RMA Process

[datapartners]

I am amidst the RMA process with Buffalo where they previously had and confirmed by phone - they already have my proof of purchase. I sent them the drives support diagnosed bad on the phone and they were received on 8/6 by JAMES.

As per the technicians instructions, I sent all 4 RMA's in one big box containing individually labeled boxes (stating as much on the outside of the main box), each with their respective RMA number all over the outside of the smaller boxes, inside the boxes (rma emails printed out), and on a post it inside with each drive to boot.

Each drive was individually put in esd bags and contained within HD shipping boxes surrounded by foam and bubble wrap. The 4 boxes inside the one big box contained further foam and bubble wrap. So everything should be kosher.

My question is, how long after buffalo receiving the drives should I expect to get them back (Florida), and do they send emails to notify of status updates along the way? If so I haven't seen them.

Thanks!

[Texturtle]

Those will all ship FedEx ground. If you contact tech support they should be able to give you more information. Unfortunately the system does not generate emails.

[datapartners]

Drives just came in. Fantastic! Thanks Buffalo!

They are all brand new, Wonderful!

They are different model than the highly faulty (5/7 fail over 3 years, including a previous replacement) Desktop class Seagate ST3000DM001's they replace - Great!

The model they are replaced with - Western Digital WD30EZRX has a slightly higher rating on newegg - whereas only 40% gave 1 or 2 out of 5 ratings, where the other was 45% - Improvement!

But...

The WD30EZRX is still a desktop grade drive, and it is 5400 RPM. The ones I already have that came with the unit are 7200 RPM, so I can't responsibly go back to the default RAID6 on this unit, as its not wise or even recommended by buffalo support staff to mix the RPM's. So I will go with R5 + R1 to yield the same capacity, some resiliency (although not double parity), and effectively splitting the arrays to only contain the same model drives.

Will See how this pans out, but since I am re-purposing the device this may be OK with the 2 separate arrays.