Anyone know the 'Harddisk Replace' policy?

Question

hi, all,

I was so sad to find my harddisk of 600m failed without any omen last week. It is less than 1 year old. I had no backup of the data. Does anyone know the "Harddisk Replace" policy of Dell?

Can I ask them to recover my data? I know that they will probably only replace a new disk for me. But, if I request and I pay, will they help me to (try to) recover the data?

Thank you for your reply.

rickmktg · Answer

Dell will not recover your data, they will only replace the drive.  It's your responsibility to do regular backups.  You can try putting the drive in a USB enclosure and see what you can recover, it depends on the failure. Message Edited by rickmktg on 08-01-2005 06:19 PM

ejn63 · Answer

That won't even cover the evaluation fees. Plan on upward of $1,000 for an evaluation and basic recovery, and possibly several times that if it's a difficult recovery or there's a lot of data.

vdogg · Answer

I real tech could do it in about 2 hours if they know what they are doing. At a coust of $200 to $250.

beaver9 · Answer

Will it really cost $1000 to recover the data? I can only afford for $200 or $300 for that. :(

vdogg · Answer

Check your Dell warranty. It is the same for your hard drive. Can you boot with a bootable floppy or CD and see the hard drive? You can make a bootable floppy usiing another computer with windows xp pro. If you can see the hard drive a tech could put into a pc and copy the data for you. There is a special connector that you can use to connect the laptop hard drive to a IDE cable in a desktop computer.

KNIGHT 26 · Answer

Yes, to recover your data, pl call Ontrack(800) 872-2599http://www.ontrack.com/dell OR DriveSavers(800) 440-1904 http://www.drivesavers.com These pople support dell cust.

rickmktg · Answer

@beaver9 wrote:
I know it is my responsibility to backup the data. I was thinking to backup it recently but it die before I can do anything. The harddisk failed entirely.

Do you have any idea if there is any companies can help in this kind of matter? Thanks a lot.

Yes there are, you can Google for them. Plan on spending up to $1,000.

beaver9 · Answer

I know it is my responsibility to backup the data. I was thinking to backup it recently but it die before I can do anything. The harddisk failed entirely.

Do you have any idea if there is any companies can help in this kind of matter? Thanks a lot.

KNIGHT 26 · Answer

Why dont u take a call and speak to above people, they offer some discount for dell cust

ejn63 · Answer

A 'real tech' qualified to do the job cannot possibly provide an estimate without having the drive in hand. Be VERY suspicious of lowball estimates. A superficial recovery may be possible - or maybe not, depending on how far gone the drive is. It IS worth attaching the drive to a working system and trying to read it yourself. The desktop converter cables cost more like $5-10; for $20 you can buy an aluminum USB drive case and mount the drive externally. Desktop adapters are as near as your local CompUSA - they usually carry them. Aluminum bays: newegg.com, zipzoomfly.com.

vdogg · Answer

You can buy the convertor cable for about $20.00 and plug the drive into a desktop computer and see if there is any data on it. I can get you a part number and tell you where to one. If you are interested?

beaver9 · Answer

@vdogg wrote:

Check your Dell warranty. It is the same for your hard drive. Can you boot with a bootable floppy or CD and see the hard drive? You can make a bootable floppy usiing another computer with windows xp pro. If you can see the hard drive a tech could put into a pc and copy the data for you. There is a special connector that you can use to connect the laptop hard drive to a IDE cable in a desktop computer.

My warranty expires in 17 days. :)
I think it is the mechanical part of the harddisk failes.
I used another harddisk to replace the failed one and had setup a new Windows XP.
I think other parts of the laptop work well.
I wish DELL would help me. The data is really important.

beaver9 · Answer

@vdogg wrote:

You can buy the convertor cable for about $20.00 and plug the drive into a desktop computer and see if there is any data on it. I can get you a part number and tell you where to one. If you are interested?

Thank you for your information.

When it is connected to my laptop, the computer could not find it.
I also tried to connected using a USB encloser. Windows saying that it found a new hardware but no new disk can be seen. The light of the USB encloser is turned off after no more than 5 seconds. It seems the plates do not turn at all.

beaver9 · Answer

@ejn63 wrote: A 'real tech' qualified to do the job cannot possibly provide an estimate without having the drive in hand. Be VERY suspicious of lowball estimates. A superficial recovery may be possible - or maybe not, depending on how far gone the drive is. It IS worth attaching the drive to a working system and trying to read it yourself. The desktop converter cables cost more like $5-10; for $20 you can buy an aluminum USB drive case and mount the drive externally. Desktop adapters are as near as your local CompUSA - they usually carry them. Aluminum bays: newegg.com, zipzoomfly.com. Thank you for your help. I think I can deal with it if only there is something wrong with the partition table or some bad sectors. But it does not work at all. The computer could not recognize it, so, I can do little on it. I wish someone can open and fix it. But I doubt if can be repaired with less than $200. So, backup your harddisk today.

beaver9 · Answer

I already have the data recovered from the hard disk. I mailed it to China and they asked for $250. FedEx ask for $60+ when I mailed it to China, but they only asked for $30 when it is mailed back from China.

I will got all my data, my photoes, my emails, my contracts, my documents, my saved progress of games, ..., etc.

Thank you all.

Storage, Drives & Media

Anyone know the "Harddisk Replace" policy?

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