I have 4 Linkstation units. One of the units has gone bad and I have learned the hard way that this company does not support their products. Once out of warranty if there is any failures the Buffalo Tech Support response is to buy a new unit. I have had one person tell me the issue was the controller in the enclosure which cannot be purchased separately. I was able to locate an enclosure on EBay to replace the broken one and I contacted tech support again. I was told my drives were bad and you cannot move drives between controllers. Any attempts to escalate are met with resistance. Why doesn't this company support and stand behind their products?
Quote from: RDL on September 19, 2013, 04:28:03 PMthe issue was the controller in the enclosure which cannot be purchased separately. I was able to locate an enclosure on EBay to replace the broken one and I contacted tech support again. I was told my drives were bad and you cannot move drives between controllers.
Cant speak to your entire situation, but it really depends on what error you where getting with the failure of the old unit, there are light codes on the unit which denote what the actual issue is, its pretty specific depending on the case and of course the older units where more vague with the error codes but still offer a good idea of what the problem is...
As for the situations where it IS the chassis (IE the raid controller), the chassis you purchase has to be of the EXACT model family AND version (if the family had a hardware revision)... BUT, its possible that second agent you spoke too was more knowledgeable on the situation, and if he got a specific error code or if your drive was clicking (hardware DEATH for a drive), then I can understand how that might change from possible easy recovery to PAID recovery from company's like DriveSavers (Buffalo's recommendation for data recovery who charges $500+)...
it sucks, but what support can and cant do are two different things :(
(like all of the eBay drives I buy to referb arent supported for Warranty :D)