90 day Hard Drive Warranty

[Van Royko]

My Red-Drive stopped functioning when connecting via USB or Firewire 400.

Silly me - I thought the warranty on everything was 1 year. On drives its 90 days. I know two other Red owners who are having the same problem with their drives. Evidently this is an endemic problem. Its costing me $400 to fix the drive board.

Thats my complaint.

[Colin Sheldon]

I wonder if it still would have worked with a R2E cable...

http://www.finnerknowsbest.com/blogs/R2E-Review.html

[Raffi Kryszek]

Yes we hear about FW port failure fairly frequently (although usually not both the USB and FW400 at the same time). That sounds like it could be a bridge board problem and not just a "FW/USB plug" problem. Many people buy an R2E from us as a backup means of drive interface because often when the FW800 port fails the esata port still works.

[Antoine Baumann]

If I understand correctly nearly everything but the camera body has 3 months warranty, even accessories that costs thousands of dollar.
I understand it is a USA things, as in Switzerland and I think in most part of Europe, the minimum legal waranty on new product is one year, even on a 25 box rubbish headphone, and good quality product have oftently more than 1 year warranty.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think the warranty is more important than the quality of the product (if it last me my life, I don't need any warranty at all), but for a product that cost 900$ and that I have personnaly owned 4 of them that broke in less than 1 year (FW800 problem) and 2 of them out of warranty, I feel like a normal 3 years warranty like on most of the other computer hard drive would not hurt the customers.

cheers,
antoine.

[Cail Young]

If I understand correctly nearly everything but the camera body has 3 months warranty, even accessories that costs thousands of dollar.

Digital Media and Batteries have a 90 day warranty, everything else is 12 months.

[Antoine Baumann]

Hi Cail, Thanks for the correction.

cheers,
antoine.

[Paul Leeming]

I would ask one thing though, and that is for non-spinning solid state media to have a one year warranty, especially since it is essentially shockproof.

Thoughts?

Paul

[Mark B.]

I've often found that good quality equipment comes with a long warranty, because the manufacturers know the customers won't have problems and the warranty will never get used. Shoddy equipment gets a short warranty, because the manufacturer doesn't want to spend money repairing all the gear that breaks down.

Red's short warranty suggests they don't trust their own gear's build quality. If they adopted something more like a 3-year warranty on everything they sell, it would show that they believe their equipment is robust enough to survive into the future.

[Martin Weiss]

Red's short warranty suggests they don't trust their own gear's build quality. If they adopted something more like a 3-year warranty on everything they sell, it would show that they believe their equipment is robust enough to survive into the future.

The previous video camera we bought cost twice as much as the RED1, and came with 90 days warranty.

Pretty much any equipment that is for professional usage, comes with 90 days of warranty.

[Michael Stanmore]

just to add to the statistics... our reddrive had the same problem. :(

[David Anderson]

Just spent $400 because my FW800 port failed as well ... I do my best to shoot nothing but cards now

[Sam Winzar]

One of my two RED Drives has this same problem (No FW800 anymore). I got them in two different batches and the one with the still operational FW800 port has two little white recessed dots on either side at the back. Do these mean anything?

[mehr]

we had also the problem with the drive after 2 days use

[Michael Hastings]

I feel like a normal 3 years warranty like on most of the other computer hard drive would not hurt the customers.

cheers,
antoine.

Hard drive manufacturers give those long warranties because almost no one actually takes them up on it because of the hassle of finding the receipt, finding where to send it then sending it in, etc. I have had at least half a dozen 3 or 5 year warranty drives fail over the past ten years but never bothered to mess with it because even though my 80 gig drive failed and it was annoying, after the year and a half things had progressed so I was able to go to the store buy a 250 gig drive for $129 - so why hassle with warranty replacement to get back a refurb 80 gig drive? If everybody that had failed drives decided to actually sent them in under warranty those companies would be in bankruptcy.

Short warranties really serve to put a legal limit on the manufacturer's liability. If there is a problem down the road then the manufacturer has the ability to decide if it is an isolated situation and often they will do a "free" or low cost repair, but if it is something that is in every item then they have the legal ability to implement some kind of repair or upgrade program at a cost that is as low as possible to the customer but still keeps them in business.

[JanneJansson]

Be aware of the EM and static electric ghost. I have all my sensitive gear (drives, boards, controllers and transmiters) in antistatic bag during transport.

When I connect a drive to the camera or a computer I always make the drive case touch the computer case before conecing cables to contol the static sparc. Every mm of arc is about 1 000 volt, so you can with one wrong static sparc fry a port on the red drive.

On some mil-tech, ports have protection against static arcing, and a drive that is built for purpose "not office use" would benefit with that protection.

..and regarding the warrenty, EU law is consumer warrenty 1 year minimum for electronics.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Hard drive manufacturers give those long warranties because almost no one actually takes them up on it because of the hassle of finding the receipt, finding where to send it then sending it in, etc.

