[IronH4WK]

Originally Posted by NetfreakBombay

If HDD is Seagate, there is some hope.

Seagate had a bug that screwed up HDD electronics but did not corrupt data. Most data recovery shops know about it and can fix that in minutes. All they need to do is update firmware on disk so that BIOS will start detecting it.

That is if this is due to that specific bug.

More details :

Firmware Update for ST31500341AS, ST31000333AS, ST3640323AS, ST3640623AS, ST3320613AS, ST3320813AS, ST3160813AS

one of my 500GB internal hard drive (ST3500620AS; 7200.11) started giving sluggish performance and eventually became inaccessible. for some time the BIOS (AMI) used to detect the drive and the boot process used to take a long time (it checks the drives connected to it). later it stopped detecting it and when i unplugged it, boot process was back to normal.

now i've two internal drives left 250GB and 1TB. few days back when i was copying data off the 1TB drive (data dump) i found it was not able to copy some of the stuff. i downloaded HD Tune Pro (trial) and ran the checks. it revealed lot of bad sectors on both the 250GB and 1TB drives. i've since moved the data out and formatted both drives (not LBA mode) hoping Windows will mark these bad sectors and not use them. so far nothing has happened, but i'm still worried.

[_raVan_]

Can anyone give me the name of a good computer hardware seller in Pune?

[vasudeva]

Originally Posted by NetfreakBombay

If HDD is Seagate, there is some hope.

From my personal experience of RMA of hard disks, if it is Seagate, expect
1. refurbished replacement which will not have the performance of the returned piece.
2. going to Seagate office, depositing the defect, then being intimated of replacement, and going again to Seagate office to collect the 2nd hand+refurbished+lower performance drive.

Whole process takes 3-4 weeks, at least 2 trips to Seagate, and a used+compromised disk at the end.

This has happened for me with Seagate in 2 out of 2 drives as late as mid-2011.

With Western Digital
1. Make an online RMA request. Check on pickup and collection. They will give a scheduled pickup date.
2. Scheduled pickup date has been never met, but at least there is a delay of only around 4-7 days.
3. Once the hard disk is picked up from your home, expect a brand new unused disk within 3-4 days.

This has been my experience with WD in 100% (2 out of 2 cases) as late as 2011.
Whole process takes 3-4 weeks, no trips anywhere, and a brand new disk at the end.


Bottomline: for me, WD remains the preferred choice, and I last bought a Seagate in 2010, but 3-4 WDCs in 2011.

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by vasudeva

From my personal experience of RMA of hard disks......

My post was not about RMA at all.....

Seagate had this bug that did not destroy HDD or Data, but made is inaccessible via BIOS. To fix this, HDD needs to be connected to serial port and new Firmware needs to be installed in HDD.

For this, Seagate offered free pick-up and delivery of HDD worldwide for series that were impacted by this bug.

If HDD was still visible with BIOS, users could apply firmware update themselves by running a program.

[vasudeva]

To further enforce the point, WD RMAs and gives a new disk, and from my experience without even checking whether it was justified. That means (or at least it did till late-2011 before the Thailand floods perhaps made them more stingy) that if I had a minor problem with WD, I could RMA and get a new one. With Seagate, it is firmware upgrade, and if that does not work, then RMA and get a used disk. I never got a new disk for no fault of mine.

[Thad E Ginathom]

My Seagate disk was been working fine and was in its second machine, so I do not think it is a firmware issue. Further to that, it has been diagnosed by a recovery shop as actually being a failed read head.

The disk is in warranty. I have done nothing about it for the past few days, but had been inclined to attempt a data recovery, which would involve dissasembly, and thus void the warranty.

So, the cheap way forward is to claim the warranty, and loose a few months data. I'm disappointed to hear of vasudeva's experience with this: the Seagate service does not sound good.

Far more expensive: I have to buy a new disk and pay around Rs.5,000 to the recovery shop with no guarantees. Ouch. But I think that is what I'll do.

[vasudeva]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

So, the cheap way forward is to claim the warranty, and loose a few months data. I'm disappointed to hear of vasudeva's experience with this: the Seagate service does not sound good.

It is not my experience alone. However, I still like Seagate regular disks for their faster performance than WD. This holds for all Seagate's except for performance where I have 2*2TB WD Caviar Blacks.

My Seagate RMA experience has been for 1 external freeagent 500GB for which I got a `certified refurbished' which was a lot slower than the original one (verified through AIDA64 and HD Tune Pro). An internal 1 TB HDD was also RMA which resulted in another refurbished disk. This was Seagate's policy as of 2011 at least in India and for most cases. It was refurbished replacement whether the disk went bad on day 1 or at end of warranty. Even local vendors confirm this.

