Western Digital No Longer Allow Warranty On HDD Removed From Enclosures

[ethereal]

Dear MARK STEWART,




Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support. My name is Sam.




I can understand that you want to replace your WD My Book. I am sorry for the inconvenience caused to you.




I am sorry to inform you that, Once you hard drive is removed from the external hard drive the warranty will be void. Western Digital no not recommend our customer to remove internal parts of drives.




To know more about Western Digital replacement policy, please refer to the link below.


https://support.wdc.com/warranty/warrantypolicy.aspx?lang=en




If you have any further questions, please reply to this email and we will be happy to assist you further.




Sincerely,
Sam
Western Digital Service and Support
http://support.wdc.com



Note: If you have not visited our community forums, please make sure to do so. You may also find the answer(s) to your question(s) there. Link to WD community forums at http://community.wd.com




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[Chris Moore]

I figured it was too good to last.

 

[nojohnny101]

I thought they have never honored these warranties? I guess I am mistaken but I remember last year when people started noticing that prices of HDs in external closures were often lower than ones bought bare, a couple of people posted about the feasibility of "shucking" them from cases. I thought it was pointed out at the time that while this would work, the drives would not carry a warranty.

Did people actually pull drive from external closures, use them for some time, then return them under warranty if they failed? Did people have to put the drives back in the external closures in order to return under warranty?

 

[Chris Moore]

I have 4 shucked drives in my NAS but they are Seagate and they were always treated as OEM drives, meaning that there was no warranty. The shucked WD drives used to show (when checking on their website) as having a warranty, even using the bare drive serial number. It appears that the company has finally come to terms with the mistake, because it was always a violation of the manufacurer policy.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[ethereal]

I thought they have never honored these warranties? I guess I am mistaken but I remember last year when people started noticing that prices of HDs in external closures were often lower than ones bought bare, a couple of people posted about the feasibility of "shucking" them from cases. I thought it was pointed out at the time that while this would work, the drives would not carry a warranty.

Did people actually pull drive from external closures, use them for some time, then return them under warranty if they failed? Did people have to put the drives back in the external closures in order to return under warranty?

this is the first time this has happened to me - which is one of the reasons i chose western digital

i returned bare drives before to wd without any issue - the reason for the post was to let people know that the policy has changed

 

[scrappy]

So did you return your shucked drive(s) to WD as a bare drive? I am just curious how they would know otherwise. Last year I purchased six 8TB EasyStore WD external drives at Best Buy for $160 each (~$1k total cost) which I shucked and stuck the bare drives into my FreeNAS system. All had Western Digital 8TB Red drives w/256MB cache. Had I purchased those drives separately my total cost would have been over $2k. I saved my WD EasyStore enclosures and receipt, so if a drive ever goes bad within its warranty period I plan on sticking that drive back into the enclosure then shipping it off for replacement.

The way I see it, even if a drive or two goes bad and isn't covered by WD because they somehow know I shucked the drive I still saved a ton of money overall by shucking those external drives over buying bare drives. And yes, I know the warranty is shorter on the EasyStore external drives but when we are talking about >50% savings it would take at least four of my six drives prematurely dying before I lose my cost savings over buying bare drives.

 

[Chris Moore]

The 4 Seagate drives I have shucked are running perfectly fine after about a year of use. The bad thing is, you can't keep from breaking the housing when you open it. No warranty for me, but I saved enough to buy a replacement if I needed to.

 

[silverback]

WD easy store 8 TB are 180 right now at Best Buy. Still a great price if there are reds in there.

 

[ethereal]

So did you return your shucked drive(s) to WD as a bare drive? I am just curious how they would know otherwise. Last year I purchased six 8TB EasyStore WD external drives at Best Buy for $160 each (~$1k total cost) which I shucked and stuck the bare drives into my FreeNAS system. All had Western Digital 8TB Red drives w/256MB cache. Had I purchased those drives separately my total cost would have been over $2k. I saved my WD EasyStore enclosures and receipt, so if a drive ever goes bad within its warranty period I plan on sticking that drive back into the enclosure then shipping it off for replacement.

The way I see it, even if a drive or two goes bad and isn't covered by WD because they somehow know I shucked the drive I still saved a ton of money overall by shucking those external drives over buying bare drives. And yes, I know the warranty is shorter on the EasyStore external drives but when we are talking about >50% savings it would take at least four of my six drives prematurely dying before I lose my cost savings over buying bare drives.

yes i returned a bare drive and they also sent me the hard drive before i sent my one back (i asked them to)

 

[pschatz100]

The 4 Seagate drives I have shucked are running perfectly fine after about a year of use. The bad thing is, you can't keep from breaking the housing when you open it. No warranty for me, but I saved enough to buy a replacement if I needed to.

A little off topic perhaps, but I shucked three 4 TB Easy Store drives - no issue with the cases. In fact, after I installed the 4TB drives in my system, I put my old 2TB WD drives back into the cases and now use them for external backups. No problems after 4 months.

 

[GrantWilson]

I thought they have never honored these warranties? I guess I am mistaken but I remember last year when people started noticing that prices of HDs in external closures were often lower than ones bought bare, a couple of people posted about the feasibility of "shucking" them from cases. I thought to write my paper as it was pointed out at the time that while this would work, the drives would not carry a warranty.

Did people actually pull drive from external closures, use them for some time, then return them under warranty if they failed? Did people have to put the drives back in the external closures in order to return under warranty?

Hi,

I actually successfully RMA'd many drives which were pulled from the enclosures. Got a full external with power supply and cords sent back. But that was in 2017, if my memory serves me right. A lot of discussions on reddit - and many ambiguous comments, like this one about voiding warranty when you shuck (officially, the way it always has been?).

 

[deafen]

FWIW, WD now uses the same serial number on the enclosure and the drive. I just shucked a pile of 6TB drives that I got for $80 each on Prime Day, but I kept the enclosures in case I ever need to do a warranty return. As far as I could tell, there's nothing that would indicate tampering (no stickers across case seams, etc.) Just have to make sure that I put it in the enclosure with the matching serial number!

In the past, I've sent a number of shucked Seagates for warranty RMA, and never had an issue.

 

[tfran1990]

As far as I could tell, there's nothing that would indicate tampering (no stickers across case seams, etc.)

If you match the drive S/N with the case/enclosure S/N its still a big win.
Be on the lookout for WD to start putting a tampering seal on the inside of the enclosure.

 

[Pascal666]

Be on the lookout for WD to start putting a tampering seal on the inside of the enclosure.

Warranty voiding tamper seals are illegal in the US: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/pre...panies-it-illegal-condition-warranty-coverage