Sorry to hear of your hard drive woes but your experience with Sony is not unsimilar to mine. I purchased my laptop direct from Sony and had it built to spec (>£1500.00). It came with a 2 year warranty which expired in April 2012. Not 2 months later my hard drive crashed (Seagate 500GB). While I do accept that HDD can fail unexpectedly, in my experience it has NOT been very common and I in fact have 5 other laptops in my household (1 mac and 4 PCs), ranging in age from 1 year to 5 years, none of which have given me any hard drive problems at all. And they were all considerably cheaper than my VAIO F series. The F series is also my desktop replacement, so unlike the other systems rarely leaves my desk or gets knocked about. So I really was quite miffed when I found this system failing, what I would consider prematurely.
I was expecting some resistance from Sony as the sytem was out of warranty but their blatant disregard for existing customers was breathtaking. Knowing that Sony was unlikely to repair/replace the drive under warranty I opted to replace the drive myself - its a very simple matter and I have done this on previous laptops (for upgrading rather than for frank failures). A simlar replacement drive with larger capacity can be had for around £90 on Ebuyer. Unfortunately I misplaced my recovery discs and therefore had to contact Sony to get new ones - which they were more than willing to sell to me for the princely sum of £30 + £17 postage - for 2 CD's in a paper sleeve, containing an OS that I had already paid for!
What they neglected to tell me was that by changing my drive, the recovery discs would not work on my system as the OS was "locked" to my original hardware configuration. So after installing the new HDD I could not recover my system with the recovery discs. Back to Sony and their attitude was that as I had failed to tell them that I was replacing the HDD myself (which I had) they should not be expected to tell me that this might be an issue with a hard drive fail. The Sony agent flatly refused to refund me. He quite smugly told me that he had listened back to the recording of my initial query when I had said I was replacing the drive and he could rightly assume that this mean't I was having this done at an authorised Sony repairer (which I had not said), and therefore they bore no responsibility. He seemed oblivious to the idea that if I was getting the drive replaced at an authorised Sony centre, why I would need recovery discs in the first place (as this clearly would form part of the "repair").
It was very apparent from the discussion that "Customer Support" was anything but. There was no interest at all in finding a solution to my problem - just angry words about why I should not be opening up my own system and replacing parts myself. They then said the only option was for me to send the laptop to them to "investigate". This would cost £70 + VAT for carriage to Sony, plus an unspecified fee for the repair - this would only be made known to me once they had had a look at the system - more £££. Very clearly the only thing that interested Sony was to make as much money off of me as they could with little regard to the actual problem I was having.
I have now installed a retail version of Windows 7 on my system with new HDD at considerably lower cost than what Sony would have charged. I am still trying to get them to refund me for the useless recovery discs they overcharged me for. I suggest you stay away from Sony and get yourself a new HDD from Ebuyer/Amazon. If you match drives exactly your recovery software may work, but just be aware you might have to factor in the cost of a new copy of Windows (you will then need to download the Sony specific drivers for your laptop which are available on their website). In fact if you can get someone to lend you a Windows installation disc, the Windows serial number for your current system should still be able to activate it - so u need not buy a new copy of Windows (after all u already paid for the Windows licence on your current system).
Its a pity Sony pays such a little attention to their Customer experience as they do make some really attractive products. This was my first VAIO laptop but after this episode will probably be my last.
