Dilemma on RMAing an SSD - worrying T&Cs

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

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Hi guys

I've a Crucial M225 128GB which is knackered. I've received my RMA details through email today and saw this in the email:

"In order to protect your privacy and other interests, please securely delete all data from the product before you return it to Crucial. The returned product may be repaired and resold to another party as a refurbished product by Crucial. As part of the repair process, Crucial will take reasonable steps to overwrite any remaining data on the product, however, Crucial is not liable for loss or misuse of any personal data stored on returned products."

:eek::eek::eek:

This drive was my boot drive...that means it had all my email on it, passwords saved in Firefox, Steam...everything personal that you can think of.

The drive is completely dead but by reading that it sounds like they would replace the knackered part, format it and resell it on...

I'm in two minds now...how certain can we be that our data is securely destroyed before they do anything with it, I thought they would have destroyed the drive (as surely under data protection laws they should do...?).

Anyone know any more about it?
 
It should be safe. I believe the reset all the cells to 0. So any data should be totally destroyed. Chances are they will not actually repair the drive anyway.

This is weird because i'm in exactly the same situation with the exact same drive. Just waiting on an email with my RMA number.

I managed for format half the drive before i started dropping out of windows. Now I cannot get access to it for more than several seconds before it disappears from windows. However i didnt keep any particularly sensitive information on the drive :/

If im not mistaken i believe with an SSD there isnt the chance of data being recoverable after it has been reset, unlike a disk drive where it can potentially be possible.
 
That doesn't sound so bad, have you read that somewhere official?

I've learned not to keep anything important on an SSD (at least without having an up to date backup), once it died I've found it impossible to access, with standard HDDs at least you still have a chance...as well, live and learn!
 
Not much different to that of what OCZ seem to offer when returning one of their drives. I'm not too sure what you would have expected them to do any different to what they have noted...?

For me it was a bit of a wake up call on what I did, in terms of passwords etc.

Since returning my OCZ Vertex "dead as a dodo" 2E I now no longer have FF save any passwords. I now use Keefox and Keepass to store all of my passwords in an encrypted file. All the passwords have been randomly generated and is a different one from one site to the next.

It did take a while to go through all the forums, Paypal, eBay, etc etc etc sites to create new passwords etc but overall I think that it was more than worth it as it illustrated to me how complacent I had become.

You might also want to take it as a wake up call to review how you save your data and passwords.

The only way for sure that you will absolutely guarantee the integrity of the data on the drive is to forget about the warranty return and destroy it.
 
Yeah, the passwords etc., were backed up elsewhere so I didn't lose any critical data (except for Fallout 3 40+ hours of savegames) but I'm now using Lastpass but I still need look into keeping them more secure I think.

To be honest I expected them to destroy defective drive, not reuse them, though it does make sense thinking about it, it just took me by surprise.

Anyway, I did ask on the Crucial today, if anyone is interested their reply was:

"The reason we recommend wiping the drive is due to the drive being sent back in the post. We do wipe every drive we receive but we always recommend that you do this before it’s returned to us.

For example if you send a drive back in the post and something happens that the drive does not reach us then it means your data would still be on the drive but not returned to Crucial. It is very rare that any items do go missing in the post but as it’s something that we don’t have control over we would recommend the drive is wiped before you return it to us.

I can confirm that we do wipe any flash products that we do receive.
Junket, Crucial Moderator UK"


Sounds fair enough to me.
 
Nice to know i posted my 128gig M225 today :) Cant wait for the replacement. I hope its an M4, Perhaps im being greedy but i paid £284 for that drive.. today that gets you a current gen 256gig drive :/
 
Crucial have a pretty good rep for RMAs.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if they sent you back an M4. Fingers crossed anyway. :p
 
jakspyder said:
Nice to know i posted my 128gig M225 today :) Cant wait for the replacement. I hope its an M4, Perhaps im being greedy but i paid £284 for that drive.. today that gets you a current gen 256gig drive :/
Click to expand...


Ha ha, this is getting weird, I sent mine back today as well!

And you'll be pleased to hear that I was told by a nice chap on the phone that they don't make the M225s anymore so I would be getting an M4.

To be honest I have no idea what the difference is, I lost all faith in them when the M225 died so I've been pondering what to do with it when it comes.

I don't want to use it for a boot drive, it's too much hassle moving across...I might use it for storing photos on.
 
My advice would be to keep the M4.

It is an awesome drive, and is currently one of the most reliable (firmware updates to fix bugs aside).

The only drive I'd change my M4 to would be an Intel 520.

On the other hand, using it for merely storing photos would be a bit of a waste IMO.
 
TheBigCheese said:
I lost all faith in them when the M225 died so I've been pondering what to do with it when it comes.

I don't want to use it for a boot drive, it's too much hassle moving across...I might use it for storing photos on.
Click to expand...
Loads of normal Harddrives also died all the time as well

So what you going to use as a boot drive ?? :p
 
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They did indeed, in fact I've sent a pen drive off to Corsair and an HDD off to Western Digital as well today! I've got a Samsung to go back if I can find it...

My SSD died back in June but it's only now that I've actually got round to sending it back...what I meant by lost all faith in them was when it died it utterly died.

I didn't realise at the time with SSDs that when they go generally you can't recover anything, whereas with standard HDDs you can have a last gasp at getting data off them there isn't that ability with SSDs, that's why I lost faith in it.

HDDs also seem to give more warning when they are on the way out giving you time to rescue data....of course with proper data backup procedures, rescuing and last gasp attempts wouldn't be necessary but that doesn't always happen *ahem*.

I have to admit that when I got the SSD it was amazing as a boot drive!
 
Ill be using the replacement as a boot drive. Not sure if i should keep it or sell it sealed and new and buy a slightly better one, if there are better ones. Not that iv got the fundage. :/ AND im on a sata2 mobo anyway. and the sata3 pci cards i hear are so bad you often just get worse than sata2 performance anyway. Infact over the course of writing this post iv decided ill keep it and save the pennies towards a full system overhaul with native sata3 ports lol.
 
jakspyder - any news on your RMA?

Western Digital emailed to say an HDD had arrived but I haven't heard anything from Crucial regarding the SSD yet, I sent it tracked so I know it was received OK (not worrying btw, just curious)



I may also be racing you in my head to see who gets their M4 first :p
 
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