I just had a very bad experience with Sony support. They refused to give me the model number of the Toshiba drive in my notebook.My experience with Sony support—pick a division,any division—has been abysmal. The support website is fair at best. Am I over-reacting or is this the norm with Sony—lousy support.

lfe2211

Can’t comment on Sony support, because I’ve never used them.

However, if your computer is running, go into Control Panel | System | Hardware | Device Manager and expand the Disk Drives branch of the tree.  From there you can right-click on your disk drive and bring up the Properties sheet.  From there you should be able to see your disk drive model number.

Jef

Thank much for the info but I already knew my drive model from a utility that I have.The question I never got to was whether an Hitachi drive could be used in lieu of the original Toshiba installed. The service manual shows configurations for both types of drive with this model but doesn’t say whether they are interchangeable for replacement/repair purposes. This is important to me sine Hitachi makes a 60 GB model whereas Toshiba only goes to 40GB for this drive design. The Sony support tech never let me get that far in the discussion. He just said open your box and pay Sony $350 plus (2-3x market value) for the drive model he refused to identify.

If you have a look at the following thread:

You can visually see that the drives are different.  The Hitachi drive has its connector along the side, whereas the Toshiba has its connector on the end.

The drives use different connectors, rails and sheeting materials.  There have been a number of posts on the forum regarding swapping one for the other, including the different part numbers needed to make this work.

What you propose can be done, but it’s a matter of more than just sourcing the replacement drive.  There are a number of other parts to secure in advance of making this work.

I wasn’t sure what you were after from your original post.

Jef

For the record, Toshiba makes 1.8” drives in 60GB and 80GB models. The 60GB are easy to find but the 80GB are not. Most likely, you will need to order a different interface cable in addition to the drive if you want to switch to a different brand HDD.

Here’s a place that sells the 60GB model .

Especially Jefn. This is the post I’ve been looking for especially the link to

http://www.siliconpopculture.com/sonytr/viewtipic.php?t=5486&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Among other things, it clarifies the Toshiba/Hitachi issues

Many thanks.

For the record, Toshiba makes 1.8” drives in 60GB and 80GB models. The 60GB are easy to find but the 80GB are not. Most likely, you will need to order a different interface cable in addition to the drive if you want to switch to a different brand HDD.

Here’s a place that sells the 60GB model .

Here’s a site selling the 80 gb model:
http://www.computergiants.com/items/one_item.asp?part=118609&aff=1
$499 :shock:
It’s the same site I bought my 60 gb hdd from.

This site is selling it much cheaper but for part number they have mentioned MK8009GAH instead of MK8007GAH.