Have i been ripped off

dvdfan

Hello,

I had a problem with my video security that records footage of my premises so i got a local security firm to fix it. They couldnt find the problem on site, it wouldnt record, so they took it with them. I was following them for a couple of weeks and they eventually said that the 2 hard drives were gone and they had to be replaced and they are special hard drives so it would be expensive. They quoted around €500 to fix it. Now i took out the hard drives to have a look and see if they were new or not, they looked new and the only thing that resembled a date was 2003.02 which maybe february 2003, is this likely to be 2nd hand or the original. I think i may have been ripped off because they look like any old hard drives to me.

I took down the info on the hard drives, there are 2 of them both are identical they are samsung spinpoint SV1204H 120gb Verna hard drives. A quick search brings up prices ranging from $112 - $180. Have i been ripped off or are they just overpricing like all the other firms. I havent paid the bill yet and want to know where i stand before i do. Would any old hard drive have worked for this, im very tempted to just rip out my hard drive from my pc and try it and see or would it have to be a special hard drive like he said

Thanks for the help

btw the system is a Mitsubishi Digital Recorder Model DX-NT400E

JackKelly

Looking at the first link google throws up here, it says

[FONT=verdana, Arial, Helvetica][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica] 2 bays on the caddy, each bay can take any size HDD up to a maximum of 2TB

So it looks like you can use any IDE hard drive.

I can't see how both Hard drives managed to fail at once. That seems a bit unlikely. Also, 500E to stick two Hardrives in a bay is a bit ridiculous.
[/FONT][/FONT]

DublinWriter

TimAy wrote:

I can't see how both Hard drives managed to fail at once. That seems a bit unlikely. Also, 500E to stick two Hardrives in a bay is a bit ridiculous.

Some units like this use different ways of striping data across drives - it might be the case that one of the drives might be gone.

Either way OP, have you tried putting them in your PC to see if they even spin-up and get recognised?

hopeful

Looking up the info on the samsung spinpoint SV1204H drives they seem to be oldish 5400rpm drives. Are these the drives the company put in or took out? If they put them in then they ripped you off as these drives cannot have been available for retail for several years...they were first produced in 2002 as far as I can tell.

dvdfan

Thats the thing i was thinking. They are the supposedly new drives that he put in it, but its well possible that they didnt change them at all. I see what you mean about the 5400 rpm thing, ive had a look at the 3.5" hdd on komplett.ie for the samsung models and they all seem to be 7200rpm.

Is there usually a manufacturing date printed on HDD's, as i said the only thing that resembles a date is 2003.02 which maybe February 03.

Also im not 100% sure on this but im sure the problem was before he took it away that it wouldnt record, but im fairly sure i could replay old footage it just wouldnt record anything new after a certain date. I do know for 100% that i followed the troubleshooting section in the manual and it gave instructions to do a hard drive test, which it passed. This was what cause suspicion originally when i was told the hard drives failed.

Anyway is there any sure way i can tell if i was conned here and wheter there was new hard drives put in at all. They originally installed the system for a different owner a couple of years ago.

Whats the best thing to do, ask for the receipts or has anyone any ideas.

Blazer

looks like you've been conned...ask for receipts for the supposedly new hard drivers and make sure they're from a recognised shop or brand.

DublinWriter

Ok, I had a wee bit of a rethink on this.

Technician goes out, inspects unit on your premesis, brings unit back to bench, replaces drives and drives back out to your premesis and re-installs.

€500 isn't that bad at all dude. Maybe a little bit over the odds, but not much, certainly nothing I'd term to be in rip-off proportions.

Remember, you'll need to have a good relationship with this company as they look after your security system in it's entirity I presume. Whinging about rip-offs and getting drives for €50 from Komplett might sour the entire relationship.

Again, it's your call.

Theta

Chance your arm and ask for the old drives back and a recipt for the new ones!

TempestSabre

DublinWriter wrote:

Ok, I had a wee bit of a rethink on this.

Technician goes out, inspects unit on your premesis, brings unit back to bench, replaces drives and drives back out to your premesis and re-installs.

€500 isn't that bad at all dude. Maybe a little bit over the odds, but not much, certainly nothing I'd term to be in rip-off proportions.

Remember, you'll need to have a good relationship with this company as they look after your security system in it's entirity I presume. Whinging about rip-offs and getting drives for €50 from Komplett might sour the entire relationship.

Again, it's your call.

