Replacing hard drive on Vaio VGN-FE41S

[jimcanno]

I want to replace my old hard drive with a new one, but every time I try to install it my laptop says there is an issue.

The replacement drive is not a sony one and sony support told me I can only use a sony hard drive. Does anyone know why?

[Blencogo]

Hi jimcanno.

Is this the same 1TB drive you asked about at the start of December?

https://www.sony.co.uk/discussions/thread/189208

If it is a 1TB Drive it will be an Advanced Format drive. AF drives are not supported by Sony Recovery Discs.

The only way forward is to return the AF drive and replace it with a standard format hard drive that is formatted with 512 Byte Sectors. I don't think you can get standard drives larger than 500GB.

Alternatively, you may be able to install a commercial version of Windows but you will lose all preinstalled software and drivers.