Erase HD contents

[abe1877]

I have a seagate 160 gb pocket hard drive. My computer no longer recognizes it when I connect via USB. I've tried on multiple computers, but no luck. It's making a funny noise too. It's still under warranty and I plan to send back to Seagate.

I have quite a bit of personal information on there and I obviously cannot erase the hard drive with any of the software out there.

How can I make sure all the data on there is erased before I send back? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[vacunita]

You can't really. If you can't get the drive to be recognized in a computer, then short of destroying the drive, which I'm pretty sure would void the warranty, there's not much you can do.

You could try to take out the drive form the casing and plug it directly into a computer and see if it will be recognized, then you can perform a format on it. However I'm pretty sure taking it out of the case will void the warranty as well.

However if you can't access the data, chances are neither can they. They'll just send you a new one, and take the old one for parts. I really doubt Seagate or any of the major drive manufacturer will go looking in drives sent in for warranty, for information on their owners. It just doesn't happen that way.

BTW unless you use an industrial data wiper, data in hard drives is never truly gone. There are ways to get at data if you try hard enough. But trust me, Seagate doesn't have the time to try and recover potentially useless data from every drive they get sent back just to see if they have something personal of the owner.


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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[goombawaho]

If you're really paranoid or if the data on the drive will cause problems if anyone else sees it (embarrassing, trade secrets, personal info), I'd just swallow the money and buy a new one. Destroy the old drive by opening it up, getting the cover off and then drill multiple holes through the platters. Then for good measure, take a nail or a dremel and grind or scratch the rest of the platters. It's best to take the platters out so you can get both sides.

I'm not paranoid, but I've heard some amazing stories of how data can be recovered from what people thought were "destroyed" hard drives.

 

[acewarlock]

I use a BULK Tape Eraser to completly remove everything. Or if you know where there is a large transformer you can pass it by that.




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