I bought a 250GB SataII hard-drive a little while back, Seagate was the brand – here is my whinge.
I had never bought Seagate before it was usually Western Digital. I bought the Seagate becuase the store I got it from ( Umart Online ) had no Western Digitals in stock. I paid for the drive and a week later installed it with my shiny new Vista OS. things were happy for about 2 1/2 weeks then the drive failed completely – the PC would not regognise that the HDD was connected, even at the BIOS level. The PC still recognised the other drive fine. I took the Seagate to a local PC store and they had the same problem – so it wasn’t my PC.
So OK, I have had the drive for about 3 or 4 weeks, take it back and was told Seagate requires their drives to be sent back to them – no instant replacement. They do that saying it would be 2 weeks to get a new one back. Two weeks later, the answer is ‘Seagate have it’, same answer three weeks later. I was away for a week and just called a day back – the answer is the Seagate have sent it for repair to Singapore! (from Australia) and I should get it back next week – that means it has been in for repair longer than I have owned it!
I tried contacting Seagate – the phone number goes to a call centre in China (I think) and I can’t make sense of it.
All for a AUD$100 Hard drive!
goldcoaster 
Samsung HDDs are pretty good, i’ve been using them for a while. Before that i swore by Seagate.
Also check out pricepoint.com.au, they’ve got great prices and the guys that run it are very helpful.
Thanks Mick. A quick look at pricepoint has them about $35 more than I paid.
yup. Seagate’s manufacturing plant is over here @ singapore =)
anyway. manufacturers don’t usually repair hard disk. It is just not worth the cost to do a repair since hard disk are so cheap now. normally they will just give u a brand new drive.
Thanks yozora.
I will give then until Monday (today is Friday) if it not ready for me I will either get my money back or get a replacement off the shelf.
I see no reason why it should take this long for such a cheap device. If it was a pair of shoes I would either get a new pair or money back instantly why would computer bits be different.
I’ve had more luck with Seagate than other brands. A couple years ago I returned a faulty IBM to another Brisbane-based computer seller (with Game in the name), and didn’t get my replacement drive for 10 weeks!
Wow – I can’t believe they are going to repair it. I can’t imagine it would be worth their while. Umart sure have cheap prices I buy from them quite a bit. My way of thinking is they should have replaced it and then sent the faulty one back. Thanks for the heads up.
DJ, geez it better not take 10 weeks!. They said next week. I am going in Monday and if it hasn’t returned they have 3 choices – give me my money back, give me an exact replacement, or let me pay the difference and give me the next size up.
I think that is reasonable seeing the drive failed only after a few weeks of use.
samsung always works best for me
I have to say that I bought a 160G ST hd 3 years ago and it failed 8 months later.
Then I sent to repair, after some time, well I forgot how long I waited becoz in the same time I bought a WD one for replacement.
Anyway it was either got replaced or fixed but it failed again after 2 years.
ST if you can’t ensure you harddisk to work within 5 years, why you give a 5-y warrenty. ST harddisk really sucks.