Disc error on vaio

[Ria1966]

Bought a Sony vaio laptop for my son for university...it was 3 days out of warranty and came up wuth disc error..had to take to 3rd party to see if we could retrieve any of the work he hadn't managed to save but was told hard drive knackered and needs replacing....Sony are not accepting any responsibility...anyone know where I stand.

[Blencogo]

Hi Ria1966 and welcome.

Technically Sony are correct - 12 months is 12 months but it does seem a little harsh. I doubt if it will help but I will ask Sony to look at this. As I said, they are within their rights and I doubt if it will help but it is worth a try. As the drive has worked for a year it is difficult to claim a manufacturing fault - a drive error is more likely to be caused by a sharp jolt when the Vaio is writing to the drive.

Did your son make a set of Recovery Discs when he first got the Vaio? This is recommended by the system and covers the problem of reinstalling the original software in the event of a hard drive failure.

After the drive is replaced, you can buy an external USB 'Caddy' for around £10 into which you can mount the old drive and see if data can be recovered from the faulty drive. This often works as it is usually the Operating System part of the drive that is damaged.

There are professional firms that offer data recovery from a damaged drive but they are very expensive.

Let's see if I get a response from Sony.

[Ria1966]

Unfortunately did not make a set of recovery discs although he fortunately did save nearly all his work on memory sticks....we had to take to a third party to be repaired as soon as it happened as he needed the computer and I think this is half the battle that we didn't approach them first but there was a time factor involved and i didnt know whether or not they offered this service....will work on Sony see if they will change heir minds...thanks for comments will take them on board x