[plug] WD drives coming formatted as NTFS?

[Ari]

Ari wrote:
> jlmiller at mmtnetworks.com.au wrote:
>> I would agree with you in wanting the business to do the right thing. 
>> Proper route to take. Keep records of the entire transaction you may 
>> need it later.
>> Sent via BlackBerry® from Vodafone
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Ari <sothisistheinternet at gmail.com>
>> Date: Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:18:40 To: <plug at plug.org.au>
>> Subject: Re: [plug] WD drives coming formatted as NTFS?
>>
>> Ari wrote:
>>  
>>> Kevin Shackleton wrote:
>>>    
>>>> Might not these drives have been recovered stock from a batch of 
>>>> drives
>>>> set up for PC installation that never made it in the run.  Therefore
>>>> they would have been bulk copied but never actually used.  They would
>>>> have been sold off cheap and presumably bought cheap, with free 
>>>> mounting
>>>> brackets.
>>>>
>>>> I don't see anything wrong with that, so long as there wasn't 
>>>> deceptive
>>>> practice.
>>>>
>>>> Kevin
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> There was nothing to mention that the drives were not absolutely 
>>> brand new. Certainly no mounting brackets. I thought it odd that 
>>> they weren't in static bags, but I've had some manufacturers do that 
>>> in the past with drives that were brand new. This is well known 
>>> retailer with a range of drives from a variety of manufacturers.
>>>     
>> I've had a few private requests for the name of this company. I am 
>> going to wait until I hear back to from the owner who I have emailed. 
>> I'm pretty pissed at this point because of the amount of time I've 
>> lost and the extra two days of downtime, but just because an employee 
>> screwed up I want to give the owner a chance to make it right and 
>> provide an assurance that it won't happen again - to anyone. I think 
>> I'm being as fair in this. Please don't think I'm snubbing the 
>> requests for the name, I just want to give the owner a chance to fix 
>> things first. I think we'd all like that chance if we were in that 
>> situation.
>>
>> That said, I've learned quite a lot about drives and accessing data 
>> contained on them. For example, smartmontools is installed by default 
>> in FC11 and the smartctl command (with the appropriate options) 
>> allows one to examine the information stored by the drive. For 
>> example, my 'new' drives have had double the number of power cycles 
>> as I have given them...
>>   
> Response from the shop today - not from the owner but from two 
> separate staff members. Each was forwarded a different email I sent - 
> the first with my query regarding the drives, the second with the 
> followup I sent after determining the drives were not truly new. I was 
> offered either store credit (person 1) or a swap (person 2). Both 
> acknowledged the drives probably came from cancelled builds. The 
> second said that this would only have happened if there was no stock 
> other than these semi-used drives. According to their website the 
> drives are well and truly in stock, with at least 31 drives between 
> their locations, and at least 20 at the location I purchased these 
> from. I've asked if all their stock of these drives are semi-used. 
> This might not have been an issue had I just been warned! With notice 
> two things may have resulted - 1) I would have been okay with it and 
> there would have been no hassle, frustration, or downtime with a loss 
> of days of productivity on my end or 2) I'd have purchased more 
> expensive truly NEW drives! There's no loss for them in that scenario, 
> so why not tell the customer?
>
> I've had days of downtime now because of this lack of notice. Somehow 
> a swap or store credit just doesn't cut it especially when I will have 
> to take more of my time to travel back their to get it to happen. The 
> very least they could offer is a refund and an apology. I've asked for 
> a refund. If that isn't forthcoming this afternoon I'll let you all 
> know which business this is and you can decide for yourself if it's 
> worth the risk.
Refund granted. I was also offered store credit or drives that were 
definitely brand new (still in sealed static bags), but I was just so 
irked at all this trouble I didn't want any more to do with them right 
now. I am now having to retest two more drives prior to use - I always 
do as I've found a significant proportion of drive failures occur in the 
first week of use, as if they were damaged in transport. Then my FC11 
file server can come back online and I can see about using xvidtune 
(thanks Andrew! this is why I haven't updated that thread...no FC11 to 
try it with atm).

I hope it's okay that I've decided not to name and shame - I don't think 
they deserve it and I don't think there was any really bad intent on 
their part, just some rather unwise purchasing/disclosure decisions. At 
least people reading this will know to ask if they receive a drive 
outside of a static bag and to have a look at the clamshell to make sure 
the brands match!

Thanks to all of you for the help, suggestions, knowledge, and discussion.

Cheers,

Ari