T61 Used Hard Disk Under Warranty-Odometer Reset!

Message

josh999 · #1 Post by **josh999** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 12:26 am

I know that Lenovo is in their rights to send me a used "serviceable" Disk under warranty. I also know that there is nothing they can do to "recondition" a disk. But here is the problem:

All the S.M.A.R.T. Data on the used disk I received for my T61 was zeroed out. This INCLUDES all the counters (including power on hours). So, presumably Lenovo is "lying" to me. It is the same as turning a cars odometer back. I'm not even sure it's legal!!!

ajkula66 · #2 Post by **ajkula66** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 7:37 am

What you're entitled to is the replacement hard drive that works properly within specs, no more and no less. As long as you haven't received anyone else's data, what they've done is perfectly legal.

And, BTW, hard drives can be refurbished, although I personally doubt that Lenovo goes through that trouble.

josh999 · #3 Post by **josh999** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 7:59 am

"Specs" include a specific number of "power on" hours. I am entitled to/should know what life is left for future planning. Since they are within their rights, why do they send it with bad/incorrect information built in?

#4 Post by **carbon_unit** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 8:30 am

The number of power on hours is irrelevant. Hard drives fail when they are ready. Did your last one run the amount of hours you expected? Did you plan around that?
They supplied you with a serviceable part. That is all they are required to do. That is all you are "entitled " to. You got what you are supposed to get. Now you are just nit picking.

josh999 · #5 Post by **josh999** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 9:25 am

Your point is well taken about power on hours....but if you are familiar with SMART statistics there are several that are predictive of potential failure. The fact that they "zero" out the SMART statistics on all these drives before shipping seems to indicate "routine" process of reshipping used drives. If they are "ok", why not leave the statistics "as is"?

Nameless · #6 Post by **Nameless** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 9:34 am

I think I have to agree with josh999 here. If Lenovo has nothing to hide, why are they wiping out the SMART data area? Seems pretty dodgy to me.....

sktn77a · #7 Post by **sktn77a** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 10:28 am

One of the drives' specifications is the Mean Time to Failure, in hours (which presumably is power-on hours). So if you've been sent a drive with only 5% of it's specified MTTF remaning, the probablility of it failing on your dime is much higher. I accept the necessary evil of replacement parts not being brand new, but I don't like the idea of getting one that's almost reached the end of its service life.

josh999 · #8 Post by **josh999** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 11:14 am

My point exactly... although I question the wisdom in companies like Lenovo in recycling drives (the most critical and likely to fail component), I accept their right to do so. However, the manufacturer never intended these numbers to be reset. Let me be happy with Lenovo by seeing that a drive they send me has had very little use and no impending failure properties. Or, let me see that they sent me a drive likely near the end of it's useful life. But don't delete the data that the drive companies feel so critical to collect.

ajkula66 · #9 Post by **ajkula66** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 12:27 pm

josh999 wrote:

Let me be happy with Lenovo by seeing that a drive they send me has had very little use and no impending failure properties. Or, let me see that they sent me a drive likely near the end of it's useful life.

Honestly, what difference does this make in real life? If the replacement drive fails within the machine's warranty period, they'll send you another one. And another one...

I own several perfectly working (passing all tests as well) IBM laptop drives dating back to 1996...and let's not go into how many newer ones I've seen fail, regardless of manufacturer (Seagate being the only exception, never had one of their drives fail), capacity, speed or interface...

One should rely on backups and not on any type of "scientific" data that is SMART-related to guard the "valuables" on their hard disk...

My opinions and experiences only.

#10 Post by **carbon_unit** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 12:46 pm

Same here. I have 10 year old drives that run fine and I have seen new ones dead right out of the box. MTBF is a guideline not an absolute. It really does not mean much in real life. No person or any software can predict when a drive will fail. It happens when it happens. As long as SMART does not detect a problem right now the drive is OK. If it fails within warranty IBM will send another one.

pianowizard · #11 Post by **pianowizard** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 1:37 pm

ajkula66 wrote:Honestly, what difference does this make in real life? If the replacement drive fails within the machine's warranty period, they'll send you another one. And another one...

