Z series hard drive failure (US laptop in UK)

I have an almost-new Z series, bought in the US (I am in the UK) in December.

It seems the hard drive has failed, as it started BSODing on boot. I tried to run the recovery partition and also Windows 7 recovery mode from a Windows 7 install disc, and these simply hung. Further attempts to fix it using Windows XP and Windows Vista media also failed with similar issues.

I was able to boot using NTFS4Dos, although it didn't seem to read my data partition very well, as files were missing.

Booting with Knoppix was more fruitful, as everything seemed to be there. I rewrote the MBR and didn't get anywhere, so then I deleted the three partitions (recovery, Windows reserved, and data partition) and started again.

Now Windows installs, but it BSODs after the first reboot.

I guess my hard drive has failed, somehow (there are no mysterious noises, and I don't recall any impacts, it's remotely possible my kids took a magnet to it, however).

Anyway, since I guess I bought this in the US, I have to buy a new hard drive myself and hope it fixes the problem.

Any recommendations? Or should I go SSD? The system came with a 320GB disk originally. I assume it's not too hard to perform the swap, as I don't like really small jobs....

 

If you can still get to any part of the HDD Data you have stored, your HDD isn't your culprit. It sounds to me like a Memory problem. Have you tried to run any kind of disk error checking utility under Knoppix or Ubuntu live disks? The only thing besides a memory error I'm thinking of right now would be that you have bad sectors.. but I'd still test the HDD before you buy a new one as I REALLY don't think thats it.

 

memtest86 is fine. I've since run chkdsk and that says everything is ok, so I don't know what is going on.

 

Since you state it's new, I'd contact Sony and see if you can get a service repair.

 

My 320GB harddrive on my Z570 failed this past August as well. I was shutting down the computer (Vista), and the computer just froze. Had to hard power reset. Upon trying to log back on, I was unable to log on.

I used my Sony provided recovery disks to recover directly from boot menu as much data as possible, but let me tell you, it was a pain. Everything was very very slow. The harddrive was very unresponsive. Some files could just not be copied at all. The ones that copied okay, I was happy with, but lost lot of data.

I was under the warranty, and Sony sent a repair man and replaced my HDD. Works fine with a new HDD.

Never heard of HDD failing like that. I am always careful not to move my computer when its operating. I am hoping it was just a faulty HDD. No problem yet with this one (knock on wood), but I try to back things up more often now.

 

Do you guys have (had) Seagate drives? They issued a service bulletin for those last year I believe... just not for your model Vaio. They are a LOT more prone to fail than normal.

 

My drive is a Hitachi.

 

I called Sony, the website said I had to call 0905 0310006 (35p/minute). The call took 11 minutes, 5 seconds.

They said it appears to have int'l warranty (no idea why that is) so they will pick it up and repair it, normal turnaround is 5 working days, but if they need international parts it could take 4 weeks....

Anyone with a UK Z series? Do you have a 320GB Hitachi drive?

If this is going to take 4 weeks, I'll just buy my own drive......

 

Hmm.. That's an interesting warranty! For just a HDD, one would hope they don't take 4 wks. But you never know...

 

i dunno, they will presumably have to get a hold of the US drive image too - different bundled crapware for US models

 

sounds like usual uk sony runaround, they really need to up their game

 

don't know what you mean, the normal procedure (and the one I assumed) is that there would be no warranty at all for a US laptop in the UK.

 

Received it back today.

They replaced the hard drive, that was the problem.

I probably would have been better just buying the hard drive and fitting it myself, the service is too slow for my liking.