Hi,
If I were to buy an external drive (the brand I'm looking at is toshiba) and were to take the drive out, and put it in a computer, would the manufacturer still cover the drive under warranty if it were to fail, or not seeing as you've opened the case and taken the drive out?
Thanks,
Ed
99.9% sure the warranty would be void - depends on the brand of drive inside the case. Guess its the risk you take when purchasing a cheap external drive instead of an internal.
I know Seagate drives aren't recognised when you try to check the warranty status online if they're OEM drives / drives removed from external cases. Haven't tried WD drives, as I've only ever opened up portable drives, and they've usually had the USB connectors built onto the drives PCB.
What if you keep the external case, and then if it fails while being used as an internal drive, you reassemble it into the external case to get the warranty. Have they got any way to tell that it has been opened up??
Unless you keep the case in perfect condition I'm sure they could tell by looking at it.
Bought a Seagate external drive from Officeworks a while back just to use as an internal drive, on opening the external drive case, it was impossible to open it up without damaging some of the plastic clips that hold the case closed.
Even if you put everything back together, I'm sure they could definitely tell it's been tampered with.
Before removing it from a case just run a diagnostic tool, not the quick one, but the one that checks every sector, it takes like 7 hours or so, but if the drive passes, it's VERY unlikely that it'll just die within the next year or so.
Doubt they'd honour it. Warranty is void once removed from casing usually.