WD's service and replacement for me was without hassles. However, my last RMA was in June 2011 when I RMAed a 2TB WD Caviar Green for `slow speed'. Got a new one in a month (collection took perhaps 25 days). However, things might have changed after the Thailand flood. Supplies have gone down and maybe the companies are much less relaxed about RMA. Prior to this, I know for sure that WD did not check on receipt if the disk needed replacement. I think their India RMA centre is in Bangalore/Chennai. Say the disk got collected on day 1, it reached the RMA centre on day 2, and I had the disk by day 4 or 5. If I had sent the disk on my own, I would have perhaps got the disk in 10 days from RMA notification to new disk.

[bluevolt]

My seagate 320 GB HH had some issues and was replaced by HP in two days after I logged a complaint with them. I am happy that I got a new western digital instead of a new seagate. Seagate is not reliable as per the experience of many members.

Refer from this post. - http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/gadget...ml#post2665738

[aravind.anand]

I have a Dell XPS 15 laptop. It has intel i5 second gen processor, 4 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD, 1 GB graphic card (Nvidia GeForce GT525M) and Win 7 OS. But the outstanding features according to me are the brilliantly loud JBL speakers with 12W subwoofers and the cool backlit keyboard

[JMaruru]

Originally Posted by aravind.anand

I have a Dell XPS 15 laptop. It has intel i5 second gen processor, 4 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD, 1 GB graphic card (Nvidia GeForce GT525M) and Win 7 OS. But the outstanding features according to me are the brilliantly loud JBL speakers with 12W subwoofers and the cool backlit keyboard

Did it come with Full HD display(1920 x1080p) and what was the cost?

[aravind.anand]

Originally Posted by JMaruru

Did it come with Full HD display(1920 x1080p) and what was the cost?

Full HD display was about 8k extra, so I hadn't opted for that option. My system was about 55k when I bought it in August last year. Try using the Dell India website. The site is highly interactive, it lets you configure and build your own Laptop. Pretty interesting stuff that!

[JMaruru]

Originally Posted by aravind.anand

Full HD display was about 8k extra, so I hadn't opted for that option. My system was about 55k when I bought it in August last year. Try using the Dell India website. The site is highly interactive, it lets you configure and build your own Laptop. Pretty interesting stuff that!

As such, have ordered XPS 15 with Win 7 Pro, Intel i7, 8GB, 750GB HDD, Full HD(1920X1080), Nvidia GeForce GT540M 2GB, Backlit KB and Intel Advanced Wireless 6230.

Yes, i configured the same on the Dell website.

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by NetfreakBombay

Or ask the engineer to bring a spare power supply... I am facing the same problem in PC and hope its SMPS that is bad since Motherboard is out of warranty.

Turns out nothing was wrong with computer. Since case was not opened for last few years, dust had blocked all airways and CPU was getting too hot while bootup. Even CPU heat sink did not have any space for air to move.

Gave 250 Rs to neighborhood shop to disassemble everything, clean and reassemble while taking care of cable mess.

Now CPU runs at 45*C under load

[majorpayne]

My new budget desktop's specs:

Cabinet: Antec ONE Gaming Series Mid-ATX Case
Mainboard: Asus M5A88-M
Processor: AMD FX 6100 6 core processor, 3.3GHz, 8Mb Cache
Memory: Kingston Hyper X 8GB (2x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3
HDD1: Patriot Pyro 60GB SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SSD)
HDD2: Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA3
Optical Drive: Samsung DVD RW
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 6870
PSU: Corsair Enthusiast Series TX650 V2 650W

[anand_lukose]

Originally Posted by majorpayne

My new budget desktop's specs:

Cabinet: Antec ONE Gaming Series Mid-ATX Case
Mainboard: Asus M5A88-M
Processor: AMD FX 6100 6 core processor, 3.3GHz, 8Mb Cache
Memory: Kingston Hyper X 8GB (2x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3
HDD1: Patriot Pyro 60GB SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SSD)
HDD2: Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA3
Optical Drive: Samsung DVD RW
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 6870
PSU: Corsair Enthusiast Series TX650 V2 650W

Neat looking specs, How is the FX series faring ? and do you mind sharing the cost since you mentioned this was on a budget.

I got a Western Digital Live Hub recently. Really needed one since my Hard Disk was very close to being full. Now the real pain in transferring all the media begins !