Hard Drive needed for repair?

I'm turning in my presario V6000 to HP because the motherboard failed and the guy on the phone says I need to give them my harddrive too. Not only that but he said they usually wipe it and I can include a note asking them not to but theres no guarantee they'll listen. Am I missing something here? Do I really need to give my harddrive to them in order to replace the mobo?

 

nooooooooooooooo

 

Why not buy a 2nd hand HDD on ebay load it with the recovery disc then send that in, afterwards reinsert yours and sell the one you got on ebay, if it's that important to you.

 

what kind of service is that!? thats ridiculous!

 

SPQR has a great point. From my experience, they do not need your hard drive to replace the motherboard, but to run the diagnostics to ensure it is correctly done. Now with that said, it is 50/50 if they actually power up your laptop. It is nearly impossible to tell because they may use their own livecd cocktail, etc. I agree with the above, and just purchase a small, chea (and hopefully healthy) exchange drive. Unless you have the means to make and image/backup of the existing information, this will be the easiest idea. Another idea, is to invest in a nicer drive and enclose (can be done for under $100) to do this. If you go with the 2.5" flavor, you can always use it as a back up for the internal drive. If you go with the 3.5", you will see better speed and a lower price...but it is only internally compatible desktops. I prefer having an external drive, but to each his own. I backup my info, do a quick dban and reinstall with the recovery dvd and then update the drives to what I was using. I like to keep my information as well as the information of others that I access/hold private, thus I don't want my drive getting out there for some reason if they decide to grant me a new rig/piece of hardware. Extra work, but worth it for my piece of mind.

 

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They said they need to reimage the drive so that it would accept the new bios and that there was a 50 percent chance of it not working if they didn't do it. Is there anyway I can get the harddrive to work again without wiping it?


A more general question, is there a way to simply connect the harddrive to my other laptop and get the files off?

 

if i were you i would save an image of the drive to a large computer or something with a large ammount of space. that or replace the hard drive and ask them if you did that if they would really need you to load any thing to it if they say theyre going to wipe it any way.

it sounds bogus that they woul need to "reimage" a hard drive in order for new bios to work.

 

There is something seriously suspicious here. HP cannot force the customer to send in the hard disk if the customer chooses not to and the fault is not related to the hard disk.

 

Noooo, they definetly do not need the hdd, and i would never be sending my hdd in. they should have a spare hdd !

keep your hdd...

true. something smells fishy here.

i have send in my 8510p and my previous lenovo t61 to several repairs now and i never left my hdd in the laptop, and i was never asked to send my harddrive in. there are precious files from work on my laptop, some from projects i have signed a non disclosure contract...

even if hell freezes i would not send my data to a repair center...

 

Just make sure you leave your bank and credit card details plus any relevant passwords on the HDD in an easily accessible folder. LOL.

Only joking, don't do that.

Seriously though is it possible you have a windows OEM version that once you have had the system board replaced will no longer validate with the OS on your HD?

 

You dont need to send it in. I always tell them before hand that im not sending my harddrive in and i never do they always fix the problem. I also never send it back with ram.

 

I know most the time they would requir the whole machine including the drive. They do this possibly to check the systems integrity and make sure that everything else is working. No point in sending the system in for a repair and getting it back to relize later that you needed something else replaced. I see this all the time and not just on Manufactures warranties but also company warranties such as staples. which I am familiar with. (deal with every day. )

 

For repair you don't need to send in your hard drive. Their technicians always have exact image hard drives for testing. Don't be supprised that right hand doesn't know what left hand is doing, especially with those guys on the phone who never do actually repair work.

However, you can take out data from your hard drive easily with an adapter either connected to a laptop or desktop.
This one is used to connect to a desktop's IDE cable :
http://cgi.ebay.com/Hard-Drive-IDE-...5|66:2|65:12|39:1|240:1318|301:1|293:1|294:50

This one is for connecting to another computer via USB:

http://cgi.ebay.com/2-5-to-USB-2-0-...5|66:2|65:12|39:1|240:1318|301:1|293:1|294:50

 

In conclusion I ignored both the vaguely indian accented guy on the regular HP helpline and the very American sounding guy at the HP Technical support hotline and sent it in without the HD. I popped it back in and it works fine. Now I just need to see whether the BIOs was updated to prevent the mobo from failing again.

 

For repair, you don't need to send in hard drives, battery,and AC adapter.
The negative side is you miss a chance for a free replacement if they're not in good working condition such as bad hard drive, broken AC power cord, low battery life...etc.

If you're sending your hard drive, make sure back it up. Their incompetent, low paid technicians tend to reload OS , just simply they don't know how to fix software problems.