to RMA or not?

[stant093]

I've never sent anything in for RMA, however, i just go this 15gig western digital carvair. seems to have bad sectors all over, i got it in a bunch of stuuf i recently purchased. surprisingly the warrenty is valid untill this june. is it worth it to send it in and have it either fixed, or a trade of some sort for a larger drive? how does this work?
Thanks to anyone and every who can feed me some info.
Sam

[AuraEdge]

Send it, what have you got to lose? you have a bad drive.

Western Digital has an excellent RMA program compared to some other hard drive companies (unlike another company who's name is three letters long). They even offer to ship first if you allow them to secure funds on your credit card in case you default, which they release as soon as they recieve the defective drive.

[daveleau]

If they take it, send it in. If you low level format the drive, you can probably fix it since bad sectors are most often caused by corruption by the OS. If you talk to the tech, he may tell you to try this first. If he doesn't say that and willa ccept the RMA, send it and get the new drive.
Dave

[stant093]

ah, i'd ship first, its not a big deal, i was told what was wrong with the drive, and they were right. no credit card either..no way id pay those interest rates...YOU HEAR THAT VISA! (stop calling me!!!)
Hell guess ill send it out.

--since bad sectors are most often caused by corruption by the OS--- its been formatted, and is empty now (slave)..so i wouldnt think thats what it is.

Thanks AuraEdge, daveleau

[thekingofpain]

Run WD's diagnostic tool over it first after viewing their RMA procedure at the website---follow all WD's instructions for RMAing the drive after running the diagnostic...

[stant093]

thats what im actually doing now! thanks though

[stant093]

boxed up, rma in the process. it wont "verify drive data integrity" in fdisk past 17% ...cant run scandisk on it either. western digital's prob now
thanks everyone, mods feel free to lock this thread.
Sam

[daveleau]

Just to clarify, a low level format is different from formatting in DOS or the OS. Aregular format will not take care of any bad clusters, no matter what. A low level format will fix all bad clusters, the question though is whether they will reappear or not... If the drive is going bad, they reappear.

Seeing what is happening in your last post, I agree that that is not the problem, though.