[tzs]

That reminds me of an internal hard disk I had several years ago. I think it was a Seagate, but it might have been Western Digital. This was a retail drive bought at BestBuy, and the box specifically said that it worked with Windows, MacOS, and Linux, although it noted that their fancy add-on software only worked under Windows. No problem for me, because I didn't need the fancy add-on software.

A year later the drive developed some bad sectors. It was still under warranty so qualified for a free replacement. All I needed to do was get an RMA number and ship the drive to them.

But to get an RMA number you had to run their diagnostic software which, if it decided the drive really did have a problem, would issue the RMA number.

That diagnostic software was Windows only.

I ended up temporarily moving the drive to my Windows gaming box to run the diagnostic. I'm not sure what would have happened if I had been a purely MacOS and Linux household.

[splix]

I had same problem with failed Seagate HDD. They were asking me to use their Windows-only app to diagnose the problem.

I tried to explain that I use it with a NAS and I cannot install Windows on it just to do such diagnostics test. No luck to convince the support and I had to hack some pieces of old hardware together just to run that tool. Funny enough the tool was able to tell only something like "the drive is broken". I had a much more detailed report from NAS though, with details from SMART but that was not accepted. Basically they didn't believe me and asked for a confirmation from their tool, like it's more trustworthy.

Of course I'm not going to buy any Seagate after such experience.

[the_pwner224]

I recently RMAd a Seagate Exos (their series designed for enterprise / data centers) recently and didn't have to run any tool or provide any details. I was using this one for my home NAS.

There may be a difference here between the consumer drives and the enterprise drives, or maybe they changed the system to not require it in any case now.

[splix]

It was IronWolf Pro. I guess it's a business drive, but not an enterprise drive.

I was not an enterprise or even a business customer anyway, so they had that procedure. The process may change since that moment, I just checked it was in 2019. Maybe I should give them another try

[alar44]

I can't blame them. I'd imagine tons of people try to replace perfectly fine drives - "I can't find my spreadsheet so drive is bad" "Windows updates were slow so drive is bad" "I bricked my drive trying to install Linux on a NAS" etc etc.

[crtasm]

At least those first two scenarios don't sound like people who'd think to provide SMART test data.

Windows shouldn't be a requirement for getting a faulty product replaced.

[CoolGuySteve]

Yeah my Ryzen CPU came with a free game but the only way to submit the form was to run some Windows tool.

I had to get the state consumer fraud bureau involved before AMD would honor their promotion.

[jabbany]

Hah, I still remember that promo. Even on Windows, the tool was super flaky and often did not detect the hardware.

[fomine3]

It's fair if the game is only for Windows

[CoolGuySteve]

Not really, I beat it using Lutris on Linux.

[boomboomsubban]

>I'm not sure what would have happened if I had been a purely MacOS and Linux household.

Passthrough to a VM, though I suppose the Windows license could be an issue.

[jabbany]

Actually, since Win 10 you can run the OS indefinitely without a license. It just doesn't allow you to customize stuff like the wallpaper etc.

Ref: https://www.howtogeek.com/244678/you-dont-need-a-product-key...

[BenjiWiebe]

You can run Windows 7 indefinitely without a license, too.

You get a nag every now and then, and the desktop background keeps resetting to black. Can't remember if there's a watermark as well (10 has a watermark).

[Arrath]

I had myself a hearty laugh recently when I was in Vegas and the casino elevator wall screen panels had the ACTIVATE WINDOWS banner overlaid on the videos.

[AniseAbyss]

I see pre built PCs come with free demo version of win11. They expect you to crack it yourself.

Microsoft stopped giving a shit about piracy from consumers. Its a far cry from the days when windows cost €300.

[jabbany]

With all the ads they shove in your face you'd think they'd just make the OS free at this point.

[tzs]

I don't know if this is changed with Window 11 but 10 and earlier let you go a while between installation and entering a license key, at least for the consumer editions, so licensing should not be a problem.

The big issue with a VM approach in this specific case was that this was before Macs switched to Intel processors. My Mac was had PowerPC.

A VM might have worked on my Linux machine, although my recollection is that back then (early 2000s) VM passthrough was not very sophisticated. I remember trying Windows VMs for a few firmware things that involved proprietary vendor commands and finding that it was hit and miss.

[pixl97]

You can download 180 day trials of Windows server from Microsoft, no license needed.