I agree I'd look at the service overall not just at the cost of some minor component. But it seems expensive to me. Perhaps ask for an itemised bill as you feel its a little expensive, but perhaps theres more to it than you realise.

kaizersoze

You haven't been screwed price wise for the work done (call outs, bench work, replacement parts, etc.) but to me it looks like you're not getting what you paid/will pay for. It looks like you got s/hand drives or they didn't replace them at all. The drives needed in that unit are nothing special btw, just standard according to the spec sheet.

DublinWriter wrote:

Remember, you'll need to have a good relationship with this company as they look after your security system in it's entirity I presume. Whinging about rip-offs and getting drives for €50 from Komplett might sour the entire relationship.

Nonsense. Why would you want to have any kind of relationship with a company thats going to rip you off? Especially where security is involved. The next time he rings them they'll be rubbing their hands again.
There are plenty of reputable companies around that won't screw you over.

OP, ask them for the old drives to send away to have some important footage recovered or you complained to the manufacturer about the problem and they want to test the drives, just to see their reaction.

Anti

you got caught with your trousers around your ankles by the sounds of it.

dvdfan

Thanks for the replies, he did specifically say that reason it was expensive is the drives were special and very exspensive and when i rang him because it was taking so long he said the unit had to be sent away, which dosent make sense either.

dvdfan

Can anyone verify for sure if the hard drives should only be 7200rpm when buying new ones. I was hoping someone with good knowledge could give an opinion here. Considering i have recieved the bill but havent paid it yet i would like to know my rights and where i stand. Can i say to him with confidence, the hard drives you bought are not new because any new hard drives come with 7200rpm and not 5400rpm.

I think the best thing to do is ask him for an itemised bill and/or a receipt for parts and see where it goes from there.

TempestSabre

No because retailers (especially brick and mortar stores) might have unsold old stock which are 5,400. Technically these are new drives. But they should be very cheap. That said can you not just ask for a breakdown of the bill. That will reveal all.

Sir Random

There's nothing 'special' about those drives, other than the fact that they're really old.

Do you know who supplied the original system? If it's an IDView system, then they are probably the original drives, as a Google search for that drive comes up with an IDView system on Pro Securitys website:

http://www.prosecuritys.com/sv1204h.html

dvdfan

DublinWriter wrote:

Ok, I had a wee bit of a rethink on this.

Technician goes out, inspects unit on your premesis, brings unit back to bench, replaces drives and drives back out to your premesis and re-installs.

€500 isn't that bad at all dude. Maybe a little bit over the odds, but not much, certainly nothing I'd term to be in rip-off proportions.

Remember, you'll need to have a good relationship with this company as they look after your security system in it's entirity I presume. Whinging about rip-offs and getting drives for €50 from Komplett might sour the entire relationship.

Again, it's your call.

To be honest i wouldnt deal with them again anyhow. The only reason i picked them was because they had a sticker on one of the cameras. It took a couple of days before they got back in touch with us and about another week for them to call out. The guy came in had a look and said he got a phonecall and had to go and would be back after lunch. Didnt see him for 2 weeks.

Then after been on to them again someone else called back out, was going through the manual for about an hour and said he couldnt find the problem and hed have to take it with him

Not exactly great service. Anyway i agree and know that callout charges can be expensive in alot of industries. But thats not what im disputing, its the fact that it looks unlikely he changed the hard drives because they are an old make that would be hard to find in any retail store, and the fact that i done a hard drive test following the manual instructions which leads me to think that he pulled a fast one. Also he did say the reason why it was so exspensive was due to the special hard drives.

DublinWriter

dvdfan wrote:

Didnt see him for 2 weeks.

Fair enough so, that is indeed extracting the yellow-stuff.

Shop around, as himself says.

TempestSabre

Sounds like taking advantage alright. :mad:

KdjaCL

Use a Program to find old files on a HD after a format and see if theres anything on the drives from a previous life. Brainfreeze cant think of the name of the program thats usually handy for this type of thing

New ones wont have anything.


kdjac

Endurance Man

This sounds like a mix of bad service and the company chancing there arm with 2nd hand drives. Do you know how big the hdd's where before? 120gig for video recording is useless, you would get a few days at the most out of that. We use a minimum of 2x250gig hdd's and thats even being phased out now.
Best advice i could give, phone Night Owl Security if you have any more problems .

dvdfan

KdjaCL wrote:

Use a Program to find old files on a HD after a format and see if theres anything on the drives from a previous life. Brainfreeze cant think of the name of the program thats usually handy for this type of thing

New ones wont have anything.


kdjac

Excellent idea, do you know if there definetely will be some files there if it was formatted, is this always the case or what??

I dont know what was previously in it, afaik it used to be able to record for 30 days but im not definete on that.

