A new HDD

If you bought a real cheap one John they would have been refurbished. You can check the warranty status by putting the serial number in here. If it’s in warranty (doubtful) then follow the process to RMA it.

Amazon is often a good place to buy things if you know what it is you’re buying. I do my research elsewhere and then see if Amazon can do it any better.

So, hard drives for a P5G41T-M LX. Good news is it’s SATA. I use E-Buyer as they stock proper mainstream kit. Sort hard drives by price and for £36 we can get a Toshiba P300 500GB 3.5” SATA High-Performance Hard Drive. SATA 6.0 Gbit/s Interface, 7200RPM, 64MB Cache. Ticks all the boxes.

Have a look on Amazon and it’s exactly the same price.

Now have a look at 500GB HDDs on Amazon and ask yourself how anyone can sell one for £12 or even £25. There is no such thing as a “generic” hard drive, there’s only 3 manufacturers (Toshiba, WD, Seagate).

Why the need for specifically that hdd?

I’ve just got THIS  – it’s from Amazon, ( not marketplace afaik ) on Prime – ordered yesterday, due today – I thought it was great value for a WD Blue 1TB, 7200, SATA3, 64Mb Cache. It’ll go as an data drive with W10 on an SSD.

I just remembered that Bruce said he had some insider data which showed that the manufacturing location was the most important factor for drive reliability. Based on 20 years out of date data I would also tend to avoid certain countries (Malaysia in particular), and prefer others (Taiwan was high both for Bruce and I),  but a lot can change in 20 years.