Does changing you hard drive yourself void warranty.

I would like to change my hard drive to large one but I am afraid that it might void my warranty. Anyone have experience with this?

 

As far as I know it does not void your warranty.

 

It shouldn't. I changed one once myself because my drive was failing, and HP didn't care.

 

I was just wondering if you have to change it back if you send it in for repairs? Thanks for the replies.

 

i upgraded my ram and it diddnt void the warranty, but then again thats a lot more simple and they did have a slot specifically so you can upgrade it lol. But i dont think it would void the warranty to change the hard drive, probably best for you to call them and ask, some companies may be different to others so even if somebody else diddnt have problems you might.

 

Definitely change it back if you have it send back to repairs. Doing otherwise might be 'fine' but just seems like your asking for trouble.

For example, what if they 'determine' the part you switched is the 'bad' one and replace it?

 

he has a point, and they could say that the warranty has been voided by you even if it hasnt and you cant prove them wrong :O

 

Amazingly there are no stickers in the back regarding voiding the warranty if the seal is broken. If the notebook dies then replace it with the original to send back. Keep the original drive until the warranty expires and use that as an external hard drive in the future...just buy the enclosure for it..

 

The first day I got the laptop I put 2 gigs of ram in. The HP rep said to put the old ram back in when I send it in. Its just that the screws on the bottom show some sign of being opened since they are painted black. Thats why I'm worrying, since I bought 2 years accidental damage for it. Thanks again guys, I will get in contact with HP.

 

True... if you contact HP (or anyone else), I'm sure the line would be: "It won't void your warranty, but we're not responsible if you damage it." Thus indirectly suggesting you would void it. Thats why I take the stance "What my Vendor doesn't know, won't hurt them."

However, I was actually thinking of something silly like:

1) They run a routine test on the hard drive.
2) It does not respond in an expected fashion (since they didn't code for the differrent hard drive). Could be something as silly as not being able to parse the model number of the drive.
3) They replace the drive...

Every now and then you hear about stories where someone RMA's a laptop and gets a different hard drive in the process. If that happens, your out of luck if you sent the system with your own drive.

As for voiding the warranty, its unlikely they'd claim that for a hard drive -- you fried your motherboard while replacing a disk? RAM might be a bit more understandable that they'd claim that.

I didn't hesitate when upgrading my RAM and drive on my laptop, but I kept the original parts (and the original image on the drive) so if I do have to have it serviced I can put those bits back. Simple.

 

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AFAIK the ram and hard-drive are considered "user-replaceable"

That being said, if you UPGRADE ANY component... put the old parts BACK-In before you send it in for "service".

Like mentioned above, what will happen is if part is replaced they will replace parts with the SAME parts the unit SHIPPED with.

Unit shipped with a 60gig hd.. you installed a 120... well you're not going to get a 120...

Ditto on the ram... unit shipped with 512 and you upgraded to 2 gig... you're going to get the unit back with 512...


PS: Keeping the orginal parts helps you troubleshoot...

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