WD80GB bit the dust, almost. Recovery/RMA?

[timm]

Hey,

I've got a Western Digital 80GB drive which is starting to fail on me. Well, it HAS failed actually, but at times, it's still possible to boot it up and recover some of the data.

Now, I'm looking at RMA'ing the drive, or just returning it to the place of purchase for a replacement, but I'm interested in keeping the 70 or so GB worth of.. ehm.. documentaries. Yeah. That's it.

Burning it all out could have been a solution if I could get the drive to stay alive for over 20 minutes, but this I can't do. 24x CDR just doesn't cut it.

So, I'm wondering -- has anyone ever gotten a replacement from Western Digital BEFORE they returned the defect drive? Or even better, anyone had such luck with any Norwegian webshops? (as that's where I am -- Norway).

Thanks for any help, guys.

(PS: For the record, I've got a total of 4 WD80GB drivers, and they all work nicely.. well, all but one

[Speed]

Sure, I've gotten my replacements ahead of time. In fact, they ask you to return the old drive in the mailer they send the new one in. Naturally you need a credit card to make this happen...

[timm]

Figured.

Is this one of those "we charge you when we ship the new drive, and refund you when we get yours back", or just "if we don't get your old drive in X weeks, we charge you"?

My balance is a bit low atm, so I was hoping for the later