specific hard drive model tied to notebook? true/fake?

Two years ago I was told by an acquaintance who owns a Sony Vaio (VPC-EJ3D1E was still in my browser history, I think it's this one) his notebook requires a specific hard drive. I met him not too long ago saying he got it fixed with problems and two guys having a go at it, and it just didn't go out of my mind. Is there such a thing as hard drive DRM? I mean this is Sony so I wasn't really surprised when he told me this but I just claimed there isn't such a thing, because why would there be?

Has anyone ever heard/ come across this?

 

Only if you password protect the HDD/SSD from the UEFI BIOS or Legacy BIOS then you need the password to unlock the drive to format. I think it had more to do that you still had your info on the drive platter that he/she undeleted and found it. And what is meant by "requires a specific hard drive" are you referring to the size limits or what other means? Alot of fuzzy info is being tossed around here where no one can nail down the right answer.

 

Ok.
He basically told me you he can't just buy any 2.5" HD or SSD because this laptop needs a specific model otherwise it won't be recognized. He took it to the first guy and he installed two drives which supposedly didn't work, the second guy apparently fixed it.

Where did you read *I* wanted to recover some files? xD

 

What you describe would be unusual, but is technically possible. For instance, my laptop is restricted to certain wireless cards unless you use a modded BIOS, but it will take any 2.5" storage drive that will fit.

 

Personally, I've never heard of any such restriction on a laptop where you had to have a specific model of 2.5" drive or else it wouldn't work. Maybe your friend read the OEM repair manuals for it and said manuals specify certain models of HDD, getting the idea from that?

 

Some older laptops sometimes used a "non standard" drive model. By that, I mean something along the lines of a 1.8" hard drive that was connected using a ZIF cable. Those are the exception rather than the norm and the hard drives aren'T tied to any specific laptop, but the fact that they aren't the standard 2.5", mSATA of NVMe hard drives makes them harder to acquire.

Wasn't Sony infamous for using that kind of hardware back in the earlier 2000s?

 

The only example I can think of are the mainstream Sonoma ThinkPads, i.e. T43, R52 and X41. Installing an unsupported hard drive results in "Error 2010" upon POST. There are modded BIOS and patches to disable the error though.

1.8" drives aren't that bad, true they're rarer but they're still easy to find, just slightly more expensive, and if an adapter exists (like mSATA to ZIF/micro IDE/micro SATA adapter) the problem is pretty much moot.

It's nothing compared to proprietary stuff Sony has been using like forever. I've seen RAM cards and double layer SSDs with proprietary connectors that no one else has used, these are real PITA.