Bad Harddrive...

scriptasylum

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Joined
25 Dec 2001
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My brand new 120GB 8MB cache WD harddrive died on me the other day. I only had it for a few days too :mad:

Anyway, Newegg RMA'd it easy enough, but I had data on it. I really think the controller on the drive was bad (smelled the all-too-familiar smell of burning silicon) so chances are the data on the platters was still there. Seeing as I have some sensitive data on there, I wanted to delete the drive before sending it in.

So, I decided to try to erase (or at least corrupt) the data by placing a big magnet over it overnight (the magnet was an old Rockford Fosgate Power 10" subwoofer). Then I ran the drive in a degaussing coil for a while. Hopefully this will at least corrupt the data enough to make it unaccessable from a casual read attempt.

SO here's mny question: Is there any way anyone knows of to delete harddrive data in a similar situation?

BTW: I did try everything under the sun to isolate the problem. The BIOS simply won't recognize the drive and it also causes any other drives on the same cable to not be recognized too. Cables, jumpers, and all combonations of configurations did not help. And yes, the IDE controller is fine because it's attached to a drive right now. Also, the 120GB drive didn't work on 2 other PCs I tried.
 
I HATE western digital

well if you can't get your computer to recognize the drive there is no way for you to easily delete the info off of it. I would have to image that what you did was probably as effective as you can get in that situation.
 
A shotgun would do it... :p

Seriously though, if you can't detect the HDD it will be hard. HDD manufacturers usually (IBM anyway) have a policy not to take a peek at your data if you send in broken disk. Chek if WD does the same. In that case you'll be safe anyway.
 
I HATE western digital
yeah..seems to be the same old WD's...they dont come with a warranty...they come with a RMA
 
Umm...

I'm sure WD and IBM have the policy, i'm more worried about the employees of the company =P
 
unless your famous or say to them "dont look on that disk" then im sure they dont give a **** and probably chuck it in the bin

but when your told not to do summin it makes you wanna do it more

i work in a high security place lots of sensitive documents and **** but i just dont care

and if they know your famous theyll wanna look on that disk real bad so they can get some hot news about you:)

if you wanna good way of destrying data on your HDD go here :)

PS it will void your Warranty
 
Abuser,

I really don't think that method you have linked is sufficient enough to eliminate sensitive data. . . . :p


p
 
Originally posted by jroc
I HATE western digital
yeah..seems to be the same old WD's...they dont come with a warranty...they come with a RMA

What are you talking about? WD packaged drives come with a 3 year warranty. If scriptasylum bought an OEM drive, that's the only way he won't have a real warranty from WD...

...but it doesn't matter. It only lasted for a few days, so he got an RMA from NewEgg. That's usually what happens with Internet sellers, and I probably would have done the same, warranty or not!

I've had WD drives since 1995, and I've only had one die on me: a refurbished drive that I got for free from someone. **** happens, though, and it will happen with any hard drive manufacturer from time to time.

Melon
 
Originally posted by melon
What are you talking about? WD packaged drives come with a 3 year warranty.

Only the special edition 8mb cache drive have a three year warrenty, all other warrentys were cut to 1 year last october

I've had WD drives since 1995, and I've only had one die on me: a refurbished drive that I got for free from someone. **** happens, though, and it will happen with any hard drive manufacturer from time to time.
Well their old drives were good, but in the last year or two their product has turned to sh!t, Ive had 3 60gig drives, all less than a year old, die on me. luckily they were bought when WD had 3 year warrentys on all drives, cause I fully expect to RMA it again.
 
Hmmm, to all those saying I should try a shotgun or some other destructive approach: Thanks, but I'd like to keep my warranty! :)

I hope this is an isolated incident because I've nothing but good reviews of this drive and the price was decent.

Come to think of it, I did some benchmarks on the drive and noticed the preformance was not as good as my Maxtor 80G drive, but wasn't really concerned because the WD drive was going to be used for backups and archival purposes.

I also noticed a burning silicon smell the day it started acting up but I was doing some elctronics work and just figured it was something I was working on. Maybe something on the controller went "sorta" bad that caused the smell. Oh, well, at least it's been RMA'd. Hopefully the new drive will be ok.

I was lucky (paranoid?) enough to backup all the data on my external 60G drive so it was just a matter of intalling my old 30G drive and restoring the backup. At least I still have all my data.

When I sent it in, I did not mention the data on it so hopefully no one will try to access the data.

I looked around the net for some cheap hi-intensity magnet device designed for erasing data on a harddrive but couldn't find anything. That's why I tried the speaker magnet and degaussing coil thing.
 

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