Sager sent me a new HDD!

So if you haven't been keeping up with the story, my Seagate 320GB 7200rpm died on me, and after failing to save my data, I dejectedly sent it in for a replacement. I've been using the laptop since then with an old 5400rpm Fujitsu HDD.

I just got the drive today . I have yet to open the box (I didn't feel like installing an OS this evening). It was delivered on Friday, and was sent out on Tuesday two weeks ago. 10 days for a replacement isn't bad, especially since the drive didn't reach their office until Friday. I've had much worse service from other companies. And I really appreciate that I didn't have to send in the whole laptop - few other companies would allow that for a warranty claim.

Sager may not be known for customer service, but I'm not disappointed. They've earned points for themselves today.

 

I had the same positvie experience with Sager when my HDD failed in my NP9262. I just emailed them-got an immediate response and was given the option of either an HDD exchange and installing it myself or sending the system in to Sager for them to replace it. I elected to replace the HDD myself and they immediately shipped me a replacement at no charage (free shipping) -all this within about a week.

 

To save yourself a lot of time and hassle, I recommend you use software such as Drive Snapshot or Acronis True Image to backup your entire OS. Then you could just write the image back to the new disk and boot up in a very short time. It is a shame you didn't do this before the failure but it is a good idea to start doing so now anyway.

Glad to hear you got a new HDD though.

 

I am very unhappy with Sager.

For starters, the drive they sent me wasn't packaged in anti-static packaging. I decided to test the new HDD before transferring all my files. Four bad sectors turned up.

I suspect they may have sent me a used drive.

I sold the drive today, I ran into a guy who desperately needed a new drive and was willing to pay a premium for the sake of exigency. I made sure he was informed of the bad sectors and what that meant, and he didn't mind.

So now I need to get a new hard drive, and I'm not going through Sager to get one.

Anyone have any recommendations for the best way to get good hard drive speed without sacrificing storage space or breaking the bank? I figure I'll need ~300GB storage, could settle for 250GB if I can get amazing speed, and I'd rather not pay more than $300-ish for the whole thing.

I figure my options would be a couple 7200rpm drives in RAID 0, maybe a small SSD (64GB or so) plus a 250-320GB 7200rpm, or maybe a 10,000rpm HDD (do they make 'em for laptops?). Which of these would be best? How would they compare? Sorry for acting like a total noob here .

 

The only 10,000 RPM HDD that I know of offhand is a Velociraptor, and those won't fit in a notebook (power issues). I think newegg right now has a sale on the popular Hitachi Travelstar 7K500 (500 GB) for about $99 with a promotional code. Most people who've gotten it seem to swear that it's one of the best (mechanical) drives they've ever had.

Edit - Just looked in the Notebook and Tech Bargains subforum, and found this ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=456377)

 

I have purchased many hard drives for my laptop from Amazon.co.uk but Amazon.com should be just as good. I did have one delivery that was not sufficiently packed but the hard disk was still ok and I was refunded postage cost by them as a way of saying sorry. You could also contact a different reseller to get one too.