Jawa Ex Machina
Veteran
We bought two Seagate Blackarmor WS 110 external drives for the MARIANNE shoot. They seem like good, solid drives for this type of thing. 7200rpm, 32mb cache, USB and eSata.
The first couple of days, we used a laptop PC with USB to do backups. After a while, we started using my desktop PC instead, because it's much faster and you can't really control the energy save function on this laptop. Plus, the desktop has an eSata, the laptop doesn't.
So I connected one of the drives to the eSata, and that worked fine for one day. The day after, the drive wouldn't start up. Not with eSata, not with USB, not on the desktop, the laptop, another PC laptop or either of the Macs we had.
I'm thinking something must have happened when it was removed from the eSata connection. The support say it's either the power adapter inside the box, or one of the cables, and if we just turn it in they'll fix it for us.
So we turned the thing in, and they can't fix it. Instead they offer us a new drive. I'm cool with this in theory. No data was lost, and when that drive stopped functioning, we just used one of my old external drives as extra backup, and we didn't lose any material in this whole mess.
But the problem is this: If we take a new drive, they'll send the old one to be destroyed. A shops supplier do make random hardware tests to see if they're actually not functioning for the reason they're being shipped. If the shop or the supplier destroys the drive, I won't get a new one on the warranty.
Now, I'm sure whatever middleman Seagate is using as a supplier is trustworthy. But I've got 250gb of raw material from shooting a commercial feature film on this drive and a really, really tight budget.
Anyone had this dilemma?
What's standard practice in the industry?
Keeping the old one and purchasing a new at full price?
Sending the old one to be destroyed and getting a new for free on the warranty?
Getting a written confirmation from the shop that no material will leak from them?
EDIT: Damn. Wrong forum.
The first couple of days, we used a laptop PC with USB to do backups. After a while, we started using my desktop PC instead, because it's much faster and you can't really control the energy save function on this laptop. Plus, the desktop has an eSata, the laptop doesn't.
So I connected one of the drives to the eSata, and that worked fine for one day. The day after, the drive wouldn't start up. Not with eSata, not with USB, not on the desktop, the laptop, another PC laptop or either of the Macs we had.
I'm thinking something must have happened when it was removed from the eSata connection. The support say it's either the power adapter inside the box, or one of the cables, and if we just turn it in they'll fix it for us.
So we turned the thing in, and they can't fix it. Instead they offer us a new drive. I'm cool with this in theory. No data was lost, and when that drive stopped functioning, we just used one of my old external drives as extra backup, and we didn't lose any material in this whole mess.
But the problem is this: If we take a new drive, they'll send the old one to be destroyed. A shops supplier do make random hardware tests to see if they're actually not functioning for the reason they're being shipped. If the shop or the supplier destroys the drive, I won't get a new one on the warranty.
Now, I'm sure whatever middleman Seagate is using as a supplier is trustworthy. But I've got 250gb of raw material from shooting a commercial feature film on this drive and a really, really tight budget.
Anyone had this dilemma?
What's standard practice in the industry?
Keeping the old one and purchasing a new at full price?
Sending the old one to be destroyed and getting a new for free on the warranty?
Getting a written confirmation from the shop that no material will leak from them?
EDIT: Damn. Wrong forum.
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