Microdirect – Samsung 750GB Spinpoint F1 SAT (Samsung HD753LJ)

I purchased a hard drive from microdirect about a year ago. The hard disc drive is a “Samsung 750GB Spinpoint F1 SAT,  Samsung HD753LJ” and has always seemed to have problems with sectors and the hard disc drive did not always appear in “My Computer”.
I ran Spinrite to repair the sectors which seemed to work for a while and then the problems started occuring again. So Spinrite seemed to be a temporary fix until the problem got worse.

I have two other Samsung HD753LJ connected to the computer for storage of games and software and media etc. The main reason I bought the third one was for data backup. I use Cobian 9 to backup all my files from my other  Samsung HD753LJ 750Gb. Due to me loosing very precious data in the past I learnt from this mistake and could justify spending £65 on another hard drive purely for backups.

The hard disc drive came with 3 years manufacturer warranty.
I then tried to contact Samsung directly and they told me to use the ES-TOOL which seemed very useful but still did not help resolve any of my issues but alerted me of an error code which was:

Error code/Fault description :
Service code => AJ38 : Smart Error
Error Occured Test Loop Number 1

I then tried to submit an RMA to Samsung but it came up with this problem:

“code 103: The product has been brought in from outside of this service region and cannot be serviced. Please contact your reseller or distributor.”

So I now enter my country on the website as China instead of UK and I can progress further for the RMA. I guessed China as most things seemed to be imported from here these days.

It the produced an RMA sheet which states I need to return the item to China. No way was I going to do that when Samsung must have offices in the UK. So I emailed samsung and explained the problem they stated:

“The RMA number that you have provided belongs to a service center located outside of your service region. Please understand that your hard drive was brought in from outside of your service region and you may contact the point of purchase for further assistance.”

I the contacted Microdirect and they said submit an RMA on the site once logged in. I tried and it said it was out of warranty which was incorrect.(I had my receipt to prove them wrong just incase.)

They generated my an RMA and sent it in an email. I have now returned the hard disc drive in similar and suitable packaging to microdirect which cost me £2.99 for recorded signed delivery.

Another interesting email Samsung sent me (From: SamsungHDD RMA [hddrmareg@samsung.com]):

Dear customer.

Firstly, we apologize for your inconvenience.
Your HDD sold from SAMSUNG to HongKong.In this case, your drive must provice RMA by point of purchased.
Your dealer(supplier) should bear all the responsibility for the HDD.
If you want to RMA service, please contact your dealer(supplier) or our homepage RMA process.
www.samsunghdd.com – support – warranty
? Out of service area.. This mean grey distributed.
This is not shipped your country and area ,
For example ,  If one of drive requested in USA, but this drive were shipped to EU country ..
it will be reject service request in USA.
? Please always BACK-UP your preclous data.

Thanks

I will update you on my progress and how easy or awkward they can be to deal with. It was sent today 12/01/2009.