Tag: external_hard_drive

Your rights as a consumer

I bought a Western Digital My Book 1tb external hard drive recently from Komplett.ie and it was dead on arrival.

I checked the Komplett site and was led to a page with instructions on returns

Komplett.ie returns instructions

I followed the instructions and received an RMA several days later. I posted back the drive and a week later I received an email saying:

RMA item received, not tested yet.
You will be notified later by e-mail at the next action.

They haven’t even looked at it yet? AAaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

This was on November 30th. I ordered this device on November 2nd. I still don’t have an external storage option over a month later.

Over the weekend I started looking into my rights as a consumer and I noticed on the Consumer’ Association of Ireland website that:

When you buy goods from a retailer, you make a contract with him. He agrees to provide certain goods to you for a certain price. If your purchase turns out to be faulty, the retailer, not the manufacturer, is responsible to you and must sort out your complaint. You are entitled to a refund, a replacement or a repair.

[emphasis added]

A refund? I didn’t see any mention of this anywhere on the Komplett website but according to the Consumer’s Association, I am within my rights to ask for it – excellent!

I have now emailed Komplett asking for a full refund. It will be interesting to see their response (and how long it takes). I’m not holding my breath.

External storage options

My main computer is my laptop – it is a desktop replacement. The biggest issue with this is that laptop hard drives are, by definition, small 🙁

On my laptop I have all my music, all my photos and all my email going back to 1997! The laptop has a 120gb hard drive, but I am fast approaching that limit!

I have a La Cie 200gb external firewire which is fine for backups but what I really need is to be able to move my music and photos onto external drive(s), freeing up space on the laptop, and allowing me to grow my collection.

The drive(s) should be easy to add to, so that if I find I’m approaching the limit again, I can simply add another drive. I’d like to add drives in pairs so I can mirror them using RAID.

Has anyone any suggestions on a good way to set this up? And what is good kit to use (good = cheap and reliable).