sending a hard drive off for warranty

Discussion in 'Detailing Bliss Lounge' started by invaderzim, Nov 8, 2012.

  1. invaderzim

    invaderzim Jedi Nuba

    My solid state drive in my laptop just died. But now I have a conundrum; do I send it off for warranty with all my personal information on it?
    Most of my passwords are contained in a password program but some less crucial ones are saved in the browser. There isn't anything incriminating on the drive but the idea that someone somewhere could get it working and have a copy of my computer running is a bit creepy.

    What would you do? Eat the cost of the drive or send it off and try to change all your passwords and hope the drive isn't recoverable at all.

    Never thought of it that much before but if someone steals your laptop they get a pretty good look at your life.
     
  2. SoCal Garage

    SoCal Garage DB Forum Supporter

    I would send it off so as not to potentially void the warranty for other parts of your laptop. What brand of laptop is it?
     
  3. Kilo6_one

    Kilo6_one DB Forum Supporter

    I am no tech person, but I would rather pay someone I know to fix it then send it off to be done for free and have everything possibly comprised. Small price to pay. Sad it has to be that way actually
     
  4. invaderzim

    invaderzim Jedi Nuba

    it is an older laptop that I upgraded the drive to SSD so no warranty on the laptop itself anymore.

    I figure I'll eat the cost of the drive and just get a 128 MB one this time rather then the 256MB I splurged for last time. That should make it a bit cheaper to replace.

    Loved the solid state drive though, it did wonders for speeding it up. A couple weeks ago I updated it to their latest firmware and it made it even faster, but maybe I should have waited....
     
  5. ChrisJobe

    ChrisJobe Two Bucket System Washer

    I would just buy a new drive and try a drive toaster to see if you can recover the old drives data
     
  6. SoCal Garage

    SoCal Garage DB Forum Supporter

    Another aspect you might consider is to do is what I do: I always take out the original drive and replace it with an enterprise drive(s). This way when the computer goes to warranty I simply exchange my drive out for the original (which is left the way it came with no additional files). You can purchase enterprise SSD drives now too. A bit more expensive, but worth it.

    Here's a good article on enterprise drives (if you don't already know what they are): What Makes a Hard Drive Enterprise ClassWhat is the Difference Between an Enterprise and Consumer Class SSD
     
  7. joffems

    joffems Any Rag Vehicle Washer

    My recommendation to my customers is to not send drives back to the manufacturer. Some don't care and send their drives in any way, others pay for keep your hard drive protection and some just eat the cost when drives die.

    What state is your drive currently in? Are your receiving lots of errors? Is the drive not powering up?

    As a next step, I usually recommend booting your machine with a live Linux CD and trying to access and erase the drive. If it works, you can then send it in under warranty. If you're not sure how to do that, let me know and I'll be happy to help.
     
  8. invaderzim

    invaderzim Jedi Nuba

    currently the computer just comes up with "can't find operating system" when I try to boot it.
    I did find a thing on power cycling the drive that some people said worked (and started having to do after they did the latest firmware update) So I'll try that and see if it helps.
     
  9. kyoshiro

    kyoshiro DB Forum Supporter

    Boot a Linux Live CD, mount the SSD or try and format it then send it in for repairs. Its pretty hard to recover by software due to the nature of SSD drives. Does your bios still show the SSD and got a model number/brand?
    If the controller chip is broken, you can't access the data anymore as well and its pretty much unrecoverable unless you pay some hefty fees for data recovery and then you may have some slight hope. The data mapping on SSDs are quite a bit more complicated than conventional hard drives and on SSDs with MLC (majority of consumer ssds), its even more complicated as they store 2 bits in 1 block as opposed to a 1 to 1 ratio. Now having 2 bits in 1 block may sound simple but you are representing 4 electrical levels as opposed to 2 which is harder to achieve.
    Also if your laptop supports hard drive encryption via bios, turn it on and it'll auto encrypt your ssd. Send it in encrypted for repairs and you'll be even safer :)
     
  10. Kilo6_one

    Kilo6_one DB Forum Supporter

    ^^^^ ok, he lost me after "boot"

    [​IMG]
     
  11. invaderzim

    invaderzim Jedi Nuba

    no kidding. I get a couple words and then a few throw me off and then a few more make sense and then...
    eDZ6aTdpMTI=_o_jeff-dunham--peanut-blooper.jpg
     
  12. Kilo6_one

    Kilo6_one DB Forum Supporter

    As long as I can play battlefield, thats my extent of computer knowlege.......... after that I have friends in IT. I just hand it to them and say "lmk cost and time, thanks"
     
  13. kyoshiro

    kyoshiro DB Forum Supporter

    Lulz

    Nonetheless the last time I sent in a perfectly fine ssd for warranty, they gave me a new one. It is also possible for laptop's hard drive controller going faulty like my previous motherboard. Best if you have another machine to work on or you can plug in the laptop's old hard drive and boot from that

    Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2
     
  14. ChrisJobe

    ChrisJobe Two Bucket System Washer

    try a chkdsk
     
  15. UniqueAutoKraft

    UniqueAutoKraft Any Rag Vehicle Washer

    ~Boot your laptop, pull up the BIOS, see if the drive is recognized at a hardware level.

    ~If the drive is listed either remove it and attempt file recovery on another system using a SATA to USB housing/converter or by placing it internally on a desktop. Better to add it in to the desktop while it's off, but if you chose to do it when the computer's on go in to control panel> administrative tools> computer management> storage> disk management> right click disk management and select rescan drives. The drive should show up and you'll see a pop up notifying you of the system installing device drivers.

    ~If the drive can be found under windows and you wish to recover the files make sure you get absolutely everything, you're going to wipe the drive before sending it out for RMA

    ~Assuming the drive was able to be found under another operating system and you've backed up your files you're going to want to format the drive. Use a 32 pass format to ensure absolute data destruction.

    Feel free to email me if you need any additional help as I don't always check the board. neoh.force@gmail.com
     

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