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Faulty Hdd (currys)

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NotRichAtAll
NotRichAtAll Posts: 889 Forumite
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in Consumer rights
A few weeks ago i bought a seagate bup slim external drive for my son to use to store his uni work on cost £50
yesterday the drive started to behave abnormally and finally stopped altogether. I am pc savvy and have built several custom systems in the past so i know my way round pc's and their hardware. Going by what i have read it sounds like the MBR is corrupt hance the drive is no longer recognisable or accessible.

So tomorrow i am hoping to go into currys and get a replacement item, i have the recipt however i have no packaging my son binned it, can i still get a replacement without packaging?
failing that i will go to seagate under warranty returns.

thanks any advice appreciated

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  • wealdroam
    wealdroam Posts: 19,181 Forumite
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    edited 13 March 2015 at 8:58PM
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    NotRichAtAll wrote: »
    A few weeks ago i bought a seagate bup slim external drive for my son to use to store his uni work on cost £50
    yesterday the drive started to behave abnormally and finally stopped altogether. I am pc savvy and have built several custom systems in the past so i know my way round pc's and their hardware. Going by what i have read it sounds like the MBR is corrupt hance the drive is no longer recognisable or accessible.

    So tomorrow i am hoping to go into currys and get a replacement item, i have the recipt however i have no packaging my son binned it, can i still get a replacement without packaging?
    failing that i will go to seagate under warranty returns.

    thanks any advice appreciated
    The missing packaging will not be a problem.

    Whether you will get a replacement tomorrow or not is down to Currys.
    They can if they wish check to see that the fault is inherent or not, and that may well lead to a delay... at best.
  • NotRichAtAll
    NotRichAtAll Posts: 889 Forumite
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    thanks for the reply
  • Geodark
    Geodark Posts: 1,049 Forumite
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    A corrupt MBR does not mean it's a faulty hard drive and would not stop it being recognised. There's software out there to repair MBR's. What makes you think it's an MBR problem???
  • CoolHotCold
    CoolHotCold Posts: 2,158 Forumite
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    Packaging doesn't matter. If it's faulty they'll exchange it (or refund if thats what you want and DOP is <21 days)

    Faulty MBR doesn't mean physical fault.

    If you're using Windows plug it in and check Disk Management. Go to Start, Control Panel, Administrator Tools, Computer Management and click Disk Management. If it's faulty it won't appear there. If not or if it's making weird noises it's likely faulty.

    Try http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/item/seatools-win-master/ if it does appear there, that tool will scan and check the disk to see if it is faulty or not.
  • NotRichAtAll
    NotRichAtAll Posts: 889 Forumite
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    Geodark wrote: »
    A corrupt MBR does not mean it's a faulty hard drive and would not stop it being recognised. There's software out there to repair MBR's. What makes you think it's an MBR problem???

    i am thinking MBR because although the drive is recognised in device manager it is not seen in disk management which is really where you need it to show up if you want to fix it, also seatools was downloaded and ran that was also unable to detect the attached drive so limiting the amount of possible problems to the mbr and a few other such areas like partition and boot sectors section of the drive also as it was a flash based drive and not a mechanical drive with platters it was not possible to hear the drive attempting to do anything, testdisk software was also used which is a bit of software that is really good for partitions and mbr problems, guess what....the drive was not detected. So if a pc cannot detect a hard drive how would software help?
    anyway to cut a long story short i saw a really helpful chap in currys and the drive was exchanged, we plugged it into one of the stores display pc's and he clicked a few clicks and agreed the drive was not responding or detectable.

    http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/master_boot_record.htm

    http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
  • delsus
    delsus Posts: 44 Forumite
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    If you had a corrupt MBR chances of the system booting from any HDD would be slim as that's where the system looks to find the location of the bootloader.

    I believe what has actually happened is the drive has physically failed, if there is a USB connection it might see it in device manager, maybe even as a disk drive (no recognition in device manager could be a connection issue, and an unknown device could be a firmware problem) in which case return the product to currys, mind from my own experience their aftersales care is none existent. Last time I had a faulty product in warranty from them they were terrible, they insisted on repairing it then a week later the same issue recurred and it took a lot of arguing to get them to replace it.
  • akkers
    akkers Posts: 259 Forumite
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    Just a couple of point:
    If they do take the drive back to take a look or for a refund/exchange you can say goodby to your data.
    Also HDD manufacturers have a funny rule - if the disc packaging (ie: label) is defaced then it goes out of warranty and they will not touch it. This is of course an unreasonable rule and you can fight it.
    In fact I took a faulty WD HDD to a computer retailer where I had bought it 2 years earlier. The retailer was going to book it in for sending to WD when he saw that I had written 'disk 1.4' on the label. Of course I had written on a blank area and not defaced any info. The retailer would not have it and refused to accept the HDD. I then got a firmer and told him to take the HDD and send it back to WD or I would take him to court. 'Ok, I will try' he said and took in the drive. A few weeks later a replacement drive arrived from WD for me to collect.
  • NotRichAtAll
    NotRichAtAll Posts: 889 Forumite
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    anyway to cut a long story short i saw a really helpful chap in currys and the drive was exchanged, we plugged it into one of the stores display pc's and he clicked a few clicks and agreed the drive was not responding or detectable.

    all data was safe as this was purely a back up of my sons work
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