New Dell PC Raid 1 hard Drive Failure

jollyroger

Hi,
I just received my Dell Vostro PC on Tuesday. It has been working fine and today one of the hard drives has come up with an error. It is a RAID 1 set up i.e. two hard drives set up with one as a backup(mirror). I contacted Dell and there hardware support is not open until Monday. I bought the PC from their business site, although it is for home use, and the only difference in there trems and conditions is that you cannot return it - if you don't like it - doesn't say anything about being faulty.

My question is- can I insist on a refund as the goods have developed a fault so quickly or will I have to accept a repair or replacement?
I don't really want to start faffing about and reinstalling software etc. I am concerned if I start doing this if they ask me to then I may not be able to reject the goods.

I am not sure if this should be under a different part of the forum. Any advice appreciated.

John_Gray

With RAID-1 you ought to be able simply to replace the failing hard disk with the one Dell sends you, and the new disk should be rebuilt from the contents of the good disk, thus making them identical again.

That's the theory, anyway.

jollyroger

Yeah, I thought that. My concern is that there has been a problem on a 3 day old PC. I think I would prefer to return it.

John_Gray

Your problem isn't with the PC, but with a hard disk, which can fail at any time. Usually this failure is more likely at the start of their life and towards the end of their life. It would be reasonable simply to replace the hard disk, IMHO...

S0litaire

Dell's business support has (in my experience) been great.
Hard drives fail all the time, get on the phone Monday morning and after a few diagnostic tests (they have to go through this) they'll probably get a replacement drive out to you within 2-3 business days (You might be able to wangle a next day courier since the machine is less than 7 days old!

One time they got a replacement drive out to my client the next day, with a Dell approved engineer to check out the rest of the server and rebuild it. (Might have been the fact my client was a solicitors firm) ^_^ lol


Also since you set it up as a Mirrored set, then all you'll need to do is swap out the drive and tell the OS to rebuild the mirror set. It should only take 10-20 mins for a clean system.

Sweey_as_a_nut

Jollyroger, When you get the new HD set it up as two separate drives. That is what I done with my Dell, when I first received my new computer off Dell that's how it was set up as a raid system.

If you think it saves time, it would be negligible. And the best way to insure your work is safe is to back it up, on another separate drive on your computer is a start, and another backup to a USB removable drive is further security. Raid systems are for nerds with nothing better to do with they're time, and of course computer mags. They after all need something to write about.

basmic

Sweey, might I suggest you read up on RAID? The pure fact that the OP is using RAID 1, means they haven't lost any (potentially) important data. Let's not forget the fact they needn't have to reinstall when they receive the harddrive.

RAID 0 is risky, IMO - but that's the price you pay for speed, when you have twice as many harddrives to fail. RAID 1 is a very good prevention against hardware failure!

John_Gray

Sweey_as_a_nut wrote: »

Raid systems are for nerds with nothing better to do with their time

Ignorance is bliss, eh? :rotfl:

You had better tell most of the businesses in the country/world that they are wasting their money, then. One of the more common ways of setting up a server is to mirror (RAID-1) the operating system partition and to use RAID-5 for quantities of data disks. Have a look at the specifications for any NAS device with more than a couple of drives, and tell me those which don't use RAID of some type.

jollyroger

I'll phone on Monday. I purposely bought it as a RAID 1 setup in order to have a backup - never thought it would fail so soon.

jollyroger

I used the diagnostic software and the hard drive passeed the test. I phoned this morning and they thought that it was a software problem. They phoned me at home this evening when I was at the computer and fixed it remotely in a couple of minutes.
Most impressed.
I then got the hard sell about additional warranties.
Thanks for al the advice.

S0litaire

I'm sure someone wil point out that "Raid1" does not = "Backup" "Mirror" It's just a way to protect data from a hardware failure.

If you want backup, then drop the raid and set your system's Backup program to use disk 2 as a backup drive... ^__^