM sold off their Hard Drive business. I have one 40 GB one that has been working fine for over 2 years. I use it for backup purposes only, thank god.

Yes, Maxtor is king. I have used their drives for 5 years + and have never had a single problem. According to my friend, Seagate is good too, he used to work there, but I can't comment.

[handrail]

just bought a new 80gb maxtor to replace the craptastic IBM drive. the now functioning IBM will be used only for backup i think.

i e-mailed the nice lady who called me the day i bitched them out informing her that the only way to get the drive to work was to delete all the info. i have yet to get a response. i doubt that i will.

pieces of crap.