10 days after M1530 warranty expired - hard drive about to die?

My warranty on my M1530 expired at the start of the month. Today I booted it up and I get a message saying "a hard drive in the system reports that it may fail".

So what if that does happen? A new hard drive is cheaper than extending the warranty, but do I then lose my Vista license? Do I have to buy another copy? I can burn the essential stuff to DVD and start over, but I just want to know what the best idea would be.

 

The OEM license sticker is stuck to the bottom of the laptop; the licence comes with the laptop, so you don't lose the license if you want to reinstall on the same computer.

Secondly, your warranty only expired 10 days ago, so maybe you can contact Dell, and if they are really nice, they might fix it for you. (just a suggestion, though I have no idea if they would actually do it for free)

Otherwise, just get a replacement 2.5" SATA hard drive and reinstall Windows and your other software back on to it.

Also, the drive might not fail, but I guess I would want to replace the drive anyways.

 

Try to get them to replace it, esp since it's only a couple of weeks after the warranty expires. Bug them until they do.

If they really refuse, then just backup everything important and just see if its really a problem. Like said above, it might not even fail.

 

I was thinking the same thing, you are only little 10 +days out...Contact Dell...and be super nice..tell them how much you like Dell and your 1530!

Maybe, just maybe, as good faith they woud fix it for you as a one time shot? They have been known to do things like this.


Cin

 

If your oem harddrive is momentus, you can use their cloning software to clone to new hard drive and swap drives and you will have lost nothing. I cloned oem drive onto a Western Digital 320gb drive, Not because my oem was dying, but i wanted the xtra 120 gb of space. I eventually did clean install on drive with x64.

 

This is what I would do:

let my computer run, if what the bootup screen said was true then i would make a backup, and wait until it burns out, but there is also the possibility that your hard drive runs perfectly for years to come, because it might have just detected an error in the system file and determined it was your harddrive when it wasnt.

i would NOT consider calling dell, they will just give me trouble, i would look for a good deal on a 500GB HD at 7200RPM, it might be pricey but its capacity is top of the line.

i would also try to format and re-install windows if my computer starts giving trouble, when i mean format, i mean FORMAT ALL the hard drive, including backup partitions and dell mediadirect partition, because those can give errors and issues.

thats what i would do, but its really your decision

Best of luck !

 

Download HDTune ( http://www.hdtune.com/). Then reference this page: http://www.hdtune.com/faq_1.html#health and launch HDTune and check your Health Screen. Its not always 100% accurate but it may help you to confirm if the drive is going bad.

Drives are cheap - you can always replace it yourself as mentioned by others above this post. Bear in mind, if Dell were to replace it - it has been my experience they will send out a blank drive for you to reinstall your OS using the Dell Restore media.

If you plan on keeping your m1530 for some time you might want to look into extending the warranty in case other issues creep up.

Use this link to see prices on extending your warranty - http://support.dell.com/support/top...e_sign_in?~ck=ln&c=us&cs=19&l=en&lnki=0&s=dhs

or call Dell Customer Care

 

As others have said, no you don't lose your Vista license. You may reinstall on a different hard drive (in that notebook) using the key provided.

Here's what I'd do. Hard drives are (relatively) cheap. I'd just go out to Best Buy or Newegg or wherever and pick up a new drive for $100 or so and move on. I'd also call Dell and see if they'll replace your old drive anyway. If they do, then you can either keep the replaced drive as a spare, buy an external enclosure and use it as an external storage device, or my favorite...use the 2nd drive to experiment with alternative OS's without needing to monkey with your main drive. It takes about 60 seconds to swap the drive in a 1530.

 

One suggestion since you are so close out of warranty is to tell Dell that you started to have symptoms a few weeks ago, but because of work and time constraints you weren't able to contact Dell in that period of time, but you would have made an effort to contact them earlier if you knew the warranty expired so early.

Dell still wants you to have a good image of them, and often times with a little bit of pushing you can get some goodwill on their part. They don't want you thinking that their computers will fall apart right outside of the warranty.

On a side note, if you don't get it replaced, HDD's are cheap:

320GB 7200rpm (FAST!) - Seagate Momentus 7200.3 ST9320421AS 320GB 7200 RPM $89.99

500GB - Seagate Momentus 5400.6 ST9500325AS 500GB 5400 RPM $99.99

Both with free shipping

I'd recommend the 320GB 7200rpm, its fast, I have 3 total in my laptops 2 in the M1730 in RAID0 and 1 in the 1530, neither have given me problems.