johnnyBrandom wrote:
I'll accept that you are probably referring only to that being a reasonable cost for the task, and I might agree with that, but you are then ignoring a few influential circumstances here. Now, I'm not interested in debating this so hopefully I won't spawn a debate here, but I'll just offer you some food for thought from my perspective ...
At least in this sentence you seem to understand that manufacturing and selling a hard drive is unrelated to providing data recovery service.
johnnyBrandom wrote:
Consider that Seagate sold me a drive that lasted fewer than 100hrs spread over about 1.5 years before failing and now they want me to pay them $600 (about 6x what the drive originally cost) to recover the two or three files that I didn't have backed up.
Seagate doesn't care if you pay them or not. They sold you a hard drive without any data on it, they are more than happy to give you another one without data on it. Here you have tried to blend two distinct businesses again. Also you are asking that we believe you played no part in the failure, we are giving you that even though we know a big percentage of drive failures are caused by mishandling or accidents. It doesn't really matter what happened though, because Seagate sold you a storage device, not data protection services.
johnnyBrandom wrote:
Consider that the drive has a 5 year warranty (warranty does not include data recovery). Is it reasonable to expect a drive with a 5 year warranty to last at least 5 years? I think so.
This is not reasonable or based in logic of any sort. Warranties exist because the potential for failure exist. The warranty is there to help make sales, if you know the product will be replaced if it fails then you might consider buying that one, not the one with less or no warranty. Automobiles fail under warranty ALL THE TIME. Sane people do not assume it will never need warranty service because it has a warranty.
johnnyBrandom wrote:
Consider that I might send it back for replacement under warranty if I was was 100% certain I will not ever want to recover any of the data - but I'm not. I can live without the 2-3 files I know I didn't back-up but I am not 100% certain I missed something else.
Doesn't sound like Seagate's problem at all.
johnnyBrandom wrote:
So Seagate gets away with selling defective merchandise and does not have to honor the warranty OR customers pay $600 ransom to recover data Seagate was responsible for losing OR Seagate honors the warranty, sends out a replacement drive to customers. Who will use that replacement? Only someone who wants to give Seagate $600 in a few months. Reasonable?
No, all manufacturers experience defects, failures, and returns, as well as product abuse, not just Seagate. You know this, but want to pretend it isn't so because you think it helps your argument. And Seagate does have to honor their warranty, you made another false claim. They will even honor the warranty after you have your data recovered. As to your question about "who", I will use the drive. Anyone that doesn't want to use their replacement drive from Seagata, WD, Samsung, HGST just let me know. If it's unopened I'll pay the shipping for you to send it my way
(this offer is only good for the 50 states LOL)
All that said, I feel your pain and completely understand how devastating data loss can be. That doesn't make me take the position that your data safety was Seagate's problem. Just like all the Western Digital recoveries we get, it's not WD's job to protect your data, they are selling an appliance and will gladly replace it if it fails within the specified warranty period.