When Hard Drives fail...

And so I've gotten meself a "new" laptop to replace the ageing (or rather, aged) Compaq V3000 notebook I received from Starhub for signing up with their broadband plan 5 years ago. There wasn't any particular reason why I needed a replacement, and indeed I would have continued using the Compaq if its CMOS battery didn't start conking out on me. Sure I could simply swop out the battery, but couple that with the fact that PUB, the place where I'm currently interning at, loaned me a spanking new HP Elitebook 2560p to play around with, it was inevitable that NAS hit me. (If you know what GAS means, you'll know what NAS refers to.) *GAS refers to Gear Acquisition Syndrome

My old Compaq (with the Apple logo)
 and the new Toshiba 

I bought a second hand Toshiba Portege R830 for about half the stated retail price from a vendor in Sim Lim Square with about 8 months of warranty left. I won't say its second hand really, since its never been turned on, but I wouldn't call it sparkling new either. It came free with the M1 fibre promotion which probably contributed to the bargain price. 

Either way, I've had my eye on the R830 for a long time after doing copious amounts of research - 9 hour-long battery life, 13" matte screen, Intel Core i5, 6GB RAM, DVD player, HDMI, VGA and Ethernet ports, USB 3.0, SD card slot - how did Toshiba manage to squeeze all that into a slim frame weighing only 1.4kg? The R830 was released before the era of the ultraboook (2011), yet I'm sure this business grade laptop will slot in with the new crowd perfectly fine. The only fault I could find was the average integrated graphics card and the whiny cooling fan. Check out the Cnet Review.

The Portege R830 (left) vs the Elitebook 2560p(right)

Anyway, I wasn't surprised or worried when the new notebook started giving me problems - random blue screens, slowdowns and crashes - since it was still under warranty. While I couldn't tell what was wrong from the blue screen error codes (yes, even Google failed me), the sounds coming from the hard disk though hinted to me what it was - a dying hard disk drive.

First thing I did was to run Check Disk and it passed the test. I wasn't entirely convinced though, and another blue screen spurred me to try SeaTools. My suspicions were confirmed when it failed the long test. Just for good measure, I downloaded the bootable Hitachi Drive Fitness Test which also confirmed that the hard disk was bad.

Luckily for me, the laptop was still usable so I immediately did a backup before bringing it down to the Toshiba Service Centre in Kallang. After only 2 days of waiting (not counting the weekend), I got back my notebook with a brand new hard disk installed! After all those horror stories of people's experiences with warranty claims and the RMA process, I was pleasantly surprised that Toshiba did everything efficiently and did not give me any problems at all.

I just hope this new hard disk works fine: My sister's Sony Vaio laptop had to be sent back twice for the same problem when it was still new.

I didn't intend to do a review on my new purchase, but what the heck:

Toshiba Portege R830

PROS:
- Slim and incredibly light
- Full featured business notebook (not nerfed with ultra-low voltage chips)
- Tons of connectivity options
- Soild build-quality
- Robust battery life

CONS:
- Expensive, compared to newer ultrabooks in the market
- Mediocre graphics
- Noisy fan when things get hot
- Tiny speakers, bad sound

Clearly not a laptop for entertainment junkies or gamers, but its a winner when it comes to portability and battery life. Few laptops out there can match its lack of weight other than the lightest of ultrabooks (and its newer cousin, the Z830). It won't handle high-end games but it certainly runs Starcraft 2 fine at the lowest possible setting. HD videos run smoothly as well, though external speakers/headphones are a must for videos and music.

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Have you had any horror stories when doing a warranty claim? Looking back, I guess the reason why I was expecting the worst was probably due to people's tendency to rant and complain if they've had a bad experience - few would do the opposite for a good experience.

How about a pleasant experience?