My 14-month-old WB_BLACK SN580X 4TB started failing WD’s Dashboard diagnostic, and the Dashboard said it needs to be replaced, so I created an RMA in “Advance” mode ($25 plus a non-refundable shipping charge) - I want to get the replacement, clone onto it, then return the failing drive. But, more than weeks later WD/SanDisk hasn’t shipped the drive yet: the drives *exist, they’re stock in stock at their Amazon store, but apparently (per customer service) they only honor the warranty with parts from some internal store and they’re out of stock. So they thank me for my patience with every email, and I am doing daily full backups while getting long delays/hangs on my office computer.
So, I’m thinking I need to buy a different drive and resell the WD drive if/when they send me the replacement. My other WD drives seem to run OK, my concern is just their policy about the warranty inventory … so I might buy another WD/SanDisk for this non-critical use case. However, I’d want to buy only the most popular/reliable models soas to minimize my risk of hitting this issue again - if there is a failure, I want there to be a chance WD/SanDisk will be able to fulfill their warranty promise in a reasonable time (not 3+ weeks and still no idea!). Recommendations?
(My 4TB drive is split into a C: and D:, and the total used between the two is under 1TB. I have two NVME slots to work with on the motherboard. I do office and dev work, run some lightweight VMs, using a 3900x/64GB, don’t game)
