Dell latitude 800 laptop hard drive

[geekiamnot]

Please help me locate and remove my hard drive. It needs to be fixed by Dell and they asked me to remove the hard drive first.

 

[StormBringer]

tech support did not walk you through the removal of the drive? It is standard practice for techs to walk customers through how to remove the drive when determining to replace it. reseating the drive is one of the standard TS steps.
Anyway, is this a D800 or a C800? On the D800, locate the headphone jacks, you'll note that there is a cutout area around it and a screw just under the bottom edge of the system, remove that screw and pull the drive out. On the C800, the drive is located center of the right side, you'll notice a rectangle cutout with a single screw through it(if you have an IR port, it is located on the faceplate for the hdd) remove that screw, slide the plate up, grasp it firmly and pull the drive out.

 

[geekiamnot]

Thank you for the info but I made a mistake. My laptop is a Dell Latitude D600 , not D800. Sorry for the confusion. And, yes , Dell tech support did not tell me how to remove the hard drive.

 

[StormBringer]

Ok, D600 HDD is located on the left side, near the front corner, you'll note a cutout and a single screw just under the bottom. Remove the screw and slide the drive out.

I notice you also said they needed to "fix" the drive? Usually when a drive is determined to be bad, it is simply replaced and you send the old drive back after you receive the replacement.

I'd like to ask you to reseat the drive before you receive the new one and see if it will boot, if nothing else, it might give you a chance to get some of your data off of it.
I would also like to know whether you were speaking to a tech in India or in the US. I also don't suppose you got the tech's rep ID or badge #?

 

[geekiamnot]

dell latitude D600

No, they will not fix the hard drive. They will pick up the laptop without the hard drive.
It has stopped powering on and a few tech support people said it's the motherboard( replaced by a tech at home), next a defective memory chip( one of two), and 4 refurbished memory chips later, it still won't power on. Most recently, they said send the laptop without the hard drive so that they can solve the problem of powering on once and for all, (hopefully) . It does power on with only one memory chip . Place a second one and it will not power on.
3 of 4 tech support people had Indian names, ID were: DT D43850, DD4215, DB4569, and DF8200.

 

[StormBringer]

ok, I see now, you are sending it in to depot to have it checked out. They still should have told you how to remove the drive, its part of their job.
From the looks of those IDs, looks like those were consumer tech reps, though it's a pretty slim chance of getting an American unless you have a relationship contract. Kind of odd that they had indian names though, usually the Indian reps go by names like Bob and Fred(seriously, they issue names to them)

 

[geekiamnot]

dell latitude D600

Some of the names are: Prashant, Lokesh,Saugata. The only "American " sounding name is Gina, but like you said, that could have been an assigned name to someone who works outside this country.

We'll see what happens after they depot the laptop.