Thanks a lot! You've saved me a lot of time in troubleshooting. I'm a bit gun-shy about external hard drives right now because I (here's a story) watched the ads for weeks, then went to OfficeMax/Depot and purchased two Western Digital 10TB hard drives. I do this every year-and-a-half to two years, and the previous drives go into secure storage. So one backup and one redundant backup. I've never had a problem before.
(It's July 14th or so)
So, I had to go to two different stores because no single store had two of these drives. That's okay. I get home, and neither works. One can be seen with the Western Digital software tools, but in reformatting it, the drive just stalls for hours.
I tried a different computer, different cables, power supplies, safe start, etc. as this isn't my first rodeo with this kind of thing.
I contact Western Digital, they tell me to send them back for replacements.
So, I take the time and effort to box them up very well, drive to the post office and pay forty bucks to send them away.
Two weeks go by, there's no update on the RMA page even though USPS had confirmed delivery.
I get an email telling me they've been tampered with (modified, something like that) and that I will be receiving no replacements, nothing. They didn't even specify exactly what was wrong with them.
So, I've had a phone call with support, and a chat with online support who told me to email the department who told me that they weren't going to replace them. That was bumped up to a Level 2 Technician, and nothing happened with this for about ten more days. I finally emailed them again (polite) explaining this all again, and asked for at least a timetable on an answer, and was told to expect one this past Monday. Of course, there's nothing new on the status according to the support page.
What I did wrong? I didn't buy the warranties. I didn't do this because my dad used to sell them and he knew how often they were actually used, that it isn't worth the money's and the fact that so many past drives always work... so I didn't buy the warranty, where I could have just taken them back to the store.
Other than that, I don't see where I went wrong. I did as their tech department instructed, sent them back for replacements. They just kept them and didn't specify exactly why, just generally that they had been tampered or altered. Kind of hard to do when they don't even show up on my desktop.
What do you guys think?
Randy
Welcome to our forums.
The error you're receiving is likely due to failing hardware. Especially if the drive does not always show up on your desktop when you attach it. I strongly recommend not using it for backing up or anything else. You have to be able to rely on your backups otherwise they're worthless.
Replace the drive with a new one. It's not like external drives are expensive nowadays. You mentioned Norton Utilities. Back when that was popular, drives especially large ones, were expensive. Times have changed.
