One side effect of the one year anniversary of the MediaSmart Server is that we are now in the time frame where our warranties are beginning to expire, especially for early adopters who purchased as soon as the MSS was available. HP provides a one year warranty on the MediaSmart Server, and a few months ago they fortunately expanded the warranty to not be invalidated if you’ve upgraded the memory in your server. Most members posting on the forums that I’ve seen have been receiving replacement units for failed hardware, free replacement CD and DVD media, and overall HP has done a very good job supporting customers (after working out some initial issues with their Voice Response system).
However, now that some of us are outside our warranty, what happens if we need support, lose our Server Recovery DVD, or have a hardware failure? I sent HP a request for answers to these questions, and got the following information from the Global Manager of the MediaSmart Server Support Team.
Questions 1: Why does HP not make the Server Recovery DVD image available for download? We’ve seen several users requesting this when they lose their DVD or have a damaged disk.
HP does not have distribution rights to post recovery ISO images. In fact if you check any Windows based product (Notebook, Desktop, ISS, etc..) you won’t be able to download a recovery ISO. This is common I’m afraid for all Windows based products and not something that we can change at this time.
Question 2: A forum member lost his Server Recovery DVD and is concerned that he is out of warranty and won’t be able to get replacement media. What is HP’s position on helping users who have lost their CD or DVD media, both during and after the warranty period?
HP currently does not have an option for the customer to pay for a replacement media kit. The reason for this is that we are still sending these FOR FREE to customers even if they are outside of their warranties. We set up a support offering in North America that is way above and beyond the normal boundaries and as such we’re currently not charging for Out of Warranty support or replacement media kits even out of warranty.
At some point we will enable both a charge for out of warranty support and a charge for out of warranty media kit replacements but at this time we are not doing this. When we do it will be nominal.
This is good news for MediaSmart Server users, and I want to thank HP for taking the time to provide some insight into the support scenario as early-adopting customers begin to reach the end of their warranty periods.
Article by Alex Kuretz
I'm Alex Kuretz, and I'm the founder of MediaSmartServer.net. I was the Lead Test and Integration Engineer at HP for the MediaSmart Server until April 2008 when I moved on to other opportunities outside HP. I've kept active in the Windows Home Server community, creating several add-ins and helping users make the most of their Home Servers.
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An interesting question would have been, what happens if we need spare parts? So far I’ve not seen any replacement parts available for the MSS such as PSUs, SATA backplanes, disk trays, or even entire cases (shells).
My warranty has “prematurely expired” since I’ve swapped out the noisy PSU fan, but I wouldn’t mind being able to buy some parts as I’ve come to rely on the MSS quite a bit!
I’d love to get the name and number of that Global Manager. Last time I called to get a Recovery DVD, they gave me a run-around because I don’t have the receipt. What’s worse, I called just 10 days after the 1-year warranty expired.
This was several months ago, and I basically shelved the unit. However, I would love to get it running again. I also would like to see some disk trays made available (I’m missing two of mine).
I thought for sure there might be an .iso of it floating around, but I can’t find it anywhere. Maybe it’s time to try calling again and see what kind of answer I get now.