Laptop hard drive died after just 19 months

Hammyman

lafemme51 wrote: »

I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop which I bought new less than 20 months ago.

The hard drive has now died.

Not only do I have the expense of a new hard drive to buy but also the expense of recovering the data from the broken hard drive.

Someone has suggested that it is reasonable for me to have expected it to have lasted longer than 19 months and that if I take it back to Currys with my receipt I would have a good case for them to fix it - anyone had any dealings like this with defective laptops/PCs?

What expense of recovering the data? Just restore from backups. Oh, you didn't back up that ever so important information? Well in that case you are looking at £500 per 20GB.....

How long they last depends on how much they are in use and the conditions they are used in. One that is run in a hot machine will die earlier. One that is getting knocked a fair bit will die early.

And Currys may replace the hard drive but they will not pay for the data recovery. That is your problem. And I would get the data recovered BEFORE taking the drive back to them.

But you have another problem if you go the Currys route. Under SOGA, after 6 months, it is up to you to prove that there was a fault in manufacture which is the basis on which the claim will have to be made. You will have to get an engineers report. A far better route is to find out who made the hard drive and what their standard warranty is. Most hard drives now have a 3 year warranty and you will do far better claiming from the HDD manufacturer as they'll just ship out a replacement.

macman

Hammyman is spot on. Curry's won't touch it, (and if they did, you'd never see your data again). Even if the drive had failed within the 12m warranty, then data back up is still the responsibility of the customer-no-one else. No warranty ever covers you for data loss, even from a reputable retailer.
You'd be better off writing a nice letter to Toshiba to see if they'll give you a new drive on a goodwill basis-nothing to lose by trying.
But first get your data off with a USB caddy before the drive fails completely.
By comparison to forensic data recovery, the £40 for a new drive will be peanuts.
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/320gb-samsung-hm321hi-spinpoint-m7-25-95-mm-sata-3gb-s-5400rpm-8mb-12ms-ncq

Hammyman

lafemme51 wrote: »

I have had a few quotes of £20/25 even £45 for a 160GB drive but this SATA one is 320 GB which appear more expensive.

At any right I am going to try and get Currys to sort this out for me given its age.

£20/£25 is what people who run software to try and recover the data charge. Typically they do no more than you can do for yourself. Much of the time they cause more problems than they cure. As the professional company I use say, "DIY data recovery is the biggest cause of permanent data loss we encounter. If your data is worthless, then by all means have a go. Otherwise, leave it to professionals."

Proper data recovery is, based on £25 for 160GB you've been quoted UP TO ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY TIMES MORE EXPENSIVE. . There is a reason for this. Whilst the shops you quoted are mickey mouse, the companies that do it properly take apart the hard drives in a completely dust free sterile workspace, take out the data platters and read the data directly from them.

I use this company. Read and inwardly digest. Take note of the warnings about attempting data recovery on a hard drive making clicking noises or no sound at all.

http://www.retrodata.co.uk/data-recovery-services/hard-drive-data-recovery/laptop-recovery/

Can you recommend where I can get a 320GB SATA disc from?

https://www.scan.co.uk. Get one that has Freefall sensors in. They'll park the hard drive heads if you drop the laptop and help to protect it from damage. You pay a few more quid but its worth it.

Hammyman

Visiondvd wrote: »

Hello
I work at this stuff, a 320 gb Sata 2.5 fitted with windows reinstalled and various software, cost from me, £70 aint that expensive really is it?
You have a 12 month warranty with hard drives, thats it, you be wasting time and effort to try and pursue this.
To recover your data buy a 2.5 inch external caddy, usually about £10, insert your fault drive, plug it in your newly fixed laptop, and you may be suprised. If it dont work bin it and download your mp3's again.
trust me less of a headache than trying it out with some tech geek at Currys, or even worse Toshiba.

Please don't listen to the completely incorrect and clueless advice posted above. There is a reason that person is only charging £70 to supply a 320GB hard drive (costs £30 give or take a quid trade) and install the OS and software on....

Virtually all hard drive manufacturers offer a 3 year or longer warranty. I've not seen a 12 month warranty on a drive for a good few years now. If your drive is making clicking noises, putting it in a caddy and trying to get the data off WILL make it even more unrecoverable because what is happening internally is the equivalent of the needle on a record player being scraped across the record every time it clicks.

debitcardmayhem

lafemme51 wrote: »

I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop which I bought new less than 20 months ago.

