Pls Help: Dell have lost my old hard drive

mkbswimstar

Hi, my xps has had 2 new hardrives since ive owned it, and I paid to keep the old hardrive this time. However when the engineer fitted a new hardrive this week, he mistakingly took my old hardrive with him.
He claims he didnt know he had to leave it, even tho I have a witness to say he did know as i told him and even discussed how to get the old data from it.
He has now passed it onto the Dell Depot and they have been looking for it since yesterday and Ive just been told they are still looking. :eek:
It has family photos on it of my children and holidays, I need it back and even paid in the first place to keep it.
The manager at Dell is trying his best to find it, but has had no luck so far. I think its lost, and i will never see it again.
I want my photos back, i want them secure too.
Any advise anyone? What can I force Dell to do? Where do I stand legally?
Please help me.
Thanks for reading this.

rsykes2000

if they can't find it, what do you want them to do ? I suspect unfortunately the most they will do is reimburse you for the cost of it.

mkbswimstar

Surely if they take hardrives they should be able to trace them? My biggest concern is who has access to my childrens photos. Then my next concern is that I have now lost those photos for good.

JasX

Dell will replace the hard drive with a new one, you'll need to copy the photo's over from wherever else you backed them up to (which dell will be reasonable to have expected you to have done).

when adding extra drives its normally easier (and cheaper) to do self-install job and you just add it in alongside the existing drive, most cases typically have 6 to 8 drive bays capable of taking a hard disk/CD drive/ floppy / card reader, 2.5" drives can be fitted to 3.5" bays with a converter bracket that usually costs about 99p.

Much less risky doing it that way too.

mkbswimstar

Its a new hardrive on here now. I had just downloaded about 500 photos from my phone and then my laptop went wrong and the hardrive broke. Didnt get time to back them up. So I paid Dell so that I could keep the old hardrive when they put a new one in. Thats the one they have lost.
Interestingly this is my 2nd replacement hardrive now, so thats 3 so far! The laptops not that old either.
I have no history of the photos now.

fwor

mkbswimstar wrote: »

Where do I stand legally?

I've not actually checked Dell's service/maintenance Terms and Conditions, but I would be amazed if they don't have a clause with words to the effect that they are not responsible for the loss of customer data.

You may be lucky and get the hard disk back, but even so, if it's broken you may not be able to get anything off it anyway.

Were the photos on the phone stored on a removable memory card? If so, you may stand a chance of recovering the deleted files with a utility such as Recuva. If that's an option, the important thing is to stop using the memory card immediately as otherwise the deleted files will get overwritten.

closed

Too late now, but there is a backup sticky thread above. If he fitted a new hard disk, then presumably the old one was broken, so without spending 100's on data recovery, your photo's are gone anyway.

micktwo

You have to understand that data cost more than hard drive. Therefore, dell have to compensate you for the lost of your data and not just for a harddrive replacement. You have to make them aware that the hard drive holds some valuable family information that you cannot afford to lose.

weegie.geek

micktwo wrote: »

You have to understand that data cost more than hard drive. Therefore, dell have to compensate you for the lost of your data and not just for a harddrive replacement. You have to make them aware that the hard drive holds some valuable family information that you cannot afford to lose.

No they don't.

It's a user's responsibility to keep data safe and backed up. Hardware fails, and can do so at any time. It's a hard lesson to learn, but if a person's data is worth so much, they can afford a second drive to back it up onto, or blank DVDs, tape backup, online storage, etc.

It's nobody's responsibility but the owner of the data to keep the data safe.

CashStrappedTeen89

weegie.geek wrote: »

No they don't.

It's a user's responsibility to keep data safe and backed up. Hardware fails, and can do so at any time. It's a hard lesson to learn, but if a person's data is worth so much, they can afford a second drive to back it up onto, or blank DVDs, tape backup, online storage, etc.

It's nobody's responsibility but the owner of the data to keep the data safe.

The main point of this is, and i quote "keep data safe and backed up" ....

I have 2 1tb HDD's in RAID mirrored just because of that, the amount of people that come in our office asking if we can get data of a machine basically begging to be scrapped is ridiculous.

Although i am being a little harsh and i do hope you get it back.

gaming_guy

....................