[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.