Comet wiped my laptop's hard drive - grrrrrr!!!

Wadders

Like others have said a backup of your files should have been the first thing you did before handing them over to Comet. They (Comet) will probably point to this fact if/when you complain. Andybez38 is however correct they probably should have informed you of their plans to wipe the hard drive before they did it.

chocolatechipcookies

vicks276 wrote: »

i didn't think taking it in to have some software removed would warrant a complete backup to be honest. and i thought if they were going to do something so drastic they would at least ring me first,

It depends on the software problem. Sometimes, yes it does warrant a complete wipe of the computer. You should always backup important data anyway.

kr15snw

Same with any other electrical item that has a memory. If it breaks you risk losing everything, same with mp3 players etc.

Did you sign anything when you handed it over to be serviced? And I mean anything.

superscaper

Depending on how it was wiped/reinstalled there's still some possibility at recovering something. Try www.recuva.com and see if it finds anything.

golddustmedia

I bet Gary Glitter wishes they wiped his hard drive for him! Instead they had a good look round and then reported him to the police (he was caught after PC world found images on his PC). - (Not to imply the OP situation was anything like that!)

superscaper

golddustmedia wrote: »

I bet Gary Glitter wishes they wiped his hard drive for him! Instead they had a good look round and then reported him to the police (he was caught after PC world found images on his PC). - (Not to imply the OP situation was anything like that!)

Good thing he was caught but it does support, in principle, my earlier post that you'd want to encrypt or wipe your own stuff first. I mean what were the PC World staff doing snooping around the contents of the pc and its' files in the first place? They happened to find something illegal but if it's common practice then they'll be looking at your emails, bank statements, account details, family photos etc etc.

As I mentioned on another thread anyone who thinks they've got nothing to hide won't mind posting their credit card details, PINs, passwords etc on this forum.

golddustmedia

A friend who used to work on a tech repair centre like this told me it was common to have a look through most computers cached internet files to "see where they've been and what they've been up to".

Generally speaking if someone's PC had a software fault and they use the internet 99% of the time its because they've downloaded something they shouldn't of.

I realise that's a sweeping statement but having worked in IT for 12 years I can assure you pretty much all official software works as it should and it's the cracked/stolen/dodgy stuff that's causes most problems.

After that it's generally hardware faults.

But you're right, I would never take my PC into Comet/PC world for repair without encrypting or deleting personal files first as they will most likely "have a look round".