Excellent Western Digital RMA experience.

I RMAed one of my 36 gb raptors, and shipped it to WD on January 28th. It was part of a raid 0 array, and this single drive would randomly power cycle (in three completely different machines). I received a brand new 36 gb raptor today, manufactured on Feb 03, 2005. The entire process was pain-free with no BS involved. I just thought I'd share this for all those people thinking about buying some raptors.

Wish I could say the same about Hitachi. They have been nothing but trouble...<calling again today>

I have had nothing but good experinces with WD as well. I had to RMA a 36g Raptor last year. It was quick and painless.

Glad to hear it. I had a bit of trouble with WD, but that was long ago and it turned out fine, just took quite awhile. I've had luck with Maxtor and their advanced RMA program.

Yes , their RMA service is excellent and fast. I did RMA 2 WD drives and everything worked out. I will always buy WD and nothing else!!!!

can you explain the problem more? what does random power cycle mean
i might have same problem but not sure...

How long did it take them to send you a new drive? I think I have a bad WD hard drive and need a replacement ASAP. Don't know if I should RMA it to ZipZoomFly where I bought it at or Western Digital.

i think my wd 80gb is going bad, it sometimes clicks randomly.

I can also jump on this bandwagon.

I had an 80GB SE drive that was vibrating way too much for it to be good. (I had to set a heavy calculus textbook on my case to keep the whole thing from vibrating!) I emailed tech support, and they approved an RMA very quickly. The nice thing was that they did an advance RMA: they temporarily charged my credit card and shipped the new drive that day. As it turns out, it shipped out of Irvine, CA, so I think I had it the next day! I transferred all the data and shipped the old one back, and they credited the CC account very promptly.

I couldn't ask for any better from a manufacturer! -- Paul

WD is very fast to approve RMA's. I just got my second approved for SMART monitoring erros on a drive. Wierd cus the erros popped up at boot, and with 1 day it was getting really hard to get the info from the drive. But anyway last time i did it i got advanced replacement, and had new drive in 2 days. Sent old one back and was running fine. (till it died again this week )

Also website very informative as to if your drive is RMA eligable. And if windows datalifegaurd ( they recomend downloading it) says drive is borked. it directs you to webpage initiating the RMA. very handy IMHO