Dell Hard Drive Software Replacement Policy

In the ticking hard drive thread I started, a customer said she just received a warranty replacement hard drive from Dell and that she was struggling with reinstalling the operating system and other software from scratch.

I wrote: "When your original hard drive failed, you should have asked Dell to replace not only the hard drive mechanism but also to preload it as it was when it was first shipped to you. Then, when you installed the new mechanism it would have all the same software as when you first got your computer."

Jumping into the discussion comes this annoying frequent poster, Jankerson, who it seems, has nothing better to do than to follow me around and repeatedly sprinkle little "sound bytes" in thread after thread just to increase his forum "ranking".

Now, I don't have anything against frequent posters as long as their advice and comments are helpful and accurate like that of several other forum regulars here. But in Jankerson's case, after reviewing several of his 600+ posts, I concluded that his are among the most annoyingly tongue-wagging, gossip-mongering, misleading, inaccurate, erroneous, confusing and worthlessly trivial posts I have ever read in the Dell forums.

Here's Jankerson's unhelpful and intrusive response to this on-going discussion:

Jankerson: "Nope they only ship bare drives, no software loaded."

The confused customer then questioned why her Dell tech support representative shipped her a hard drive that didn't contain the preloaded software:

KathiMR: "So, yeah, I would have thought that they would get the drive back to original shipped condition but they said they dont'. LIke I said, I think it was the tech who said they couldn't and I don't know enough to know whether they can preinstall to a bare drive. Plus there is the activation code info which would be needed I think."

Jankerson: "Yep you are correct they don't load software, I have never even heard of Dell loading software on replacement drives, they always send blank drives. Thats a shame that they give scripted answers in the email, I know they do because I had a problem with my extended warranty showing up and thats what I got. Just take you time loading all of you stuff as you will get it done and set up the way you want in time. Hopefully this drive will last alot longer than the first one did."

In reply to Jankerson and KathiMR, I again stated that Dell DOES preload some warranty replacement hard drives with this automated reinstallation software and that I had actually received two such preloaded warranty replacement hard drives from Dell in January due to a hard drive problem I had with an Inspiron 5160 I purchased in December. Further, I explained that I had specifically requested that Dell do this for me during the tech support phone call.

As is typical for a "numbers-runner" like Jankerson, he fired back with the following pretentious and non-factual reply:

Jankerson: "Tell that to the 250+ other people who asked and they didn't do it for, they just shipped bare drives."

Well, I don't know where the "250+ other people who asked" comes from unless Jankerson, the forum gadfly, tapped into Dell's Asian tech support telephone lines. His "250+" number simply demonstrates his tendency toward posting hyperbole and exaggerated personal opinion as if it were fact.

Here's another example of Jankerson's gossip-mongering statements to increase his number of posts and thus, his forum "ranking":

"flyprivate, There is a known issue with Hitachi LT drives going south. If you read through the forums you will see that 98% of the LT HD's that have died have been Hitachi drives, and it isn't just here either, it is a known problem. And I am a computer tech too, have been for over 16 years. As an added note: A friend of mine bought a new Hitachi LT drive and it lasted 2 months and died.....just when south a few days ago."

Folks, if a world-renowned computer products and hard drive manufacturer like Hitachi had 98% of its mechanisms fail prematurely as Jankerson said, we would have all heard about it long ago and they’d be out of the hard drive business by now. This is typical of Jankerson. I pity his computer customers.

In summary, here is Dell Tech Support's official March 18, 2005 policy statement to me regarding a customer’s request to preload software on a warranty replacement hard drive:

"If a customer asks us to, we will preload the replacement drive but only within the first 120 days after purchase. We can't do it after that."

Please draw your own conclusions as to what's best for you when requesting a Dell warranty replacement hard drive and how many grains of salt to take with a Jankerson post.

PS - I have removed my previous posts from this forum because I don't want to engage in any running battle of words with the likes of a Jankerson. Good luck to all.