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Will Seagate warranty my drive?

her209

No Lifer
I have a 500GB 7200.10 drive that I bought from Fry's Electronics that's died on me. At first, the drive would still store data, but if left powered on, it would make a loud clicking sound for a few seconds then stop. I copied all the data off of the drive that I could with some files that were unreadable because they resided on the "bad" parts of the disk.

I then downloaded the SeaTools for Windows from the Seagate website and ran the S.M.A.R.T., Generic Short Test, Generic Long Test, which gave me Pass, Fail, Fail results respectively. I then booted into SeaTools for DOS and performed a low-level format on the whole drive. It got to the "bad" part of the disk and started clicking. I let it click for a good 15-30 minutes to see if it would work itself past it. It didn't. So I restarted the computer and booted back into SeaTools for DOS, but this time, it does not see the drive. Even BIOS does not see the drive anymore.

I checked the warranty status of the drive on the Seagate website, but it gives me an Expiration Unknown for Warranty Status. I don't have the receipt anymore that shows when I purchased it, but on the retail box itself, it states that the drive has 5 year limited warranty. I am 100% certain that I bought it within the last 5 years.

Do you guys think Seagate will warranty it or am I S.O.L.?
 
You'll know for sure if you contact Seagate....

Assuming it's within 5 years since the drive was manufactured, I would expect Seagate to replace it. I have never RMA'ed a HDD before so I wouldn't know for sure.
 
Call seagate their warranty is great no receipt required just model and serial number no questions asked just call them and they will give you and rma and you mail it to them they will mail you a new one.
 
I got an error like that with a drive recently. I did the live chat thing, they told me to type in my SN and a different part number and it came up. Not sure why it wouldn't respond with the part # on the drive, but they RMA'd it so who cares. 🙂
(It was a 500GB drive too)
They will ask for a code that Seatools produces when RMAing. It will be in the .txt file Seatools produces.
 
I've RMA'd a lot of drives from just about everyone. They all fail sooner or later. I do my best to back up my data and make images of all my boot drives (just in case). Seagate is my drive of choice. For the price and their 5 year warranty it's a no brainer for me. Usually serial and model number are enough for me. If I know the drive is bad I don't even run all their tests. I just say that I've run other tests. Once a drive starts failing I don't care if Seagate's "tools" could make the drive usuable. If possible I back up my data and RMA it. If your drive's warranty status doesn't come up just call Seagate.
 
if you are a consumer - they require more steps - if you are a business as in a reseller they just send you a ship notice no questions ever. probably because consumers send back too many perfectly fine drives.
 
The first 500 GB hard drive, the Hitachi GST, was shipped in 2005. So it seems doubtful your Seagate is over five years old. Hopefully a call to Seagate will clarify its warranty status.
 
Update: I called Seagate Support last week and they gave me a different part number to use in-place of the one that is printed on the drive.
 
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