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Have I been completely ripped off?
I've bought a Dell Inspiron 17 R a little over a year ago. Just one week past warranty, my hard drive crashed. I know I had a 1 TB hard drive, & I thought it was particulary fast -- maybe 7200 rpm. This is from the component configuration on the Dell website about some of my components (it's kinda Greek to me):
| 9NFG3 | 1 | MODULE, HARD DRIVE, 1T, 5.4, P11, 4K, ML500M |
| G2J3X | 1 | Hard Drive, 1T, S2, 5.4, 2.5, P11, 4K, ML500M |
| 13JRT | 1 | Module, Solid State Drive, 32, Full, Mcard, #2, 830 |
| 7C4P7 | 1 | Solid State Drive, 32, S3, FULL, MCARD, PM830 |
I brought it to a local repair shop. They returned my hard drive to me: a WD Scorpio Blue, 1 TB, 5400 rpm. They replaced it, due to a claimed "mistake," with a 500 GB drive rather than 1 TB -- the invoice says Seagate Black Able. Device Manager says I have: Samsung SSD PM830 mSATA 32 GB ATA device; and ST500LM012 HN-M500MBB ATA device.
Can anyone interpret this for me, & tell me how much I lost in this transaction? I would so appreciate knowing what's going on.
osprey4
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January 11th, 2014 04:00
Hi wichhazl,
First of all, you seem to indicate that this was NOT a warranty repair, so your beef is with the shop, not Dell.
You've gone from a 1TB drive to a 500GB drive, so you've lost about half the hard drive capacity you originally had in your laptop. Your original WD drive is clearly listed as 5400 rpm, and the new drive is also a 5400 rpm drive, so you should not see a performance difference. Since you presumably paid for the replacement, then you've got a choice. If you paid for a 1TB drive to replace your original 1TB drive, take the laptop back and have them redo it. There is very little cost difference between a 500GB drive and a 1TB drive.
osprey4
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January 11th, 2014 10:00
The 32GB mSATA drive is a cache that holds frequently accessed files to speed up the operating system.
From my point of view, replacing Windows 8 with Windows 7 was worth the effort, but I hope they gave you the Windows 7 license as well.
The extended warranty is usually a good idea for a business laptop. You need to make sure you can minimize downtime in case of problems. If you don't want to deal with Dell, there are service contracts available through Geek Squad and other franchise tech service places.
ejn63
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January 11th, 2014 10:00
Even if you can buy a warranty at this point, it will likely cost quite a bit - on the order of $300 or more. You're likely better off putting the funds aside for a replacement system or repair on your own.
It does make sense to buy any new system with a minimum 3-year warranty -- however, the cost of the warranty goes up quite a bit after purchase (and even more after the warranty expires) -- postpaid extensions make little sense.
skyrida32
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January 10th, 2014 21:00
skyrida32
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January 10th, 2014 21:00
osprey4
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January 11th, 2014 04:00
Hi Skyrida32,
No, they did not replace the original drive with an SSD. There is an SSD cache in the OEM setup but the replacement drive is a mechanical drive.
wichhazl
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January 11th, 2014 08:00
Thanks so much for your responses. So all I lost was the 500 gb. What does the 32gb SSD do? Also, it originally came with Windows 8 Pro, but the local shop talked me into installing Windows 7 Pro instead. When I bought the Inspiron in Dec 2013, Windows 7 was what I had originally wanted, because I didn't want to have to deal with learning Windows 8 at the same time as I was starting a new job (I bought the laptop for an online job doing title searching-- I needed a large screen -- 17"-- and a computer that wouldn't object to having a bunch of things open at the same time). But Windows 7 Pro wasn't available as an option, so I accepted 8. I had used Windows 8 for a year, so I was used to it, if not always happy. But what did I give up by going back to 7?
Also-- do you think it would be worth it to buy whatever extended warranty service I can obtain? I don't know what I'd be eligible for following original warranty expiration -- I tried to find it onine, but it says it's "temporarily unavailable" & I'd have to call. I really really really hate trying to understand technical support from non-native English speakers, it's one of the reasons I went to a local computer repair shop. I talked to 3 different people before I went local, got 3 apparently different answers, & never trusted I was getting the correct information (about the cost & time involved in sending my laptop to Dell for repair). Again, thanks so much for the help.