"George L." wrote in message ...

I took my Compaq equipped with 80 gig HD to ****USA but got
back a 40 gig. My data wasn't lost, but the drive is
definitely smaller, according to the BIOS and the label on the HD.

The repair center denies that they replaced the drive and said
that they only ran a diagnostic on it. I have the receipt for
the original HD (was an upgrade) and registered its serial
no., but the repair center says that it's not enough proof.

Repair shops sometime substitute parts for testing and then forget to
put back the originals. But fraud does happen, and I've had 2
experiences with hard drive downgrades like that, both where the shop
"forgot" to restore all the partitions. It seems that high-priced
video cards are the most likely targets for this now because other
components are so cheap.

Protect yourself by copying down the model and serial numbers of every
drive, video card, and memory module, and write them on the original
work order, along with "return old parts to customer."