Exactly. So, why not just leave the counters intact and be honest about how long the drive has been used for? I agree with the OP that Lenovo's honesty is questionable.

josh999 · #12 Post by **josh999** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 5:22 pm

In reply to some of the feelings expressed here:

I agree with most comments. BUT! SMART is a proven predictor of impending failure in many cases (it was developed by IBM). So, in the case of a critical system (even if backed up on a regular basis), it gives you the opportunity to back up and swap the drive without even losing the delta between your backup schedule. Or, if you neglected to make a backup (YES, I know that you always should), it give you a second chance in many cases.

#13 Post by **bill bolton** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 7:09 pm

josh999 wrote:BUT! SMART is a proven predictor of impending failure in many cases (it was developed by IBM).

SMART was developed for particular purposes related to the management of drive arrays in fixed systems.

For a whole bunch of practical reasons related to the way mobile systems are actually used, its fairly meaningless for single disk mobile system purposes.

josh999 wrote:So, in the case of a critical system...

If a system is that critical, it needs to be protected by something other than a single-end-user consumer warranty.

In my experience it is typical for all "refurbished" drives, from all sources, for all purposes to come with all SMART data reset. Its one reason why any serious drive usage for truly critical, high availability purposes always uses brand new drives as replacements!

Cheers,

Bill B.

josh999 · #14 Post by **josh999** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 8:36 pm

bill bolton wrote: SMART was developed for particular purposes related to the management of drive arrays in fixed systems.

For a whole bunch of practical reasons related to the way mobile systems are actually used, its fairly meaningless for single disk mobile system purposes.

This is contrary to everything I have read. But I have an open mind and would love to learn. Can you elaborate and/or point to a link to help explain this?

bill bolton wrote: If a system is that critical, it needs to be protected by something other than a single-end-user consumer warranty.

In my experience it is typical for all "refurbished" drives, from all sources, for all purposes to come with all SMART data reset. Its one reason why any serious drive usage for truly critical, high availability purposes always uses brand new drives as replacements!

Well, true, but "critical" is a relative thing.

Just because all do it, doesn't make it right. I pay top dollar and expect higher standards from Thinkpad and Lenovo!

#15 Post by **bill bolton** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 1:10 am

josh999 wrote:This is contrary to everything I have read.

You need to read more then. A few minutes with Google searching on "S.M.A.R.T." will yield a lot of information.

Cheers,

Bill B.

flypenfly · #16 Post by **flypenfly** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 2:48 am

If you're buying Lenovo, it's not exactly top dollar, in fact, it's very economical.

josh999 · #17 Post by **josh999** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 1:05 pm

bill bolton wrote:A few minutes with Google searching on "S.M.A.R.T." will yield a lot of information.

I have, and find nothing that states that SMART is not a useful indicator for portable drives. And, the drive manufacturers continue to spend money putting it on small portable drives.

However, I continue to welcome your personal elaboration of your statement, and a pointer to a reliable article that states that.

#18 Post by **bill bolton** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 8:02 pm

flypenfly wrote:If you're buying Lenovo, it's not exactly top dollar, in fact, it's very economical.

It seems that rhetoric took over from fact some time ago in this thread!

For instance, one easy to verify fact is that the drives which get "refurbished" are the ones which had electronics failures, not mechanical failures. Drives with any mechanical failures get trashed immediately.

Refurbished drives get new electronics boards installed, hence any existing S.M.A.R.T. data is lost. It's what the whole disk manufacturing industry does.

There's no lying, there's nothing illegal, there's no better practice etc etc!

Cheers,

Bill B.

Ken Fox · #19 Post by **Ken Fox** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 12:03 am

I was recently sent a "serviceable used part" hard drive as a replacement for one that died in a T60. The mfr. sticker stated that it had been manufactured only a couple of months before, and it worked fine.

