Data loss

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Lukie45

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Feb 23, 2004
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Question: I think I need to RMA a hard drive, but I am concerned that the data contained within may be visible to prying eyes. Does anyone know what the policy is on RMA'd hard drives and the contained data?
Thanks.
 
Why not just wipe the drive before you send it back them anyway? Assuming you can still access the disk from a boot disk.
 
try the usual tricks to get the drive to work - plastic bag it and put it in the freezer for a day, pull it out and quickly do a format, if that doesn't work try to degauss the heads, setting the drive under a florescent light gives it a mild alternating magnetic field which can get marginal drives operational (about a week under a light ~4"away)

If that doesn't work send it back, they prolly won't take the time to itemize your porn collection.:D

BTW welcome to [H]
 
If you RMA the drive, you're just getting another hard drive back - they won't have anything to do with recovering the data for you or migrating whatever data is on your bad drive to the new one.
mind you that when I say 'new', you should read it as 'refurbed'. rare is the time Maxtor, Western Digital, Seagate, etc. will send you a brand-spankin'-new drive.

if you've already suffered data loss, drop me a PM & I can prolly' help you get back up & running. if it's only looming over you at this point, backup your stuff now & send 'er back.

as for anyone at Seagate scoping out your pr0n & keyboard-drivers, I wouldn't put any worry to it - but if you're the paranoid type, wiping the drive clear prolly' won't hurt it beyond whatever damage it's already sustained. :D
 
Dont bother screwing around with it if it doesn't work lol. It has a warranty im guessing so send it in and have it replaced. If your worried about what is on the drive and want to make sure noone can recover the data off it then go to the Seagate website and download a tool thats used to zero fill the hard drive. I've used it myself on a Seagate drive for a virus on a hard drive. It will cover all traces of whatever was on the hard drive and will make it just like it was brand new out of the factory. Granted you wont be able to do this if the hard drive doesn't still work but if thats the case i dont think you need to worry about them messing with it ither.

Im not sure what they do with them when you send them in for RMA. They may check them over to see what the problem is so they can make a note of it.
 
Hi all, thanks for tips, but the problem is, I can't wipe the drive clean...even if I wanted to. The drive only appears in My Computer like 10 % of the time, in RAW format and I cannot format it. Somehow, the drive got screwed up, and I'm just concerned about possible prying eyes if I were to RMA it. I was going to set it as a master drive and try to use XP's formatting/partitioning mechanism to see if I can salvage it. Any thoughts? Thanks again for the help/advice.
 
The drive will be thier property after you send it back to them. Along with whatever you have on it.

I assume that you have some sort of data that would be important for others not to see ie. financial data, a special startup page pointing to a certain .cx website or something as such. ;)

Anyhow if you are really paranoid, then try the above techniques and do a secure delete of all of the data. Meaning overwriting it at least 3 times with random bit strings.

If that doesn't work or isn't good enough for you just smash it and burn it.

That is what the government does with all HD's that have housed Top Secret data.

If you take the last option, HD's are cheap versus the potential loss.

Many may think this is too paranoid but better safe than sorry IMO.
 
Well, as someone above said, they will send you a refurb'd drive back most likely.

Then they'll throw your drive into the repair pile. If it's fixable, they'll fix it (economically, that is). It then becomes either scrap (if they cant fix it) or a refurbished drive.

Now, whether or not they write 0's to the drive after fixing it, who knows. Maybe someone could end up with your data?

I've never tried data recovery on a returned RMA drive. I will next time just to see whats on it. We've had RMA'd drives come back with XP installed (drivers and all). Rather annoying that they don't send back a fully formatted CLEAN drive.

Read the warranty info very carefully and see if it says if they'll send you a refurb'd drive or not. If it doesn't, make note that you'd like a NEW drive.
 
BTW, all our suggestions about formatting and disk wiping have nothing to do with Windows. I'd be willing to bet that it may be fine (the drive I mean). If you clear the MBR and do a low level format on the drive, it may be just fine. All of which should be done without running Windows.
 
Originally posted by Ice Czar
somehow I doubt that Seagate has a undercover NSA operative reading RMAd HDDs :p
Click to expand...

That's what they want you to think ;)

I wouldn't be worried about the NSA operatives anyhow, I would be worried about the underpaid techs that have too much free time on thier hands.
 
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