[HP Parts]WD Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT deal

I received a Toshiba drive from HP at the end of last week. I have windows XP installed on it, but the drive has been bugging out on me, reported atapi errors and time-out errors with system hangs in the Event log. Now it's started making an intermittent clicking sound and is getting worse and worse. I want to get in touch with HP for the 90 warranty, but I can't seem to figure out how to contact the right department. I spent half an hour on the phone with some guy from the TotalCare and he couldn't seem to even figure out my order number, and then connected me to the Parts store (which was closed, effectively disconnecting me... the a-hole... I told him that was going to happen, but he didn't listen).

WHO do I call to get my drive replaced? Anyone know?

 

Call the parts store and then go to customer care. I think they will have to replace it for you and not the technical support since you don't have an HP system.

 

someone else i know also got the email i just spoke to him... he only ordered 2 of them.

also i have a feeling if hp knows they screwed up in shipping them out at half price then a lot of people may have a bad time with warranty on these drives. hp could in fact nullify it because of the mistake or simply offer you to send it back for a refund..

 

For those who received the drives...doesn't matter if they were toshiba or WD, just wanted to see how many are working correctly without any bugs...so far I see that only echamp is having trouble.

 

Echamp, you will want to go back to the parts website and get their specific contact information. I talked to a part's sale rep that could help me with an RMA, if necessary. It would be wise to put the drive through some testing before using it. At least a full format, but I have done a couple passes on DBAN, Seagate's DOS disk utility, Everest's read and write testing on loop, and HDD Health/HDTune health monitoring. I have found that my Toshiba's do not display their temperatures in HWMonitor, but it is present in the SMART info.

 

I purchased 14 total (batch of 2 and the two additional orders of 6)

(6) WD's and (8) Toshiba's, we were initially concerned about the Toshibas as the WD model has been our drive of choice since they were released and our Diagnostic programs work well (WD has their own SW as well, Toshiba has nothing)

We ran each through a full format (quite length for a 500GB drive) and then 8 hours with a program called Data Advisor from Ontrack.

To our suprise one of the WD's starting throwing Smart Errors and the developed file structure errors. A quick call to HP and a replacement is on its way

 

HD Tune shows no HEALTH information for my Toshiba drive. HDD Scan shows SMART data, and I am seeing exclamation marks on the G-Sense Error Rate and the UltraDMA CRC error count.

When I first started having problems, SMART data from various programs showed no problems, yet I kept getting ATPI read errors and timeouts where the system would hang and then eventually blue screen. I thought it was undervolting at first and disabled my cpu undervolting software. Then the problem returned and started getting worse, with the hard drive making intermittent clicking sounds as if the drive heads were resetting themselves over and over, this would occur during the time-outs. I unplugged the drive, plugged it back in, changed from IDE to AHCI drivers (in Windows XP) and the problems seem to have gone away. I'm still concerned about the SMART exclamations, and I can't seem to read any SMART info from most programs anymore... is this because I changed drivers from IDE to AHCI? I don't seem to know how to change them back either...
The read tests seem to come out okay, as do surface scans, but I'm not convinced...

I would like to replace the drive, but I'm worried that the time-outs will continue to happen (when I read about the error codes on Google, people seemed convinced that they weren't caused by the hard drive). Maybe I'm doing something completely wrong, does anyone have any feedback?

Also, will HP replace the drive if I suspect it to be at fault? Or will they only replace it if it shows SMART errors?

 

I think you can tell them that its smart information show a decrease in function and possible failure and get a return with little issue.

You might find this page useful: Link

 

Received my RMA replacement for the one failed WD mentioned in my prior post

Was surprised to receive a Hitachi 5K500.

My HP Business rep called to follow-up and I asked him about the pricing "issue"

Apparently, like most vendors, HP tracks units sold on a daily (sometimes hourly basis) their systems report variance spikes that are out of the normal and they caught it. Apparently for quite a few SKU's the retail price was replace with wholesale costs

 

hmm my order said it should ship today and i had no cancellation email but its still not shipped yet.. anyone else have this with their order???

 

Zfactor - I have the same issue. My drives were supposed to ship out yesterday. It doesn't look like these are going to ship though. Oh well...

 

yeah im a bit ticked.. if they were going to do this they should have at least sent those of us waiting cancellations or let us know i have customers waiting on these which really sucks. i didnt think there would be any issue since everyone was getting them that ordered them and now bam they do this after probably shipping thousands of drives.. bunch of crap if you ask me..

 

okay just got off the phone with hp.. ALL EXISTING ORDERS IF NOT ALREADY SHIPPED ARE BEING CANCELLED. PERIOD NO EXCEPTIONS. and they will not honor anything and basically told me that none of these ever shipped out at all. which is a blatent outright lie. she said the system is automatically going through and cancelling all orders for this part number and you may or may not recieve a email. if you dont there is nothing they can do..my first order that shipped they even went as far as putting a return request on it.

she said if anyone recieved these at the lower price and you call in about the drive there is a 99% chance they will note the account and they will not warranty those parts either.

this came from a customer support supervisor and also from the sale order dept supervisor both people told me the same thing and i called twice and simply said i have an order that has not shipped yet and im checking the status. the reg rep automatically transferred me to her supervisor..

i think its a bunch of garbage that they shipped out so many of these and now they are trying to pass it off like they never shipped a single one and all orders are being cancelled no matter what unless they were bought at the 127$ price tag

 

wow, bro. that sucks.

yea, right. they don't have the power to do that. it's part of the purchase agreement. you can't void it at your leisure, just because of a pricing error of your own doing.

I would have laughed at that rep.

 

I wonder if they are legally aloud to renegotiate their terms after the transaction has taken place. Since the drives were bought under the assumption of the specified warranty, than I am surprised they would be allowed to do this. I guess if they agree to pay shipping fees and accept a pre-opened and used drive this might be acceptable. If not, maybe a claim should ensure.

 

i was also. iregardless even if they do get warrantied its only for 90days. and they are cancelling all orders.

 

They have honored their 90 day warranty with me. Figuring out who to call initially was problematic, the people at the HP tech support didn't even seem to know that a Parts Store existed. However, calling the parts store directly, they mailed me a replacement drive that arrived within two days.

Sadly, they sent me the exact model Toshiba that I originally got. I was hoping to be replaced with a WD.

 

got the phone call a few minutes ago they cancelled my order

 

I got the supposed dread call too - I honestly was expecting a cancellation, but instead it was someone from the sales/order verification department. Apparently, my CC was getting declined because of a problem with the security code. They asked me to replace the order on the phone, to which I obliged. Just a few minutes ago got the shipment notice. There is been a temp hold for around 110 bucks on my card (thats for 2 qty of the drive). We'll see if I actually get it or if HP intercepts the shipment. The guy I got on the phone had no clue about the pricing error. He also had a pretty thick accent.

The bad part - I actually had to leave the country, but I guess it was a good thing I had my calls forwarded to my cell. I bet I will be sorry when I get back and discover the exhorbitant roaming charges :s I am also a little concerned because no one's available at the delivery address. Does HP require signature? If not, I still hope the driver just doesn't leave it in a visible spot - so here's to hoping it doesn't get stolen.

 

i got the call but mine is still showing open under order status but i highly doubt ill get them

 

my status is still OPEN, and i also doubt i'll get it