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#21
Just an update in case anyone wonders. I ended up paying the $1200+. The main problem was that the preamp went kaput (and there may have been some minor platter damage according to techs). I did get my data back (I believe I did at least, it doesn't seem that anything is missing/corrupt).
In the end, I won't be buying a WD portable drive again because of the ridiculous way they have them set up (even if that wouldn't have helped me); also because of the VERY BAD suggestion I received from someone at their tech support.
I don't plan on sending the drive in just to get a "refurbished" drive (another part of the joke that is called a warranty). I will keep it for myself, maybe one day open it up just to see what it looks like for myself (knowing that it would completely destroy it... not that it matters too much)
WD and all the other hard drive manufacturers should be forced to have REAL warranties or none at all. At a minimum, if the drive is still in warranty they should offer recovery services at a much more reasonable price (ex: take a zero out of what I paid). With my most recent drive purchases, an option of recovery "insurance" was available for $10/$15 (2 years/3 years) which I think is very worth it to avoid possibly having to pay $1000+. It really should just be included in the price of the drive though (or at least... ALWAYS offered... unfortunately I don't think it existed when I bought this particular drive).
I really feel bad for the people who can't afford recovery and/or are being tricked into thinking that when their drives come with a warranty, their data will be safe because let's be honest, most people don't read the fine print and will only find out that about this when their drive actually does go kaput.
Also to anyone going down the recovery route: make sure that if you do plan to have an expensive recovery that your drive NEEDS it. Unfortunately, mine did, but in many cases, it could just be the electronic board (PCB) that is messed up (which means they don't need to go into the drive/platters/need a clean room) and that makes it less expensive (a few hundred dollars).
In case anyone wonders, I am now doing a Samsung 500 GB SSD/Seagate 2 TB portable drives for backup (for smaller files) and for the larger files the same Seagate and a WD 4 TB desktop drive (the WD desktop drives don't have the weird setup as far as I know, but probably wouldn't have bought WD in general after all of this - bought it in the midst of all of this). The Seagate and WD have the "insurance" I mentioned above.
Thanks for the help trying to figure it out.
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