When you send a warranted hard disk to RMA do they open it before sending you another one?

[davide940]

I have a hard disk which fell on the ground but doesn't show any damage outside, makes no weird noises and it is still working. The problem is an high number of current pending sector count and the provided hard disk diagnoses software says to do a RMA. Will they figure out that it fell? In case they do, what will happen?

 

[jsmithepa]

These things are commodity items, my guess is, they just throw it into a BAD pile. But S.M.A.R.T. has a G sensor doesn't it? (not sure). Hey, if they refuse you, u know why.

 

[Hawkeye22]

I'd try deleting all partitions, recreate the partition and format the drive, then check to see if your pending sector count continues to increase. You will need to back up any data before trying this of course.

I would think the vendor would have to at least give it a quick look just to make sure it's not a quality control issue, but I've never been refused an RMA on a hard drive as long is it's still under warranty.