Do not ever buy from RJTech

Unfortunately I've got to make this post. At the end of July my M980 began exhibiting weird LCD symptoms. I opened it up and made sure to reseat all the cables but it was still flickering really badly. I emailed RJTech, whom I had purchased it from as a bare bones. They emailed back and said I was still under warranty for 1 more day but I would have to overnight it to them for them to consider it a warranty fix. That was 3:00pm EST, giving me less than an hour to get it down to the UPS Store for packaging. I made sure all my cirtical files existed on both my primary drive and a secondary drive I used for backups and that I'd taken a recent snapshot to my secondary. I paid $230 to have it overnighted from Connecticut to California fully insured so that it would be covered.

A week later I get an email from RJTech saying that the LCD screen was bad and they had to send it to Clevo France for repairs. I told them that I had data on the machine I couldn't afford to lose and asked why they couldn't repair it in house. They said they had to send it in, but everything would be fine. 3 weeks go by with no details. They finally email me last week and say good news, Clevo replaced your LCD. Bad news, your boot drive may be corrupt because we can't boot into Windows. So you'll need to repair it. Silly me, I'm still not thinking there are any problems.

I got the laptop back today. Both drives had been formatted back to a basic NTFS. My OS drive and my backup drive. Keep in mind, this was supposed to be simply to replace an LCD screen. I was without my laptop for 5 weeks. I had to pay $230 for a warranty call. And then they had the nerve to wipe my system. RJTech's response was "Sorry, but we're not responsible for data and it must have gotten messed up in shipping." Funny but shipping doesn't reformat 2 hard drives. That takes a moron tech to do it.

I cannot even begin to think about what this is going to take to recover. I had things that were litterally irreplaceable on that machine. If I had more time I would have copied the image off externally but I simply didn't. Silly me for never imaginging that someone would wipe BOTH hard drives to repair an LCD defect. I am beyond furious that this happened, and I would urge anyone thinking about a Clevo/Sager unit to avoid RJTech like the plague.

-Paul

 

Why? RJTech didn't format the drive.

It's often common practice for the factory to format HDDs.

Your best move would've been to either include a note asking for this to not be done, or better yet, remove your drives.

I once had a machine sent back to Clevo for a motherboard, and had the exact experience; all of my data was wiped. I didn't, and shouldn't, blame my reseller.

I do feel bad for your loss, but RJTech didn't do any wrong.

 

Yes they did. They promised me it would be fine, and then when it wasn't they decided to play the "oh it must have gotten formatted in shipping" card. Sorry but that doesn't fly. If they had ever said it would have been formatted I would have said don't send it. If they had the decency to at least admit it was formatted and not try and play dumb I might not have made this post. But they didn't. The reseller should know this is going to happen and warn the customer.

 

Welcome to reality, madpoet. I know a whole bunch of people that sent their notebooks out for repair (Acer, Dell, HP, etc.) under the notion that their drives would be fine. My fingers are tired so I'll leave the rest of the story to your imagination.

 

Life sucks and then you die.

It is annoying, but there nothing to do now.

 

Since it was an LCD issue, I would have taken the hard drives out before sending it, especially if the data was irreplacable. A computer can always work without a hard drive and they could have fixed any hardware problem without it in there, you just can't get to the OS.

 

@Madpoet,

Bad luck, Matey!
But thar's tuh way to get 'em files even after reformat!
Look for Pareto Logic software, it's ~50$ per year. You can retrieve all your data!

Fair Winds!
Wegh anchor, lads! Heave -ho! Heave - ho!

 

You could try Pandora Recovery. Its a free software and does a pretty decent job. It may not recover all your files though.

 

Always backup before you ship a laptop anywhere. I've even learned to start backing up before getting on flights. (I usually have to carry my work laptop on the plane for security reasons resulting in my personal laptop ending up in baggage.) While it's easy to blame the reseller and Clevo you should also hold yourself responsible. If the data was irreplaceable it should have been backed up. Don't trust RAID either. There's a long list of disappointed people (and corporations) who made the incorrect assumption that RAID was infallible. It's not and with controller failures, often due to firmware issues, the results are equally catastrophic.

Backup, Backup, Backup, Backup.
... and then verify your backups and recovery! (Long list of people and corporations who assumed they had good backups and didn't.)

Backup, verify the backups by restoring at least once if not every few months, sleep well knowing your data is safe.

 

Sorry, have to side with RJTech on this one. There are many things you could have done to protect your data that would have taken just a few minutes, but you didn't do that, and thus must suffer the consequences.

 

I have to also agree with RJTEch the screen was bad you purchased a barebones and you sent back the hard drives. This realy sucks but you should have sent back just a barebones laptop bro. Also never take verbal claims to anything, if its not in writing its worthless.

 

Yes, RAID is NOT backup. Its redundancy.

OP: Why didnt you take out the drive/s before sending it in?

Are you sure they sent you back the exact same hard drives?

At any rate, lesson learnt the hard way. On the road to recovery now, so try this recovery software

 

Sorry but it's no RJTech fault, they simply forwarded the laptop for a repair.
Stuff happens and you didn't have much time, and you were put in a situation where you had to act quickly, and you did the mistake of not backing up due to time and not taking out the hdd's.
If the info was that important that should be your first priority, to make sure under no circumstances you'll loose it, then worry about repair.
We all make mistakes, but you can't blaim the middle man.

 

I also find it odd that the drives were formatted, the fact that it took some three weeks is odd as well.

If "blame" is to lie with anyone, I'd say it would be with RJTech. They gave the impression that the data would be "fine", when the HDD's ended up formatted. This implies that they either didn't know Clevo France's repair procedures, or that they didn't properly communicate with Clevo France. Swapping screens does not format HDD's, so clearly something more was done. If they knew that Clevo France had the habit of replacing or formatting drives when making repairs, they could've informed the customer before sending the laptop off. Alternatively, they could've simply told Clevo France not to touch the drives, they surely had enough time.

It'd be a different story if the drives were in RAID though, since simple BIOS changes can corrupt the data in that case.

 

honestly with all the news about pictures of hard drive that end up on internet one would be insane to send his computer including hardware for repair.

I send my old asus G1 on repair a year ago. and the first thing i did before sending it was to remove the hard drive.

leaving your hard drive in your computer during repair is literally leaving your life in someone else hand.

someone should do something about the title of this post. rjtech which i don't know doesn't deserve such bad publicity.

 

If all they did is format them ntfs all your data is still there and should be recoverable with the right software.

 

I would have to blame both RJTech and the OP.

The OP should have just taken out the hard drives as has been mentioned. RJTech should have not been such pricks and made him overnight the laptop in a huge expensive rush. He initiated the claim while within the warranty period.

Given that the customer should be respected in these scenarios, that shifts the blame more towards RJtech being inconsiderate

 

I don't think your problems required such a dramatic title. People will immediately disregard your post as fuming/looking for attention if you are too dramatic, be factual man.

But I agree making you overnight the laptop was a shady move, and they should have had you back up your data.

 

About hard drives, OP should really back up more often... I learned this the hard way.

 

madpoet, have you tried using Linux to recover your files? If it's a boot issue you should be able to get them, if they wiped your hard drive then I don't know what to say unfortunately.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sec...-internet-security-2010-bluescreen-death.html

In Ubuntu for example, your windows files will be in "file system/host"... you can just copy them as normal, reinstall windows, and put the files back. That's if we are dealing with a boot issue here.

 

Just curios, what if to put off hdd before sending the nb?
Will it be ok for them or support team will send it back like "of course it's not working, there are no any hdd" without even checking LCD screen?