Support Quibble

[mattsomers]

Hi - My first post so please be gentle!

I have a couple of Sony PCs (VGN-S2VP & VGX-XL100) and they are currently both in for repair.

Reliability and confidence issues aside, my question is specific to my XL100. It's gone in because the HDD has become corrupt and I was getting messages about having an UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME. I'm pretty IT savvy but couldn't recover it myself without some effort and anyway it was under warranty so I thought what the hell!

Support have said that it is a HDD problem and want to replace the disk (turned up a Bad Sector I expect) so I have asked them if I can get it back so that I can attempt some Data Recovery myself (usual story - not backed up!) - I figured that I may be able to set it up as a Slave and get some data off it. Sony have said that I can have the disk back if I pay for it which I don't necessarily mind as I see it as a "Failure to backup you idiot" fee on my part - although paying for a broken part which they would otherwise scrap does seem strange.

No my main gripe is the fact they will want between £150-£200 when I could buy the exact disk for around £60 retail - Sony must be getting them for far less (buying in bulk and at cost). I'm still waiting for the precise cost at which point I'll decide whether I think it's worth it but I can't understand why Sony would want to rip off it's valued cutsomers in this way by slapping a massive markup on a broken hard disk!

Has anyone else had any similar experiences?

P.S. I forgot to mention that the whole corruption came about because the machine was constantly having to be rebooted due to display problems via HDMI...but that's another thread!

[kee-lo_]

Hi,

Thats pretty bad news that Sony don't want to give you YOUR HDD back. I would definately tell them to just send the lot back, and go to eBuyer.com and buy a new SATA drive - it's gonna be chaper for you.

Save the extra dough for the professional backup if you need it

[mattsomers]

Thanks Kee-Lo - it's good advice but wouldn't I then need to also buy a copy of Windows MCE which is supposed to be hard to get on it's own - unless I could get some sort of recovery discs that don't rely on the Recovery partition.

[kee-lo_]

If you want to buy an OEM upgrade your RAM then you can buy MCE as you've bought hardware

[William]

Thanks Kee-Lo - it's good advice but wouldn't I then need to also buy a copy of Windows MCE which is supposed to be hard to get on it's own - unless I could get some sort of recovery discs that don't rely on the Recovery partition.

I take it you have not burned a set of recovery disks?

If you have, you can just do a recovery after you have fitted a new HDD.