Hewlett-Packard Will Replace Faulty Hard Disks

September 7th, 2007

Some 1.6GB hard disk drives shipped with Hewlett-Packard’s Vectra VL 4 and Vectra 500 series PCs may fail, the company confirmed today.

The problem tends to manifest itself when the drive is relatively new, said Ken Bosley, product manager for the Vectra VL series. The models that had the problem were discontinued after November 1. But if someone is experiencing the problem we’d like them to call us.

In drives with the malfunction, users may be unable to read from the disk. Error messages include the words bad sector, inability to read, or ECC error. Hewlett-Packard will replace the units on site, or owners can ship them to the manufacturer, Bosley said.

The failures were traced to a cleaning agent used in the drive supplier’s cleaning process and problems caused during the shipping or handling of the unit. HP is replacing the 1.6GB drives, manufactured by Western Digital, with drives from Quantum.

Models with the following serial numbers may be affected: HP Vectra VL Series 4: D3810B, D3812B, D3814B, D4661B, D4664B, D4685B, D3698B, D4648B, D4654B, D4655B.

HP Vectra Series 500: D4150A, D4151A, D4152A, D4152B, D4153A, D4160A, D4172A, D4173A, D4174A, D4175A, D4414A, D4417A, D4418A, D4421A, D4422A, D4423A, D4424A, D4426A, D4427A, D4430A, D4431A, D4436A, D4439A, D4441A, D4443A, D4454A, D4464A, D4466A, D4476A, D4478A, D4480A, D4604A, D4606A, D4607A.

Customers with faulty drives should call the HP North American Customer Support Center at 970/635-1000.

Despite the malfunctions, the Vectra series has in general seen few problems and has a record of good performance. For example, the Vectra VE 5/133 and XM5/120 Series 4 are both ranked in PC World’s Top 20 Budget Desktops list.

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