why we love dell so....?

Hey ubuntu ! Merry Christmas party people !

Let me tell youse a little story, firstly I thought I'd treat myself to a refurbished dell xps 1530. 2ghz dual core, 3gb ddr and all that jazz. I received it in record time, and booted it up really excited.. Only to find it run dead slow and BSOD me after 10 minutes idle running the pre-installed vista ultimate.

So i ran a quick diagnostic from a boot cd and found out the hdd had an error code of 0146 so I phoned dell. Their technicians told me the drive needed to be replaced, so I read them the service tag on the case and find out the laptop is still under warranty! fantastic news. So i take out the sata hdd and tell them a bunch of codes and they promise to send me a brand spank unit. The existing drive that came installed was a samsung spinpoint 250gig 5200 rpm.

I just this moment took delivery of a new *samsung 200gig 7200 rpm.* Not miffed about loosing 50gig, but gaining the extra speed is a good substitute.

... then just after dell leave my house, and after giving the courier the old drive in replacement, i get a special delivery... ANOTHER NEW DRIVE!!! this one is a *hitachi 200gig 3.0gb/s sata 7200rpm..*

so, who loves dell? :wink:

holey cow, merry christmas!

Don't love them too much. I would almost garuntee they'll want the extra drive back.

BTW, I'm curious... When you had your HD replaced, did they let you install it yourself, or did they have to send out a repair man to do it? How did they handle the exchange of the old drive? Thanks.

your probably right, but if they don't ask for it back soon i will sell it!

I had two options from dell both free of charge. they offered to send out a tech to come to my house and install the hdd, or to do it myself. i opted for the latter, its really simple just undo two screws and the drive slides out. ..

the only problem with a tech coming over is they require all the original cds of windows. without them they are reluctant to come out. they kept phoning asking to read them the cdkeys for windows, when i explained i only want the drive and to install linux they shut up.

now i have a new problem, because i have never setup a sata drive im not sure now to format it and install ubuntu. . i got a dvd from linux format with 8.10, just done an integrity test and it came back with 4 errors!!!

bugger it

edit: i have tried to format using a Ultimate Boot CD. it has a bunch of format programs but they don't detect the sata drive.

you could try parted magic. Thats what I use for all my formatting stuff link here http://partedmagic.com/ .Any newer linux distro should have no problem with seeing sata though. You should be able to just put in the install disk and the installer will allow you to partition it(if your installing ubuntu). If the install disk(livecd) doesn't see your drive their may be something wrong with it, try swapping in the hitachi and see if that one works.

thanks lad, have just d/loaded parted magic 3.2.. am just booting it now will check back soon x

edit: is right, parted magic saw the hdd correctly.. have just ran the hdd wipe and it said something about the bios having "frozen" the drive. But it gave me an option to wipe it anyway so its doing so now.

what kind of partition sizes and what not do you recommend iggykoopa lad?