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Out of warranty Alto drive replacement

B

bytebuster

Well-known member
Folks,
Just curious how much it would typically cost for replacing the hard drive on an alto assuming it is out of warranty. Unlike the servers, the drives are not swappable. Drive failure always spooks me
 
I don't have the answer to your primary question, but a drive failure on an Encore product is not catastrophic like other lines because the content all lives in the cloud, and if local copies are indeed lost, they can downloaded again, or cloned from another machine.
 
You should have received a direct reply to this question in response to your email, but to educate others I sharing Support's comment again here. The current policy is that if an OOW Alto has a drive failure (or any problem that requires repair), a remanufactured replacement would have to be purchased, and you would return the defective unit to K. Cost is subject to change, so I'm not posting a number, but either K, or a dealer can quote the cost to replace the unit.


Jim
 
Why isn't equipment more repairable?

[This is not meant to be contentious but just to reflect more of a user perspective on this issue, to try to get at some thoughts of how to bridge the gap between user repair desires and K's business needs.]

This seems like something of an achilles heel for Kaleidescape (K). An analogy from a user perspective may help. Imagine if your child has no medical insurance (beyond warranty period), breaks his leg so he can no longer walk and medical staff can offer only these options: 1. Throw him on the trash heap because he has aged and he has failed in some way and is no longer generally useful; 2. Pay to adopt another child that has already been in another family or foster household and learn to live with him (he will look similar to your prior kid but is "remanufactured" so he may have some rough edges). But you like your kid and want to keep him and just want the leg fixed for a fee. You can't understand why this is not an option.

K largely wants everyone to use in-warranty equipment and most users would prefer this as well but K often puts a lifespan of 3 years on equipment (although they do allow warranty extensions for another few years) and users, especially for servers, probably often lean to a lifespan of 10 years. Until some medium ground can be found, there likely will be a lot of hardware in use beyond its warranty period.

Why are K units not built to be repairable beyond their warranty periods and why are types of repairs fairly limited? I think the answer may be one of profitability on the effort, as many people who do field repairs come to find.
 
Yup. I did hear back from K.
Looks like they end up replacing the "broken" unit with a replacement unit (for out of warranty repairs). And its not cheap :(
 
Repair of servers requires components that may no longer be available, as it is highly unlikely that 100% of the components are designed and procured by Kaleidescape.

The analogy you give wouldn't really fit this - a remanufactured server chassis is going to be identical to the end user with no separate personality like kids. The benefits of a remanufactured server are immense - you swap your drives and are running in minutes, as opposed to sending a server back and waiting until they fix it if possible. That just breeds unhappy customers and gets them looking for an alternative while they are waiting.

I have had a remanufactured server chassis sent to me twice to swap out systems with an issue. It was so fast and easy.
 
That is a good point about advanced replacement on the server. Maybe K is trying to make it as painless as possible, as long as you can afford the differential upcharge for the replacement unit.
 
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