1000 Dollars for an hard drive?

Putting aside the dubious claim that the HDX wont work with newer hard drives (why?), Steve states that “ This is not latest spec PC parts (hence $100 for a hard drive etc), but rather computing tech from 15years ago that we need to source and its not cheap.”

Fact is, according to OP, the HDD in question is a Seagate ST2000VM003 - which is still for sale for round $60 retail (and presumably much less for wholesale). Does Steve not know this?

Further, given mechanical HDDs are known for failures after 3-5 years of continuous use, in keeping with Naim’s practice of offering long term service to their products, wouldn’t it be good practice to have some of these HDDs in inventory vs the stated need to having to buy these drives each time when there is a faulty unit in for service?

Lastly, others in this post have noted competition is able to do a similar service for a comparable product for around $60 - why is Naim charging 15x for essentially a similar process.

Final roll call for members of the deceased equine flagellation society.

5 Likes

The response of Steve, which you tend not to believe :
« * The init sequence to get these servers operational is not as easy as just put a new hard drive in. The Digifi software stack that makes it an audio server needs specialist knowledge & process to get it configured properly when starting from a clean drive (the drive needs correctly binding to the main motherboard board in the Digifi SQL database). There is one chance to do the sequence right and if messed up, the drive needs re-cloning again.«

2 Likes

At least you have an explanation about the process, in other areas and in the last month, I have experienced -
A scanner about 4 years old, bought specifically for its photography related capability will not work, the only change since last used was the PC “upgraded” to Win 11. Turns out that the software is not Win 11 compatible. I managed to speak to a real person, two options, download an app the will allow scanning of documents only or buy a new scanner.
A camera that suddenly started flashing a red error message, image stabsliser failure, online information suggests continuing use will brick the camera, maker offers a repair, with no guarantee for twice the cost of the camera.
A friend manages to pull the inside drivers door handle off. The cost, a complete replacement door panel £995, plus fitting, plus VAT. The enterprising garage chap re-fixes the old one with penny washers, two bolts and T-nuts for £25.

I was asked to produce a shot of Janet Jackson and dug out the negative from the loft.
I sold my nikon cool scan but borrowed one from a friend. I took it home and couldn’t get nikon coolscan software that worked with modern macs
Went back to the friend who still had a pc on vista and we managed to get a scan

  • all this for one image!

Other options which might help were to buy vuescan or silverfast software - compatible for many scanners . Not cheap but better than bricking the scanner?
Vuescan offers a trial (fiddly to access) which will do a scan which has type all over it
Good luck

2 Likes

Hi guys,

Purely to ensure this thread stays factual. The Seagate hard drives had the EOL notice raised in Dec 2019. See doc below from Seagate confirming this.

We can’t buy parts of dubious origins from EBay etc. - on official repairs we have to use parts that we can trust where they have come from and haven’t been used etc already.

As mentioned before, we do support these servers and they are a very old design - one of my first projects back in 2006 when we did Naimnet :slight_smile:

if a DIY fix is wanted, then one way forward is to clone the drive off another HDX server. The default device name won’t be right as won’t be paired to the motherboard correctly, but it will operate assuming no other faults on the product.

Best regards

Steve Harris
Software Director
Naim Audio Ltd.

6 Likes

Thanks for the response Steve, but honestly I don’t know what this is meant to show. Of course, happy to keep this discussion factual.

  1. you can still buy the drive in question from authorised dealers that is not ebay at around $50. The document that you posted is the last shipment date from Seagate to authorised dealers. The document doesn’t show there is no stock of the drive in the market place.

  2. Seagate replaced ST2000VM003 with a newer product - why would this newer drive not work as you claim? HDD technology is mature but still improving, with new drivers generally offering superior performance and reliability vs older tech.

  3. in any event, this document you posted doesn’t explain the eye watering cost of your repair. unless you could show - as you claimed, that because the drive is no longer in production, your sourcing cost is now much higher.

  4. as others have mentioned your competition is able to do a similar swap for much cheaper. Why not Naim?

@frenchrooster - I never said I didn’t believe the steps Steve outlined in swapping the drives in the HDX. To me, in very simple terms, the steps are installing the pre-existing and standard software on a new drive, and then plugging the drive into the HDX chassis (which is in effect a small PC running windows). I don’t think this is very complicated.

Sorry, not trying to be rude, but your post and response to me suggests you know better than Naim. Perhaps you should contact the OP and do the repair yourself, if it’s not complicated. The OP will send you an hdd with his HDX.

3 Likes

This seems to me to be an extremely incongruous discussion, and I think a little clarity is required before antbody is in a position to cast judgement.

For a start, the OP says the charge is $1000 but we don’t know if that’s US$ or something else, so we have no idea what the price is.

Then we have Richard’s comments that this is not a price from an authorised Naim dealer, and that the actual price Naim service dept would quote may be significantly lower. (Although I’m not sure how an unauthorised dealer would even get Naim to supply the required parts or service?)

We also have little clarity on what the charge covers. Recently Naim have often charged a flat rate for servicing, and if that’s what this quote represents it may cover a large amount of work to bring the device to more-or-less as new contition. This may include any number of repairs given that the HDX has an internal power supply, a colour touchscreen, DAC, network card, etc. While I admit that Naim’s service charges look far from cheap these days, this price does appear somewhat more reasonable if it includes a whole raft of repair required to bring the unit back to ‘as new’ state with a warranty rather than just a straight swap of a single component.

I think the reality is the HDX is a dinosaur. Put it out to pasture and upgrade/move on. I am willing to bet a pi 4 is more powerful.

So you keep saying, but the HDX is as powerful as it needs to be so I don’t see why that’s relevant. Unlike a Pi its also a ripper, store and DAC with upgradeable power supply so a Pi is hardly a viable alternative.

It was as powerful as it needed to be ten years ago. Would you spend 1000 to fix it now or seek an alternative?

agreed. And i’d not even be that sad. 14 yrs is a great run for a product like that.
We’ve all been “there” with cars, phones, what-have-you. If it were me, I’d view is as the right time to update, be it a Core or something outside of Naim.

It doesn’t need to be more powerful now to work as it should, I don’t know why you think that’s an issue.
We don’t know what the actual cost of this proposed repair is, or what work it entails, but if I owned one and used it, I would certainly consider getting it fixed. The HDX has a very similar level of sound quality to the 1st gen NDX, so if you can live without having the latest streaming services and just want to play from local storage plus iRadio it could well be worth keeping one going.

An alternative would be a Uniticore with Naim Ndac, if the OP wants to stay with Naim and doesn’t want to bother ripping on a computer. So around 3 k .

That could be a good option if you don’t mind having two non-matching boxes and you don’t mind the reduced functionality of the Core compared to the 1st gen servers. The NDAC is getting old now as well, so you may need to budget for a service there too. Almost certainly a better sounding DAC than the one in the HDX.

1 Like

Well yes if the only hifi available in the world is naim I guess that’s his options.

I’ll swing back to my original point again. Don’t rely on hifi manufacturers to come up with servers. This particular area has been covered off for years by those specialist in this area, admittedly without a fancy logo on the front.

No i dont know more than Naim, i just have issue with how much they charge for a simple HDD swap and the reasons they provided in support of the high cost.

Here:

Perhaps Naim could clarify on your last point whether the charge above covers more than gthe HDD swap, but doesn’t look like it based on Steve’s replies.

€700 is not $1000, and Steve made it quite clear that an authorised service centre would normally find caps and other components in need of replacement, so it is perfectly clear that whatever the charge is, it’s not just for a straight swap of the HDD.