So true. Anyone who's ever gone through the hassle of replacing hard drives under warranty will understand. And will probably never do it again. I currently have two Seagate 1.5TB drives here that are dead. I've already tried to get an RMA for one of them and gave up after my 4th phone call. Not when I already replaced the two drives with new ones for < $120 each. One of the drives was out of a RAID where I had to remove the "warranty void if removed" sticker and undo 4 torx-security anti-tamper screws bound with red lock-tite to get the drive off the caddy. So what do I do there? It happened over memorial day weekend too. I needed the RAID-5 back online ASAP. I called the tech support line, auto-attendant reminded me it was a holiday weekend. So ran to Best Buy and picked up a new drive, memorial day sale, drive marked down from $139 to $109, sweet.


I have had at least half a dozen 3 or 5 year warranty drives fail over the past ten years but never bothered to mess with it because even though my 80 gig drive failed and it was annoying, after the year and a half things had progressed so I was able to go to the store buy a 250 gig drive for $129 - so why hassle with warranty replacement to get back a refurb 80 gig drive? If everybody that had failed drives decided to actually sent them in under warranty those companies would be in bankruptcy.

Actually that's kinda what happened to Micropolis. They had about a 2 year run of drives with high failure rates. And most of their products were higher-end SCSI units that were $400~$2000 each at the time. I replaced a few, but moved away from that company as quick as I could. Another company that had the same problem was JTS. Co-founded by the Tramiels, the founders of Atari. They tried making budget hard drives in the late '90s, all really low-spec stuff with 3500rpm rotation speeds, oddball capacities. Very high failure rates, I don't think the company lasted 18 months even though the drives sold like hotcakes when they first started up.

[Curran Giddens]

Kind of like how they don't expect you send in the form to get a rebate. Or, if you do send in for the rebate, they don't expect you to remember 6 months later that you never got anything back....

[Ariana]

Firewire ports get fried alot on all brands of drives. There was another thread here about it and I've seen a number of threads on other sites. The main workaround is to use firewire cables without power.

The main problem is firewire and how it's used.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Kind of like how they don't expect you send in the form to get a rebate. Or, if you do send in for the rebate, they don't expect you to remember 6 months later that you never got anything back....

That pisses me off, you have no idea. I would say that out of all of my mail-in rebates I've ever submitted, I probably have only a 60% success rate of receiving the refund. IMO, mail-in rebates should be outlawed. So such rebates are never a factor when I consider what, when or where to buy anything anymore. If such a rebate exists, I mail it in and think, "hey I've got a 60% chance of turning this envelope and stamp into $20 within the next 3 months". :thumbsup:

Right now, I'm waiting for three Blu-Ray movies from the WB RED to BLU deal where you send them the cover insert for your HD-DVD and pay $4.95 S&H and they send you the Blu-Ray version. Been nearly 5 weeks now since mailing that in.... I'm sure I'll get them someday... :Yawn:

[Brent@RED]

Firewire ports get fried alot on all brands of drives. There was another thread here about it and I've seen a number of threads on other sites. The main workaround is to use firewire cables without power.

The main problem is firewire and how it's used.

That is correct, Ariana. RED supplies a power adaptor with each drive. I recommend that you use it - let the mains power the drive, don't ask the firewire to do data AND power. It is definitely a best practice and is much easier on your drives.

BC

[Casey Green]

That is correct, Ariana. RED supplies a power adaptor with each drive. I recommend that you use it - let the mains power the drive, don't ask the firewire to do data AND power. It is definitely a best practice and is much easier on your drives.

BC

Some external drives allow for data on the Firewire Port and Power on the USB port with a double connection.

Brent, is this something RED has considered?

[rod bradley]

The 90 day warranty on video cameras is a Sony introduction I believe -- there is, in my experience, no one worse than Sony on honoring warranties. They get away with it but it doesn't endear many customers that I know of.

[Brent@RED]

Some external drives allow for data on the Firewire Port and Power on the USB port with a double connection.

Brent, is this something RED has considered?

I can pass along to our media guys...

BC

[Stephen Williams]

The 90 day warranty on video cameras is a Sony introduction I believe -- there is, in my experience, no one worse than Sony on honoring warranties. They get away with it but it doesn't endear many customers that I know of.

Hi,

Never heard of that before, do you have a link? Always had good experiance with free repairs caried outside warranty on more than one occasion.

Stephen

[Deanan]

Some external drives allow for data on the Firewire Port and Power on the USB port with a double connection.

Brent, is this something RED has considered?


Unfortunately, USB does not provide enough power for what the RED drive is pulling.

[Casey Green]

Unfortunately, USB does not provide enough power for what the RED drive is pulling.

Copy that. Thanks for checking though.