Thinkpads Forum

I have to send in a HD that was replaced under warranty and am wondering if I can hit it with a hammer or make it completely unrecoverable and still get credit for the return. Do they actually refurb HD's? There is bank and other personal info on the drive and I have been trying for a while to bring it back to life to wipe it out and now I am faced with having to send it back.

What brand HD? I have heard that some are ok with whatever is returned, but most others need to verify that the drive is infact damaged as a result of faulty equipment vs. misuse.

It is the 40G, 4200rpm, hitachi travelstar

If it's going back to Hitachi, you probably don't want to hit it with a hammer. See this: http://www.hitachigst.com/warranty/jsp/arma25h.jsp

Maybe AbsoluteRaliegh has a suggestion.

No, it is the original drive from the machine purchased new.

Some ten years ago! This company I worked for, did service for THOUSANDS of customers that had IBM equipment. It was POLICY, if a HD was to be replaced due to failure and it could NOT be formatted (DOA) The drive HAD to be smashed, I would swing the drive as hard as I could; it would go SPLAT on the floor....and once you picked it up, all you could here was broken glass noises!!!

I would not recommend doing this today, I assure you that 99.99999% likely that you will have to pay for that drive.

Does this drive work intermittantly or not at all? If it works occasionally you might try to low level format it thru your BIOS setup. I really don't think, however, that you need be concerned about your personal information on a drive returned to a major reputable company. They are aware that it's often impossible for the user to get rid of personal data, have no use for it themselves, and are aware of liability issues for divulging such information. I doubt Hitachi, or whoever, is going to slap a new controller board onto a returned drive then ship it out to the next customer. I'd imagine the first thing that would happen to a drive being refurbed is to low level format it before testing.

A powerful magnet may be a solution. You can probably find one at a hardware store (or disassemble an old loudspeaker). Stick it on the outside of the hard drive, move it around, and I suspect any data on there will be unrecoverable.

leoblob wrote

A powerful magnet may be a solution...

I was going to suggest that, but didn't because I don't know whether it works on hard drives. If anyone does know whether it works, please share.
Since drives are "electrostatic sensitive devices" perhaps you could fry it by running a small electric charge through it?

A magnet is not a reliable solution. Believe it or not, I've played with floppies with a fairly large magnet off from a speaker. This magnet was powerful enough that you could just stick the floppy to the magnet from the "pull" of the media inside. The metal door was removed. Believe it or not, the floppy was still readable, at least partly, for awhile.

The problem with warranties, and physical destruction, is that the company probably wants to run failure tests on the "remains."

About all you can do is to contact them, and ask.

Ya havta trust somebody sometime. Frankly, there are far more "identity thefts" right from peoples---and banks--garbage cans every day, than there is from some stray hard drive somewhere.

440roadrunner wrote:Believe it or not, I've played with floppies with a fairly large magnet off from a speaker. This magnet was powerful enough that you could just stick the floppy to the magnet from the "pull" of the media inside. The metal door was removed. Believe it or not, the floppy was still readable, at least partly, for awhile.

Wow, am I surprised by that! Thanks for letting us (me) know.

I tried that too; with both a floppy and a Zip Disk with several powerful lab magnets...Same result

You can try a killdisk program to wipe whatever is on the HDD; also, you can get the Secure Disposal Program as part of the ThinkVantage suite. It has some good options for securely wiping a HDD.

You can try this link as well;

ttp://download2.lsoft.net/boot-cd-iso.zip

HTH

Did we ever get an answer to this question? I just talked to a guy who has a similar problem and all I could tell him was magnets don't work.

I hit it with a hammer stuck it back in and it would not boot. Of course I don't advocate that, so don't try it at home.

A strong enough magnetic force would realign all the domains (magnetic type not network pc) on the platter, but you would probably have to get hold of an electomagnent with some serious force.

Good luck...let us know if you still get it replaced under warranty.

Just found this,

Gone Forever. DoD guidelines advocate degaussing as a way of purging data from hard drives. Degaussing removes the magnetic charges that store data on magnetic media by exposing the media to a powerful electromagnet. Different media require electromagnets of different strengths to degauss. The latest hard drives need a magnetic field of 2200 Oersteds to be degaussed.

Degaussing affects the platters and the read/write heads on hard drives, usually rendering a drive unusable. However, the process of degaussing safely erases data from removable magnetic media that don't have read/write heads, such as floppy diskettes, tapes, or cartridges for Zip and Jaz drives. Properly degaussing these forms of media erases them so they are still usable afterward.

Of course, information on a hard drive is completely unrecoverable if you physically destroy the drive. The DoD recommends using sledgehammer blows directly to the top of the drive, followed by a process of mangling its connectors so they cannot be reconnected. Putting the drive through an industrial metal shredder and disposing of the remnants in a furnace works even better.

The DoD also suggests degaussing and then using a rotary sander to remove the internal recording surface of hard drives. Sanding the entire surface of CD-Rs (CD-recordables) also purges their data. Do so on the top of CD-Rs, where the plastic is thinner than the bottom, readable side. Remember: If you physically destroy a hard drive or media, be sure you wear protective equipment (including protective eyewear) and are in a well-ventilated area.

whole article:
http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial ... /18l04.asp

A great way to 'erase" any type of CD or DVD is to pop it in the microwave for exactly 3 seconds, it destroys the metal recording substrate.

It leaves an "interesting" smell behind though.

Thermite should do the trick!

EDIT: Rephrased.

The latest hard drives need a magnetic field of 2200 Oersteds to be degaussed.

Which is a magnet equivalent to what? The kind of thing that attached to a crane and used to move cars around in a junkyard? What is the Oersted level of christopher_wolf's "powerful lab magnets"

The DoD recommends...

All of which probably makes it hard for the DoD to get an RMA # and a warranty exchange.

If you're really paranoid about this, the easiest course appers to be buy a sledge hammer and forget about an RMA.

UPDATE: smashed with hammer sent in, have not heard anything back.