Hard drives are cheap cheap cheap nowadays. I've replaced almost every one that lenovo supplied me with larger and faster ones. I recently bought (but haven't yet received) a couple of 7200rpm 250gb Seagate drives for $69.99 USD.

At those sorts of prices it is very hard to get bent out of shape over some cheap commodity part that Lenovo replaces, as long as it works. If you don't like it, buy one that is faster and that has 3x the capacity, for next to nothing. Had you bought the larger and (probably) faster drive directly from lenovo, it would have cost you 5x as much when you originally bought the laptop. Fortunately, they haven't done anything with the more recent laptops that prevents your easily replacing/upgrading the drive, like they did a few years ago with the T43s.

#20 Post by **Harryc** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 6:19 am

Ken Fox wrote:...At those sorts of prices it is very hard to get bent out of shape over some cheap commodity part that Lenovo replaces, as long as it works. ... Had you bought the larger and (probably) faster drive directly from lenovo, it would have cost you 5x as much.

Good points Ken. I like this type of logic and use it myself frequently in buying/selling/upgrading/repairing decisions. Some folks will say, 'well it's the principle of the thing'. Personally for me, there are too many principles and not enough time to get to all of them

. Choose your battles wisely ... particularly if you are not personally damaged in any material way.

sktn77a · #21 Post by **sktn77a** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 10:25 am

If a warranty is to mean anything, it should be to return the product to fully functioning and reliable condition. What you're basically saying is that the warranty replacement may be unreliable so just go out and buy a new drive.

So what's the point of the warranty?

#22 Post by **bill bolton** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 6:18 pm

sktn77a wrote:If a warranty is to mean anything, it should be to return the product to fully functioning and reliable condition.

Which they do... so what's your point?

Cheers,

Bill

sktn77a · #23 Post by **sktn77a** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 7:23 pm

bill bolton wrote:
sktn77a wrote:If a warranty is to mean anything, it should be to return the product to fully functioning and reliable condition.
Which they do... so what's your point?

Cheers,

Bill

"Reliable" is the operative word - that's the point. If a hard drive has too many hours on it they do start to have hard errors/failures (MTBF).

ajkula66 · #24 Post by **ajkula66** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 9:39 pm

sktn77a wrote:

If a hard drive has too many hours on it they do start to have hard errors/failures (MTBF).

It may be so in theory, my personal empirical experiences differ from the given statement by quite a margin...

Regardless, once and again, if the new "used/refurbished" drive fails within warranty period it will be replaced as many times as needed...in my book, that is "returning the product to fully functioning and reliable condition"...over and over again.

phr · #25 Post by **phr** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 9:48 pm

1. MTBF has nothing to do with the number of hours of operation expected from any particular drive. It's a measure across populations of drives, i.e. 1 million hour MTBF means if you have a fleet of 10,000 drives, you should expect about 1 failure every 100 hours. It doesn't mean any specific drive is supposed to last a million hours (= 114 years). 5 years is about 44000 hours, so 1 million hour MTBF can be more correctly interpreted to mean any given drive has about 4.4% chance of failing under warranty.

2. IBM has in fact refused to fix/replace obviously failing drives because the SMART diagnostics didn't report errors. They did that with one of mine a while back and the drive failed totally a short time later.

sktn77a · #26 Post by **sktn77a** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 8:57 am

phr wrote:1. MTBF has nothing to do with the number of hours of operation expected from any particular drive. It's a measure across populations of drives, i.e. 1 million hour MTBF means if you have a fleet of 10,000 drives, you should expect about 1 failure every 100 hours. It doesn't mean any specific drive is supposed to last a million hours (= 114 years).

Not sure what you're saying. MTBF is the typical performance of a drive from that family. An individual drive may fail earlier or later but, on average, they fail at the MTBF.

T61 Used Hard Disk Under Warranty-Odometer Reset!

T61 Used Hard Disk Under Warranty-Odometer Reset!

Who is online