Return Merchandise Authorization of Hard Drives

If you need advice about hard drives, I can tell you a thing or two about which ones to stay away from. In the last 3 years I have sent over fifty back to various manufacturers. I am only going back three years. Why three you ask? Well, most hard drives are under warranty for three years, (not the one-year or less that the store will cover). Most drive manufactures offer a RMA service, however, not all of them are on the same level.

As far as what brands I will no longer deal with: Samsung and Fujitsu. Sure they have the best cost to storage ratios, but for me they also had the highest failure rate. Saving $1 per gig is not worth it when the damn thing quits on you. I have talked to techs in a few other system-building shops and they seem to have the same luck using these companies.

Samsung, as to their RMA department, they are courteous, but slow. If you return a drive to Samsung you are looking at a month minimum until a replacement is in your possession. (Samsung 47 drives / 18 returned)

Fujitsu is a lot better than Samsung, however they still rack up a solid second for failure. The RMA department at Fujitsu is a little hard to deal with. I guess they don’t like it when their products fail. They are also slow to ship the drive, with still over a month to get a replacement. (Fujitsu 32 drives / 6 returned)

Western Digital once had a high failure drive, but in the last two years they seem to have put all the pieces together. For WD I have two sets of stats. The first set is for the last two years. (WD 24 drives purchased / 2 returned…well, technically one returned, the other one was DOA and that was most likely a casualty of UPS). Three years ago was a bad time for WD (6 drives / 4 returned) I separated this due to the fact that all of the failures were one model that is no longer in production. As to the RMA department at WD, they do their job not fast, not slow, about 3 weeks for replacement.

Maxtor, (often referred to as Craptor), was in the old days great. Then they sucked for a few years, but now it looks like they are back to being great. It is a bit of a pain to RMA a drive with them. They make it very difficult actually. The last RMA I had with them, I had to speak to a real person to get a RMA number. This involved a telephone, not something I have time for. However, I need to give them credit as being the fastest for RMA. On my last RMA, get this, 5 days. I sent the drive to them on a Monday and on Friday FedEx had the replacement at my door. I couldn’t believe it. (Max 20 drives / 1 returned)

IBM has been my drive of choice for the last 3 years. They consistently have the lowest RMA rate. The also make the RMA process the easiest. I know some say the Deskstar 75GXP is crap. I feel your pain, however, I was fortunate to not have any issues with that model. One added bonus when dealing with Big Blue, they often send a larger drive in return. For example, the drives I sent in were one 6gig and one 20gig. On the 6gig I was returned a 10gig. On the 20gig I received a 30gig in return. (IBM 68drives / 2 returned)

- swift