850 Pro failure: A Samsung RMA testamony

jimthebob

jimthebob

Gawd
Joined
Mar 23, 2013
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In going through life, I find that you see/hear/read a lot more of the negative than you do the positive. This post is here to speak of my recent experience with Samsung and there warranty/RMA procedure.

Many months ago, I purchased a used Samsung 850 Pro 512gb from a fellow member here. I received the drive is excellent shape, packaged very well. I put this as the main drive in my daily driver/gaming PC and couldn't have been happier. Going from a 120gb EVO constantly fighting being full to a spacious 512gb was great! The drive performed excellent and I was happy with my transaction.

Then in the most recent month or two, the PC would randomly shoot up some kind of file error, read error, file system error, something along those lines. I figured I had goofed and done something stupid during a late night session and a few too many drinks (who hasn't been there) or I attributed it to a random error; maybe something got installed and a bad download caused a file error during install, who knows. Either way, it wasn't frequently enough for me to give it a second thought.

Then last week, disaster struck. I finished a night of gaming, shut down my PC, and went to bed. The next day, upon turning it back on, I was greeted with the message that "Windows did not shutdown properly" yada yada yada. Curious but nonetheless, I selected start Windows normally and little did I know, that was farther than I'd make it with that drive ever again. PC froze, restarted, drive no longer detected. And heerrreee weeee go...

I did all the basic troubleshooting; tried different SATA cables, different ports on the motherboard to eliminate a faulty/failing controller, different power cables, and I even tried it in an external enclosure on my server. No matter what I did, the drive would only show up during a cold boot and only but for a minute or so. Then, it'd vanish. So, I called Samsung.

I explained the situation to them, and even told them I wasn't the original purchaser but I was able to come up with a receipt (thank you again, you know who you are). They said they will cover it, worst case it would be from date of mfg rather than date of purchase. I sent them all the information they needed and they approved the RMA and emailed me an overnight air UPS label. I sent the drive in, they had it for not even two days and sent me back (overnight air again :-O) a (what appears to be) brand new drive.

So now I'm back up and running. I was a bit worried about their RMA process they go through a 3rd party to do it and I had read several mixed reviews online about the service being meh at best. But here's one to say that I was thoroughly pleased with the whole process. Never had to wait on hold very long when calling in, service guys I got were polite and prompt, and the overnight air shipping both ways thing is was put me over the top. I hate that the drive had an issue and failed (thank goodness for weekly backups) but if something is going to fail, that's the kind of service and support I want behind it.

Good on ya, Samsung!

TL:DR

512gb 850 Pro failed
Samsung had great support and replaced the drive with overnight air shipping both ways
 
Every time I've RMA'd a drive, never asked for any kind of receipt. Just a valid serial number. A receipt only helps if beyond date of manufacture warranty but still within the purchase warranty. But good to know Samsung supports their products.
 
techbob said:
Every time I've RMA'd a drive, never asked for any kind of receipt. Just a valid serial number. A receipt only helps if beyond date of manufacture warranty but still within the purchase warranty. But good to know Samsung supports their products.
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Normally I'd agree, never give something unless asked for it (I've dealt with the state of Illinois, mind you). But in the RMA paperwork, they asked for it ;)
 
I won't buy a Toshiba drive again. I had a 4TB drive fail and they don't swap them out, you send it in with proof of purchase and they send you a Visa Gift card for less than you paid for the drive.
I am still waiting to get the Visa Gift card to see how much they are giving me. It should be arriving any day now since it takes 4-6 weeks after they receive the bad drive.

I've done RMA's with Western Digital and they were really good, you can do an Advance RMA so you can copy the data from the drive if it is still readable before sending it in.
 
I had a similar experience when my Samsung 840 Pro 256GB failed this summer (a 4.5 year old drive). I called Samsung and they told me I had to take it back to the retailer, which was strange. But they did take the drive back and a few weeks later furnished a replacement 850 PRO 256GB, which has been working properly ever since. The replacement drive is marked refurbished but had absolutely no wear according to the drive. I did have the reciept, and the drive wouldn't have been covered otherwise (because it was so old), so hang on to your receipts. Apparently my 950 PRO is warrantied for 10 years, that's a long time to keep a receipt! Make sure to copy if it's a thermoprinted receipt.
 
DTN107 said:
So... pretty much a standard RMA overall?



Also I agree with Zepher. Toshiba hard-drives can all go to hell.
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Pretty much what a standard RMA should be, yes. Unfortunately, it doesn't always go so smoothly or quickly.
 
jimbob200521 said:
Normally I'd agree, never give something unless asked for it (I've dealt with the state of Illinois, mind you). But in the RMA paperwork, they asked for it ;)
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I'm late to the world of SSD - or buying them for my own use lol. Since I have an unlimited supply of old server drives (WD Black etc.) from work, I've been using those. Or purchasing large non-SSD drives for personal use. I recently broke down and bought my first SSD - Samsung 850 Evo 500GB. After reading this thread the receipt is stored safely on my NAS!
 
techbob said:
I'm late to the world of SSD - or buying them for my own use lol. Since I have an unlimited supply of old server drives (WD Black etc.) from work, I've been using those. Or purchasing large non-SSD drives for personal use. I recently broke down and bought my first SSD - Samsung 850 Evo 500GB. After reading this thread the receipt is stored safely on my NAS!
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Welcome to the SSD game! For boot drives, ya can't beat em. And good first choice for an SSD. When I bought my first one, I think, iirc, it was a black Friday sale at Staples many years ago on a 120gb Kingston SSDnow! Drive. I actually still have it in use to this day. Anywho, I wasn't rich enough at the time to get a Samsung but now that's all that's in my main PC.
 
Zepher said:
I won't buy a Toshiba drive again. I had a 4TB drive fail and they don't swap them out, you send it in with proof of purchase and they send you a Visa Gift card for less than you paid for the drive.
I am still waiting to get the Visa Gift card to see how much they are giving me. It should be arriving any day now since it takes 4-6 weeks after they receive the bad drive.

I've done RMA's with Western Digital and they were really good, you can do an Advance RMA so you can copy the data from the drive if it is still readable before sending it in.
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Hmm, this does not make me happy. 4-6 weeks for a visa gift card? What a joke.
 
Ranulfo said:
Hmm, this does not make me happy. 4-6 weeks for a visa gift card? What a joke.
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I have similar problems with Toshiba; their RMA process sucks. Specifically, their *requirement* to have the original receipt rather than being able to confirm the drive based on a serial number.

In my case, I had a 3TB external drive go bad, and I had to call up the original store I bought it in (Microcenter brick & mortar) and get them to generate me a receipt copy. Thankfully they could look up the purchase via my credit card.

When it came time to get credit for the drive, I was given a couple options - some kind of Toshiba store credit for the value of the drive, or a gift card like Zepher mentioned. I actually chose the Toshiba credit because it let me order a 5TB external drive to replace the 3TB one that had died for even money, so that part was OK. But in general, I would agree - they should just replace the drive.
 
Overnight shipping from Samsung on an RMA. SO glad I have a bunch of EVOs in my system in case the worst happens.

Although my OS is installed on a 6 year old 128GB Crucial M4 ;/
 
I liked the TLDR. Mine story's the same pretty much, but it was an Intel drive. I don't remember it being overnight though...
 
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