The hard drive has now died.

Not only do I have the expense of a new hard drive to buy but also the expense of recovering the data from the broken hard drive.

Someone has suggested that it is reasonable for me to have expected it to have lasted longer than 19 months and that if I take it back to Currys with my receipt I would have a good case for them to fix it - anyone had any dealings like this with defective laptops/PCs?

lafemme51 wrote: »

Someone at work in IT used to work for PC World and apparently if pushed hard enough they would repair things like this, and it was under the sale of goods act as it is reasonable to expect a brand new laptop to last more than 19 months.

A replacement hard drive of the same size as the SATA one I have is quite expensive as its 320GB.

To recover my data is going to cost at least £60 (if the drive is not too badly damaged). The SMART message is failure immenent back up data/replace hard drive and its not making a noise so apparently this is a good sign in terms of recovery being possible.

I have the Windows CDs which came with laptop so I can sort this out myself.

I don't think it is unreasonable to expect a laptop to work for more than 19 months without a major component going wrong.

Questions are - has it died , or has it not , SMART says imminent failure , backup etc
Why remove, it why not back it up first using a live cd either Linux/Windows PE and then restore to new disk

Edited: PS if it has died how did you get a SMART message?

Spank

Hammyman wrote: »

£20/£25 is what people who run software to try and recover the data charge. Typically they do no more than you can do for yourself. Much of the time they cause more problems than they cure. As the professional company I use say, "DIY data recovery is the biggest cause of permanent data loss we encounter. If your data is worthless, then by all means have a go. Otherwise, leave it to professionals."

Proper data recovery is, based on £25 for 160GB you've been quoted UP TO ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY TIMES MORE EXPENSIVE. . There is a reason for this. Whilst the shops you quoted are mickey mouse, the companies that do it properly take apart the hard drives in a completely dust free sterile workspace, take out the data platters and read the data directly from them.

I use this company. Read and inwardly digest. Take note of the warnings about attempting data recovery on a hard drive making clicking noises or no sound at all.

http://www.retrodata.co.uk/data-recovery-services/hard-drive-data-recovery/laptop-recovery/



www.scan.co.uk. Get one that has Freefall sensors in. They'll park the hard drive heads if you drop the laptop and help to protect it from damage. You pay a few more quid but its worth it.

I think he was talking about a replacement drive, not data recovery

closed

amazon sell samsung 2.5" sata 320's for under £30 delivered free, and you should be able to get a caddy for under £5. you could get a larger drive for not much more. An oem pre-fitted drive will have the same warranty as the laptop, you only get a longer warranty if you bought and fitted the drive yourself - but it's worth giving tosh a call to see if they will help.

You may wish to buy yourself a backup drive while you're there.

It's failed the durability test under soga, if you wish to pursue it with the retailer, but it may be more hassle than it's worth.

lafemme51

closed wrote: »

amazon sell samsung 2.5" sata 320's for under £30 delivered free, and you should be able to get a caddy for under £5. you could get a larger drive for not much more. An oem pre-fitted drive will have the same warranty as the laptop, you only get a longer warranty if you bought and fitted the drive yourself - but it's worth giving tosh a call to see if they will help.

You may wish to buy yourself a backup drive while you're there.

It's failed the durability test under soga, if you wish to pursue it with the retailer, but it may be more hassle than it's worth.

The hard drive in question is a Toshiba one - if I bought one online it comes with a three year warranty, however, you have said as it was fitted in laptop when I bought it it won't have the three year warranty, just the year one like the laptop.

Tomorrow I am going to have a word with Currys to see if there is anything I can do about it, given that the part would have had a three year warranty so its fair to assume I could have expected it to last three years. If they are unhelpful I won't get stressed about it I will ring Toshiba and see if I get any joy from them, if no for £30 might as well just get a disc from Amazon.

Fortunately a guy at IT in work has some data recovery diagnostic software and is going to try and retrieve my MP3s.

The irony is that I had been looking at external hard drives to back my music and photos too. I just did not expect a 19 month old laptop to fail on me! A lesson has been well and truly learnt.

lafemme51

Thanks to everyone who has replied.

macman

You should expect a hard drive to fail from day one. It's a relatively crude mechanical device in a box of electronics, and invariably the weakest link.
The average drive will last 5 years or more. Some will last 7, some will last 2. 19 months is very much at the unlucky end of the scale, but it can and does happen.