Privacy Concern

AntiStar

AntiStar

AntiStar

Associate
Joined
7 Jul 2009
Posts
13
Whats the situation on privacy when sending hardrives back? I have a drive thats dead and still under warranty, i have been using it for about 8 months for buying stuff online etc. My question is my hardrive safe from being restored and my details lifted?
 
depends where the drive is being sent back to and also where it goes after it has been sent back to that place... so no way of knowing really :(
 
I can't say I've heard of HDD manufacturers RMA process being the source of any privacy breaches. The process everything en masse and seem to wipe refurbished drives as standard so I wouldn't worry.
 
it depend what sort of data is on the drive, you could always change any passwords etc so that even if anyone got data off it, it wouldn't matter.

or if the data is that sensitive, nuke -> dismantle -> destroy with fire
 
Preventative measures are always best.
Use drive encryption software from the start. That way RMA'ing, or theft no-longer becomes a data security issue.

If the drive is already dead and you RMA it then its a case of trusting the company and its employees not to steal your data. I have not heard of any HD companies steeling data or loosing any returned faulty drives. The company would not last long if they did. I suppose you could contact the company for clarification of what security precautions they take to ensure this does not happen.

Most cases where data is recovered by a 3rd party tends to happen at companies who recondition whole working computers to sell as 2nd hand, cutting corners in wiping the hard drives properly to save time, making it easy for a 3rd party to recover data.
 
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A few questions about drive encryption:

What do you recommend for drive encryption?
Will it get in the way, how transparent is it?
Is it possible to encrypt the OS?
Is there any performance hit from using it?
 
AntiStar said:
A few questions about drive encryption:

What do you recommend for drive encryption?
Will it get in the way, how transparent is it?
Is it possible to encrypt the OS?
Is there any performance hit from using it?
Click to expand...

I have been using truecrypt on all my drives for a few years now.
http://www.truecrypt.org/
Its completely transparent and it encrypts and decrypts faster then most hard disks can read and write (256bit AES encryption is benched at 300+MB/s). It can encrypt the operating system, partitions, whole drives and a lot more.

I have encrypted nVidia RAID 0 volumes and mounted volumes across a network which has the benefit of making windows think its a local disk allowing games to be installed on a network drive. Incredibly flexible and has a huge number of options.

Most importantly its free.

Just don't forget the password :)
 
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To be honest RMA'ing it is quite safe. If the privacy was EVER breached on returns that company would go out of business tomorrow considering that most of its custom is from corporations and businesses who value data protection.
 
I used to work for a company that made/sold PC's.
We had a lot of customers who were doctors.
If they ever experienced a HD failure then even though it was under warranty they would always purchase a new HD and take the hit on the old one.

I have also worked for companies that never RMA HDs.

If you data is 100% important and you want there to be no chance of anyone seeing it then you won't RMA a faulty HD.
 
Drives returned to the likes of seagate are repaired, secure erased with a military spec erase algorythm and then tested, wiped again then put into certified repaired stock. i am pretty sure the chance of being able to recover Any information is something silly like 0.00001%.
 
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