What do hard drive companies do after rma?

[BoWser]

Does anyone know what hard drive companies do after you send them a RMA? I had a 20 gig hd from maxtor that I sent to them and I would like to know if they wipe the hard drive or destroy it because of sensitive data. Does anyone know?

[Zepher]

The Techs will scan the drive for pron and save it. :D

[burningrave101]

Originally posted by WS6
The Techs will scan the drive for pron and save it. :D

Yup :D

Actually they probably just trash it after they possibly test it to see what was wrong with it. They may wipe them before they trash them, i dont know what their policy is. They probably just trash em. You could of wiped it yourself though before you sent it in if you were worried about them finding something lol.

[BoWser]

Well, it was over a year ago. Its probably at the bottom of a garbage pit hopefully.

[MontyAC]

I doubt they will do anything with a 20 gig hd. They will recycle it for parts.

[mobiux]

They probably find out what is wrong with the drive and fix it.

You'll notice that whenever you send in for a replacement from any top tier manufacturer, it's always a refurbished drive you get back.

THey have to get the drives from somewhere.

But I've never gotten a drive from a warranty replacement with anything at all, so I am sure your data is gone.

[Snugglebear]

They rewipe and do an LLF on the unit, so any preexisting data is gone before it's sent back out. That doesn't mean someone didn't see it at the plant, though they may never actually hook it to a PC. If you have anything sensitive on it be sure to give the unit a good wipe, alternating 4 passes of zeros and 3 passes of random or ones.

[BoWser]

Yeah, its not like I was hosting a warez server or something, i just wanted to make sure that no one will get to other data.

[maw]

Originally posted by burningrave101
Yup :D
You could of wiped it yourself though before you sent it in if you were worried about them finding something lol.

erm... how are you supposed to wipe it if you can't access it?

[EarthwormJim]

My dad had a friend who worked for IBM in their RMA department, they wouldn't even bother examining the drives, they just instantly trashed them and sent the customer a brand new drive.

[Snugglebear]

They might have done that in the 90s and up until about 2000, but since then they do refurbs in China.