My mate just had his hard drive replaced on his laptop and he asked for his old hard drive back but they said that they are keeping it for the Gold?

but he persisted and requested it and they said they will have to "find" it. I never knew about this, is it true?

the other thing is he has got home and the laptop wants windows re-installing on it for some reason and he does not have the disk. Is that normal after a swap of hard drive? I remember taking a old laptop to a shop and they swapped the harddrive in front of me and windows loaded as normal?.

Now the shop wants £55 to put windows backon for him.

the hard drive they put in ur's must have had windows already installed i guess?

sounds like he is bein well conned, where was this?

Looool I have never heard of Gold platters, otherwise I suspect HDD's would be mega expensive. Unless they mean the gold on the circuit board, which is worthless on its own, but when you have tonnes of it, it can make you a fortune.

How did they lose it lol. They have a responsibility to ensure it is kept safe until the data has been totally destroyed/sent off to a date destroyer. Unless they are planning to do a low level format and sell it on, this should mean the platters will be physically damaged to ensure no data theft.

Where did he have it done? Was it a dead hard drive or just an upgrade? If it was an upgrade, id have expected them to image it, and restore the image on the new drive, as standard. And return the original HDD to the customer. I fact, they should have asked him if he wanted the old HDD and advised him of data security risks etc...

£55 sounds a bit expensive, did they provide the laptop (Windows license) and not provide restore CD's? If he has CD's he can do it himself. I mean even PC World only charge £30 for replacement restore CD's, and it takes around 30 minutes tops, most of which is automated, especially on an OEM restore CD...

Why did he have the hard drive replaced ie faulty or just wanted more capacity?

Yes, Windows will have been installed on the hard drive - so I cant see how previously you saw a new drive installed and Windows was still there.

If he has the original Windows sticker still on the machine then I THINK he can phone Microsoft, explain what has happened and they will provide him with a proper disk. I THINK.

If the old drive was working then they should have transferred the contents onto the new drive. Personally I would always insist on having the old drive returned - even if only to physically destroy it with a big hammer. If his hard drive is like mine there will be all sorts of personal info on it eg bank details. Yes, there IS a tiddy, tiddy bit of gold on various contacts etc but I would not have thought it economic for anyone to recover that on an individual unit basis. Sure, if you were collecting dozens of the things it may become worthwhile, but not for the occasional one. Personal suspicion - there was nowt wrong with the old drive but they flogged him a new one and will re-use the old one. Nasty mind I have.

Snod

The gold plating, from the circuit boards especially, has been recycled for many years. The are other rare metals in the hard drive that may be recycled as well.

It was a place in new ferry opposite the post office. They said that his HDD was broke and it needed replacing. I did joke with him saying they will fit one out of an old laptop and then sell his on to another customer.

He said he only had disc 1 of 2 to install windows and that the product key is still on the bottom of his laptop.

He threw it on his bed and thats when it stopped working.

Contact the laptop manufacturer, they will provide a new set for a price. Like I say, even DSGi only charge around £30 usually for a set of restore discs, so it shouldnt be more than that, although you never know.

Im not sure if you can use a disc from a standard version of Windows to install and then just use the valid key, you should be able to on some, but a LOT are pretty locked down nowadays, so will probably only be able to use discs from the same manufacturer, or someone with an OEM/retail version of the OS.

ive got a version of xp if you want to borrow it i got it off matty a few moons ago ive just had my harddrive replaced and got this reinstalled on it and you dont need to use the keycode but i have got the keycode if you need it.

that would be splendid

Ay Kyle is it an SP2 one? If so it should be good for updates. I have a newer version you see.

I just downloaded an awesome verssion for him so ill try this forst, hopefully his pc can handle it

A source of recovery discs is http://www.gennersales.co.uk who charge about £23. They are authorised to do this by most of the manfacturers and have thousands of models available. Don't get excited about the free disc they throw in.

Some of their discs are windows install discs that may not come with the manufacturers drivers, but they get you going so that you can download the correct drivers if you wish (in reality unless you are a heavy gamer, the microsoft drivers normally do).

With my laptop I tried to install using a normal off-the-shelf windows disc, but because the licence number on laptop was HP, it wouldn't have it - had to use HP discs from genner above.

NOTE that genner are not providing hacked versions and need you to use a genuine licence number.

im not sure if its sp2 matty

Dunno then lol, I av an NHS VLM version but only given it to a couple of people for obvious reasons.

It works spot on, and recieves all updates etc without issue lol.

Did you/your mate sort this in the end Wheels?