MoonGear
07-29-2009, 04:50 PM
My RAID setup hiccuped a few days ago. When I booted up, the Intel Matrix Storage Console popped up a dialog telling me it was, in effect, remirroring my RAID drives.
Well, okay. I'm patient. I decided to click on the Storage Console icon in the system tray to see what I'd get, and got (surprise!) the Matrix Storage Console. I found the array status section which showed the remirroring progress, which is what I was hoping for since I wanted an idea of how long I might have to wait.
However, when I checked out the details on the various drives in the system I discovered that the RAID drives had two different model designations. Since I had specified 1TB WD Caviar Blacks, I expected to see the same product code for both.
After the remirroring completed itself, I checked the product codes for the RAID disks (and the C: drive, too) on the Western Digital site. The C: drive is the 750GB Caviar Black I ordered. But the first RAID drive I searched on turned out to be a Caviar Green. Not a bad drive per se, but not a Black. More astonishing, the second drive turns out to be not merely a Caviar Black, but an RE3, an enterprise-class drive meant for servers running 24/7. So I had kind of a bad-news/good-news situation happening.
I finally got on the phone today with Maingear Customer Service to find out what the deal is. As it turns out, Gus answered the phone--it so happens he's the tech who built my Prelude 2. Once I made clear what the problem was, he admitted that he had no idea why the discrepancies occured and apologized for them. Then, without the slightest prompting on my part, he told me that "the right thing to do" would be to send an RE3 to replace the Caviar Green.
So, not only do I get two same-model drives in my RAID config, which makes me feel much better (this may not be critical these days, but used to be when I was dealing with shoebox-sized 80MB HDs a couple of decades ago), the drives are better than specified, and at no extra charge. The machine I already deemed a bargain is becoming even more so!
This is what customer service should be all about: Admit to the problem; apologize; and make the customer whole in a way easiest on him or her, without the customer having to demand anything. This is why I've just given Maingear Customer Service an A+.
"The right thing to do." What a great thing to hear! Thanks, Gus. Well done.
Well, okay. I'm patient. I decided to click on the Storage Console icon in the system tray to see what I'd get, and got (surprise!) the Matrix Storage Console. I found the array status section which showed the remirroring progress, which is what I was hoping for since I wanted an idea of how long I might have to wait.
However, when I checked out the details on the various drives in the system I discovered that the RAID drives had two different model designations. Since I had specified 1TB WD Caviar Blacks, I expected to see the same product code for both.
After the remirroring completed itself, I checked the product codes for the RAID disks (and the C: drive, too) on the Western Digital site. The C: drive is the 750GB Caviar Black I ordered. But the first RAID drive I searched on turned out to be a Caviar Green. Not a bad drive per se, but not a Black. More astonishing, the second drive turns out to be not merely a Caviar Black, but an RE3, an enterprise-class drive meant for servers running 24/7. So I had kind of a bad-news/good-news situation happening.
I finally got on the phone today with Maingear Customer Service to find out what the deal is. As it turns out, Gus answered the phone--it so happens he's the tech who built my Prelude 2. Once I made clear what the problem was, he admitted that he had no idea why the discrepancies occured and apologized for them. Then, without the slightest prompting on my part, he told me that "the right thing to do" would be to send an RE3 to replace the Caviar Green.
So, not only do I get two same-model drives in my RAID config, which makes me feel much better (this may not be critical these days, but used to be when I was dealing with shoebox-sized 80MB HDs a couple of decades ago), the drives are better than specified, and at no extra charge. The machine I already deemed a bargain is becoming even more so!
This is what customer service should be all about: Admit to the problem; apologize; and make the customer whole in a way easiest on him or her, without the customer having to demand anything. This is why I've just given Maingear Customer Service an A+.
"The right thing to do." What a great thing to hear! Thanks, Gus. Well done.