Trying to do an Advance RMA through Western Digital

So, I have 2 Western Digital drives, both Caviar Blacks. A 500GB one, and a 1TB one. The 500GB has been giving me SMART errors for over a year and sitting in a box, and just in the past few months, my 1TB has been grinding slightly, and will lag for 15 - 20 seconds when trying to access data. I was originally just going to get a 2TB drive, and call it a day, but due to the hard drive price increase, I've decided to get off my lazy butt and RMA my drives.

I was going through to set up an Advance RMA, where they send me out a drive first, I give them a CC number, and if I don't send the defective one back, they charge me. Did the 500GB first, went through swimmingly. Set it up, printed out my RMA label, good to go. Try setting one up for my 1TB (says can do 5 per day; 1 per request), and it pulls up the drive, lets me choose why I want to RMA it, but then gives me a message...

We do not have enough information to create your Advance RMA online. Please contact us to create an Advance RMA.

Click to expand...

What? How can you not have enough information? You just let me create an Advance RMA for my 500GB drive, but not my 1TB? What other information do you need, since you just let me create one?

Just frustrating, want to get my hard drive situation sorted out, and being blocked by WD.

Hmm...

My 2TB Black does the same thing when I go to access data for the first time in awhile.

Usually takes 5-10 seconds to access.

I always assumed it meant the drive was asleep from inactivity and needed to spin up.

Is this something I need to worry about?

Convicted1 said:

Hmm...

My 2TB Black does the same thing when I go to access data for the first time in awhile.

Usually takes 5-10 seconds to access.

I always assumed it meant the drive was asleep from inactivity and needed to spin up.

Is this something I need to worry about?

Click to expand...

Well it depends on what a while is. Mine does it multiple times a day, trying to access the same folder. Go into iTunes (or any media player with a library, I just use iTunes), click "play" on an album, 20 seconds before a song starts. I've had the drive a little over a year, and don't remember it always doing that. My 500GB drive doesn't, it's nice and peppy when browsing through folders, just gives me SMART errors.

I have one out of ten Blacks that does this. Makes a bit of noise, then a pause, then finally does what I want it to do. Haven't bothered doing anything with it yet.

Why don't you contact them like the message asks you to? WD isn't blocking you from doing anything, its much more likely a software / db issue. No reason to sensationalize it like that.

http://support.wdc.com/contact/index.asp?lang=en

Plan on it, couldn't last night at the time though. Just frustrating, let me do one, but then not the other?

my black doesnt do that but my samsung does and also gives me write errors. Its funny though cause i use it to store tons of movies and they play fine and arent ever corrupt. Its usually certain folders and if i havent used my pc in few hours. Good luck JS let us know how long/fast they get this handled. I did a seagate rma and it was very smooth 9days after they got the drive.