I already knew that Dell can either use new or refurbished parts. That's why I was asking my question. I would like to know whether I got a new hard drive or a refurbished hard drive.
According to Dell's warranty, they can use either new or refurbished parts. The following paragraph is taken from Dell's warranty.
How will you fix my product? We use new and refurbished parts made by various manufacturers in performing warranty repairs and in building replacement parts and systems. Refurbished parts and systems are parts or systems that have been returned to Dell, some of which were never used by a customer. All parts and systems are inspected and tested for quality. Replacement parts and systems are covered for the remaining period of the limited warranty for the product you bought. Dell owns all parts removed from repaired products.
For the complete warranty details, see the following.
There is a yellow sticker on the outside of the box that says "refurbished," so I initially thought that I had received a refurbished drive. However, since the manufactured date on the hard drive label is recent and there are no signs of it being refurbished on the drive label, I was thinking that maybe I got a new drive instead. I thought that maybe Dell just put that "refurbished" sticker on all of the boxes. I was hoping that someone would know a definitive way to tell if I got a new or refurbished drive by looking at Western Digital's sticker on the drive itself.
A refuirbished device does not mean it was actually refurbished. Any device that is installed in a system and delivered to the end user is considered used, even if the system was never turned on.
For example, a company orders 100 systems and then needs to return 10 for various reasons. Those 10 that were never taken out of the box are considered used systems and any part we take out and use on warranty repair has to be marked as such.
Now, I can't guarantee that this is the case with your specific item. I can tell you that when it comes to hard drives they are usually never "repaired" if they come back defective. It's usually cheaper in the long run to just dispose of the hard drive. That depends of course what exactly was wrong with the drive.
Thanks for your answer. Other than the legal rules you talked about... If a drive itself has been physically reconditioned or refurbished or whatever, wouldn't there be something on the hard drive label to indicate this? Like I mentioned in my original post, it has a manufacture date of 12 Dec 2003, and there are no indications anywhere in the print that it's a refurbished drive. The static protective bag is sealed (I forgot to mention that). Although legally it may not be considered new for whatever reason, do you think it came fresh from the Western Digital factory and is actually new? Does Western Digital normally print somewhere on their label that a hard drive from them is refurbished?
You can try, if you can recover previously deleted files from the harddrive. For example with a tool like Easy Recovery from Ontrack. This could give you a hint, if the drive has been used before.
About half a year ago my dad got a replacement for his broken HD (not from Dell, but form Compaq). On the replacement harddrive, which had obviously only been quick formatted I was able to recover a complete 40GB NTFS partition with Easy Recovery. :-) The Windows system logs on the recovered partition indicated, that this drive had been in use for about 2 weeks. So probably somebody returned his system within the first 30 days after purchasing it and they used the parts for replacing broken stuff in other computers.
osprey4
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January 21st, 2004 23:00
beast194
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January 22nd, 2004 00:00
KyleLC
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January 22nd, 2004 00:00
Bev,
I already knew that Dell can either use new or refurbished parts. That's why I was asking my question. I would like to know whether I got a new hard drive or a refurbished hard drive.
Kyle
shesagordie
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January 22nd, 2004 00:00
KyleLC.
According to Dell's warranty, they can use either new or refurbished parts. The following paragraph is taken from Dell's warranty.
How will you fix my product?
We use new and refurbished parts made by various manufacturers in performing warranty repairs and in building replacement parts and systems. Refurbished parts and systems are parts or systems that have been returned to Dell, some of which were never used by a customer. All parts and systems are inspected and tested for quality. Replacement parts and systems are covered for the remaining period of the limited warranty for the product you bought. Dell owns all parts removed from repaired products.
For the complete warranty details, see the following.
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/services/en/service_plans?c=us&l=en&s=gen
Dell is not alone in using refurbished parts, you will find other manufacturers follow the same policy, Maxtor for one, as I know from experience.
Bev.
KyleLC
6 Posts
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January 22nd, 2004 01:00
Beast194,
There is a yellow sticker on the outside of the box that says "refurbished," so I initially thought that I had received a refurbished drive. However, since the manufactured date on the hard drive label is recent and there are no signs of it being refurbished on the drive label, I was thinking that maybe I got a new drive instead. I thought that maybe Dell just put that "refurbished" sticker on all of the boxes. I was hoping that someone would know a definitive way to tell if I got a new or refurbished drive by looking at Western Digital's sticker on the drive itself.
Message Edited by KyleLC on 01-21-2004 09:13 PM
MichaelC.
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406 Posts
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January 22nd, 2004 12:00
KyleLC,
Thanks for using the Dell Community Forum.
A refuirbished device does not mean it was actually refurbished. Any device that is installed in a system and delivered to the end user is considered used, even if the system was never turned on.
For example, a company orders 100 systems and then needs to return 10 for various reasons. Those 10 that were never taken out of the box are considered used systems and any part we take out and use on warranty repair has to be marked as such.
Now, I can't guarantee that this is the case with your specific item. I can tell you that when it comes to hard drives they are usually never "repaired" if they come back defective. It's usually cheaper in the long run to just dispose of the hard drive. That depends of course what exactly was wrong with the drive.
KyleLC
6 Posts
0
January 22nd, 2004 16:00
Michael,
Thanks for your answer. Other than the legal rules you talked about... If a drive itself has been physically reconditioned or refurbished or whatever, wouldn't there be something on the hard drive label to indicate this? Like I mentioned in my original post, it has a manufacture date of 12 Dec 2003, and there are no indications anywhere in the print that it's a refurbished drive. The static protective bag is sealed (I forgot to mention that). Although legally it may not be considered new for whatever reason, do you think it came fresh from the Western Digital factory and is actually new? Does Western Digital normally print somewhere on their label that a hard drive from them is refurbished?
littlewhoo
32 Posts
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January 22nd, 2004 16:00
About half a year ago my dad got a replacement for his broken HD (not from Dell, but form Compaq). On the replacement harddrive, which had obviously only been quick formatted I was able to recover a complete 40GB NTFS partition with Easy Recovery. :-) The Windows system logs on the recovered partition indicated, that this drive had been in use for about 2 weeks. So probably somebody returned his system within the first 30 days after purchasing it and they used the parts for replacing broken stuff in other computers.
MichaelC.
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406 Posts
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January 22nd, 2004 18:00
KyleLC,
I'm sorry but there is really no way to determine if the drive was actually used based on stickers or manufacturing dates.
KyleLC
6 Posts
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January 22nd, 2004 19:00
Okay. Thanks for your help, Michael.