Dell want old HDD - out of order?

yangptangkipperbang

spannerzone wrote: »

I guess there's lots of hard drive failures under warrantee so to recoup some money they repair them,

I think you are missing my point. If there are "lots" to repair, it means they would lose even more money !
They won't worry about WEEE, it would be cheaper to stuff them in a container and send them to China or India and dump them in a field.

spannerzone

yangptangkipperbang wrote: »

I think you are missing my point. If there are "lots" to repair, it means they would lose even more money !
They won't worry about WEEE, it would be cheaper to stuff them in a container and send them to China or India and dump them in a field.

The fact that these companies do repair the drives to resell suggests it is cost effective !

terry2

spannerzone wrote: »

The fact that these companies do repair the drives to resell suggests it is cost effective !

No-one is going to actually repair the drives - they are going to: either do a low level format (which remakes the data disk blocks using the existing servo tracks, and marks any iffy blocks as unusable); or (more rarely) do a complete surface scan and reposition the servo tracks to get a lower failure rate. If they can get enough usable data blocks, then it will be sold/used as a repaired disk; otherwise it will be scrapped (unless the manufacturer wants it back for analysis).

terry2

dactel wrote: »

Ive got all my passwords and financial details on this hard drive. I know that I can wipe it, but I also know its not possible to completely clean a hard drive. Ive read in the past the only sure way to delete old data is to destroy the hard drive.

For all practical purposes using something like ccleaner to delete (by overwriting up to 35 times) the worrying files will be more than secure enough. To get data back after that requires very specialist (and expensive) equipment which it wouldn't be cost effective to use to get at most peoples financial data .

Note that hitting it with a hammer is not a particularly good method. The US NSA guidelines used to require the disk being put through a metal shredder or incinerated, depending on the security level of the data on the disk.

Shrimply

John_Gray wrote: »

If you were purchasing a new Dell Optiplex PC, you would have found the following option on the configurator:

Keep Your Hard Drive
" Your sensitive data and hard drive(s) never have to leave your control. With Keep Your Hard Drive, you retain physical possession of a failed hard drive to ensure security of classified, proprietary or sensitive data.Note: the term of the Support Service and Keep Your Hard Drive must be the same."

3Yr Data Protection - Keep Your Hard Drive [add £13.00]

Surely by offering this option Dell are admitting if you send them the old drive there is a risk to your security.... If I was that bothered and wanted a fight I'd be quoting that and using it as leverage.

ChiefGrasscutter

Can you attack the old drive with a full scale sledgehammer/pickaxe and then send it back to them in multiple pieces?

John_Gray

Shrimply wrote: »

Surely by offering this option Dell are admitting if you send them the old drive there is a risk to your security....

A contrary view might be that they are out to make a little more money from those concerned about the possibility?

andy2004

A couple of weeks ago there was a program on bbc all about Hard drives and the myths of how recoverable are they and they did varies tests including hitting it with a hammer.
They used a heavy magnet, they drove a tractor over one, they used a blow torch, they even put a 2 2.5in in a toaster.
then they sent them to experts to see what if any thing could be recovered.
and only 2 of the methods they used actually prevented any data recover.
1 caused the platters to be destroyed, and i forget what the other is.
so hitting it with a hammer wont do anything, all 100% ofthe data would be recoverable, infact you might even get a bill from DELL for doing it.

As for reselling the drives, would depend on what is actually wrong with the drive.
for example it could be the firmware on the PCB board faulty and not the actual platters in which case they could do 2 things. 1 remove the old PCB and replace it with a new PCB with same firmware. or 2. update the firmware which inturn fixes the HDD. which they could then sell on. after testing.
Dban would be the best hdd destroyer, or any other program with overwrites the clusters byte by byte.

Basil1234

andy2004 wrote: »

As for reselling the drives, would depend on what is actually wrong with the drive.
for example it could be the firmware on the PCB board faulty and not the actual platters in which case they could do 2 things. 1 remove the old PCB and replace it with a new PCB with same firmware. or 2. update the firmware which inturn fixes the HDD. which they could then sell on. after testing.
Dban would be the best hdd destroyer, or any other program with overwrites the clusters byte by byte.

drive faults can be a range of faults i used to be fail anlysis op scoping down to head level making the calls sending it into the clean room for repair telling them what needed changing.
faults can be unbalanced motor, blown pcb, faulty head on an actuator. knocking actuator 1st time call would have been re-servo writing it as an example, thermal asperity blip on the platter would involve replace the faulty platter.
then after parts where changed it would go thru the whole process of programing and testers as if a brand new drive if went thru all ok out the door they would go back to maxtor warranty.
Basically most drives can be repaired the way they did this was cannibalise a certain amount of drives for parts and use those good parts for broken drives.
And manufacturers of the drive would pay for all of this not people like dell, also in my job maxtor award contracts to global companies to 'win' the contract but there was still money in it to the point of failed drives coming we had to return 66% of them to make the company i worked for make a profit. we were returning 95% so they decided to ship it out to malaysia as labour was cheaper out there but the bit that really made me laugh i heard after moving it out there they where then returning 67% so had a 1% margin of error so if did have a seriously bad batch could cause them significant problems to say the least.
and as to costs of moving them around they would have been done on the cost basis of slow boat to china on low cost contracts for them because of amount of volume we would turn around.
and when i left there we had to on our targets turn around just for ones failed in the process(failure analysis target was 5400 drives per 24hrs) not failed drives come in overall, we shipped tens of thousands per week some of them would have just needed re servo writing and they would have been fixed and on there way after going thru all the test gear again.