Have YOU made sure your hardware matches your spec. sheet?

So I replaced my thermal paste and noticed that my hard drive was not a Seagate like my spec. sheet listed, 500GB w/free-fall sensor, but was an older toshiba model!!!!

This unit was a "brand new replacement".... so I just thought I would warn any folks who are spending good money and could possibly not be getting what they pay for.

DAMN DELL.

 

Yes I did check the spec. sheet list. the HDD in Device Manager is the right one ST9500420ASG ATA device............I noticed a few times a day some clicking sound, I think is coming from hdd.

 

I also have a different Hard Drive than the Seagate FreeFall Sensor one as stated, but I don't really mind since I looked it up and it supposedly has better or equivalent performance in the one test series I found. I'm not sure that it has the free fall sensor, but I think that is (mostly) gimmicky anyway.

 

Gimmick? How do you figure? On my last 1645 I could actually here the small blip sound when the laptop was in free-fall... presumably stopping the plates from spinning........?

 

Just putting the read/write-head in parking position so it cannot touch the plates

 

Makes perfect sense, thanks.

 

Just curious....how often is your laptop free falling?

 

Well, so far? Everytime I meant for it to

... I just hope it stays that way now.

 

I don't question its ability to stop the hard drive from spinning, parking its head, or its ability to detect freefall and shock. However, I haven't seen any numbers that state that doing those things actually protects the data on the hard drive. If the protection was significant, they would advertise the numbers from the lab test.

I guess my actual point is that Dell wouldn't intentionally give us all worse hard drives than listed on the Spec Sheet, or they would be sued. If they can reasonably claim the listed part is unavailable to them (or causing any sort of problem to the laptop), and that the new part is an equivalent replacement or "upgrade", then there is really nothing to be done. Although I would guess Dell would try to get you the listed part if you ask them for it.

Even though I like my hard drive, I do see two possible problems:
1. Sending the laptop under warranty to Dell for hard drive repair might confuse them since the spec sheet has a different model listed
2. Someone who discovers that they had the wrong drive the whole time, and then requests a a brand new one as listed since Dell did sneak the replacement hard drive in.