How much should this cost?

[hate2work]

Our HD is going bad on our 6 yo computer. The wife took it to a local shop and they want $150 to transfer the important data to a new external HD, or to transfer it to the HD of a new desktop they sell.

That seems like a lot of money to me to get that done. Is that excessive?

 

[Bill in Utah]

Originally Posted By: hate2work

Our HD is going bad on our 6 yo computer. The wife took it to a local shop and they want $150 to transfer the important data to a new external HD, or to transfer it to the HD of a new desktop they sell.

That seems like a lot of money to me to get that done. Is that excessive?


New IDE drive around $50 and time to clone it around a hour...

I think its high.

Bill

 

[Deltona_Dave]

Sounds like Geek Squad

A good HDD can be had for less than 50 bucks. IF the old drive works, you can find a USB dock and a freeware disk clone software to copy. Get a good HDD, Western Digital or Seagate. Avoid Maxtor and Toshibas.

A USB dock for hard drives is about 20 bucks at NewEgg. Disk Cloning software can be found on MajorGeeks for free. 150 is too much IMHO.

Dave

 

[beast3300]

Hard drives are very cheap. Visit newegg.com for great shipping. I buy 99.8% of my computer stuff from there.

 

[FusilliJerry82]

Maxtor is now a Seagate brand.

Also, IMO Seagate has really dropped the ball with quality control in the last few years. Stick with Western Digital.

 

[beast3300]

Originally Posted By: FusilliJerry82
Maxtor is now a Seagate brand.

Also, IMO Seagate has really dropped the ball with quality control in the last few years. Stick with Western Digital.


X2, I had to RMA my Seagate. WD has never let me down.

 

[EricF]

Seagate's used to be reliable as a western digital, a few years back they had some major firmware issues, locking up drive motors and scrambled data. they issued a firmware update, which made things worse.
Their quality hasn't come back yet.
Spend $10 more and get a Western Digital.
Green is 5400RPM, slow -- runs cool -- still respectful
Black is 7200RPM, fast -- runs warm -- Great for everything
Blue -- I'm not sure.. I like the Black for my main box and the green as an external storage device.

 

[Nick R]

Blue is great. My personal PC is a Western Digital blue 640GB. (model WD6400AAKS) the SATA version. The blue are 7200RPM. The Black are also 7200RPM, the difference is the amount of cache used. The Blue are 16MB, the black are 32MB.

 

[SrDriver]

Depending on the situation data recovery can be expensive. That said if the computer is that old sounds like it could be time for a new system.

 

[Deltona_Dave]

Originally Posted By: FusilliJerry82
Maxtor is now a Seagate brand.

Also, IMO Seagate has really dropped the ball with quality control in the last few years. Stick with Western Digital.


Segate bought out Maxtor around 2005. we used to have Maxtor 40gb drives in our compaqs. Failed like crazy after a year. I use W/D and second Maxtor .11 series. The .8 .9. and some .10 series had issues.

Laptop drives, Hitatchi TravelStars (used to be IBM). Samsung makes a pretty decent drive for desktops.

I go for W/D first. I like Black Label series.

Dave

 

[Colt45ws]

I agree on going for WDs. I purchased 5 Seagate 7200.11s and just RMAd number 3.

 

[Deltona_Dave]

Originally Posted By: Colt45ws
I agree on going for WDs. I purchased 5 Seagate 7200.11s and just RMAd number 3.


Were those TerraByte or above? They seem to fail quite a bit. I have had okay results with the smaller drives (250 Gigs). But, I go with W/D for most, but sometimes I can get a deal on a Samsung (they have improved greatly). Seagate does have an excellent 5 year warranty though.

 

[javacontour]

Originally Posted By: hate2work

Our HD is going bad on our 6 yo computer. The wife took it to a local shop and they want $150 to transfer the important data to a new external HD, or to transfer it to the HD of a new desktop they sell.

That seems like a lot of money to me to get that done. Is that excessive?


Without knowing the size of the drive, it's hard to say. A replacement drive can be $50 to $100, and there is likely an hours worth of labor in a job like that. So it's probably a bit higher than if you found a college student who would come to your home and do the very same thing.

If you didn't have the USB drive cradle, you would have to buy that for say $25, then you are talking about $50 to $100 for a replacement HD, then the time to do the work, if you know how to do it. That work is copying the old drive to the new one, and then installing the new drive in place of the old one.

So $150 isn't bad if you don't have the tools and/or knowledge to do this job.

 

[Colt45ws]

Originally Posted By: Deltona_Dave
Originally Posted By: Colt45ws
I agree on going for WDs. I purchased 5 Seagate 7200.11s and just RMAd number 3.


Were those TerraByte or above? They seem to fail quite a bit. I have had okay results with the smaller drives (250 Gigs). But, I go with W/D for most, but sometimes I can get a deal on a Samsung (they have improved greatly). Seagate does have an excellent 5 year warranty though.

They are 500GB drives. Yes, the only saving grace is the long warranty, but I would have preferred to not use it three times.