Anyone have any ideas for a good free program that can recover deleted files.

thebman

dvdfan wrote:

Excellent idea, do you know if there definetely will be some files there if it was formatted, is this always the case or what??

I dont know what was previously in it, afaik it used to be able to record for 30 days but im not definete on that.

Anyone have any ideas for a good free program that can recover deleted files.

Download the trial version of getdataback.

It'll show you the files and allow you to recover simple text files but it won't recover major files unless you pay for it.

I used it after I had to format my drive but needed some files back. Well worth a look.

http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Search/getdataback.html

Takes a while to run (like half an hour or an hour or so). I left it, had lunch and came back to find it finished.

dvdfan

This one seem to be popular on download.com and is cheaper.

http://www.download.com/BinaryBiz-VirtualLab/3000-2248_4-10583781.html

Would this be compatible with the hard drives.

Also do i just yank the harddrives out of the recorder and into my computer and run the software then??? Im assuming these are standard drives that i can hook up to my computer??

dvdfan

I got a program that tracks lost/deleted files but it turns out the hard drives are macs and the file is a .dmg file and dosent seem to be supported by windows. Im eager to check and see if there is anything in these files that prove these disks are my original disks.

The files is 1.6gb, what can i do??

thebman

Well did you have Mac discs in it?

If nothing else it proves they aren't the top quality HDD's they said they put in for you.

You have enough evidence to call foul play IMO. Getting specific data shouldn't be neccessary. You will have a hard time getting software that runs on Windows that recovers files stored on HFS filesystem.

http://www.softsland.com/Kernel_Macintosh_Data_Recovery_Software.html

This might do the trick. I have no experience, just came out of a google search I did for it. I was looking for a recovery solution comparison chart when I ran into it.

"data recovery software" comparison
^search terms I used. Anyway it has a demo so you can try that if you want.

dvdfan

Well, im not sure what the original drives were (if these are not the originals) but these are definetely mac's because the program i used to recover the deleted files identified it as a mac partition, are mac drives cheaper???

Just wish i had some solid evidence but i guess ill just have to question him with the information i have now. Why would someone choose mac drives over pc drives, is one better than the other, would both work, does it make a difference.

DubQuax

Hi,

sorry I looked at this thread in work and couldnt reply earlier as I cant log on there.

I wanted to say that some people are telling you the most bull**** I ever heard. I am working for a hard drive manufacturer and if you look closely you will see that there is still 5400rpm drives on the market. Especially build for the security cameras and recording since the high data transfer rates are not needed there.

So my advice is to check the serial number and call up the manufacturer directly asking them when it was manufactured.

Good luck

Quax

thebman

DubQuax wrote:

Hi,

sorry I looked at this thread in work and couldnt reply earlier as I cant log on there.

I wanted to say that some people are telling you the most bull**** I ever heard. I am working for a hard drive manufacturer and if you look closely you will see that there is still 5400rpm drives on the market. Especially build for the security cameras and recording since the high data transfer rates are not needed there.

So my advice is to check the serial number and call up the manufacturer directly asking them when it was manufactured.

Good luck

Quax

There are previous files on the drive. It is probably an old drive if you can recover deleted files from a Mac from it.

Also if he said "special hard drive" required that is nonsense because we know the device uses IDE drives which are standard. Why would he say special?

Overall something just seems weird if there are old files on the computer and they are supposed to be new then an explanation is deserved.

But you work for a HDD company so why would the above occur? Are there "special drives" for these machines? Is there the possiblity that he would have to source old drives (say that the machine can't later drives for some reason maybe storage capacity or something like that)?

dvdfan wrote:

Well, im not sure what the original drives were (if these are not the originals) but these are definetely mac's because the program i used to recover the deleted files identified it as a mac partition, are mac drives cheaper???

Just wish i had some solid evidence but i guess ill just have to question him with the information i have now. Why would someone choose mac drives over pc drives, is one better than the other, would both work, does it make a difference.

Hard Drives are standard (there are different available but IDE is common and thats what your device uses). A Mac hard drive would work in a Pc/Mac/External enclosure generally speaking. You'd just format it to work on Pc (with Windows [NTFS] instead of OSX [HFS]). A Mac formatted drive would be for use in an Apple Desktop computer most likely. A .dmg file is an image file for OSX/Mac. http://filext.com/detaillist.php?extdetail=DMG

You should ring the manufacturer like above poster said to find out when they were manufactured if they can give you that information.

You ran some data recovery software on the hard drives and found some old files from a Mac on it so it is reasonable to have doubt in this case so you have some evidence. Finding out when they were manufactured and any other information you can couldn't hurt though.