gprellwitz
Touchdown! Greaser!
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2005
- Messages
- 12,762
- Location
- Romeoville, IL
- Display Name
Display name:
Grant Prellwitz
Okay,
I decided to be good and start doing the backups I should have been doing all along. A couple of weeks ago, I went and picked up an external hard drive to backup my PC. I started with the new PC that doesn't have a whole lot of data on it yet, but will also be doing the other shortly. Or that was the plan.
The drive has totally cr@pped out. I plug it in to the USB port and it's not even recognized. It was working fine, I moved it and the power cable came out, and it stopped working. Different USB ports, different computers, different cables. Nada.
So I'm left with this hard drive with not a whole lot but some personal data on it still under warranty. I have no way to get the data off, since the thing isn't recognized. I could probably open it up and pull out the hard drive and hook it up to an SATA connector, but that would void the warranty. (The drive is purported to be a Barracuda: http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=b9df99f4fa74c010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD)
I'm not too worried about not being able to recover the data, because there's little there I need or don't still have. However, I'm concerned about the privacy issues. What happens to the returned units. I suspect that this is a trivial connector problem that will be easily fixed, so it'll likely be repaired, re-imaged, and sold as a refurb. However, I'm worried that the data would still be recoverable. Am I just being paranoid? Should I just eat the cost of the drive and not use the warranty?
What say you all?
I decided to be good and start doing the backups I should have been doing all along. A couple of weeks ago, I went and picked up an external hard drive to backup my PC. I started with the new PC that doesn't have a whole lot of data on it yet, but will also be doing the other shortly. Or that was the plan.
The drive has totally cr@pped out. I plug it in to the USB port and it's not even recognized. It was working fine, I moved it and the power cable came out, and it stopped working. Different USB ports, different computers, different cables. Nada.
So I'm left with this hard drive with not a whole lot but some personal data on it still under warranty. I have no way to get the data off, since the thing isn't recognized. I could probably open it up and pull out the hard drive and hook it up to an SATA connector, but that would void the warranty. (The drive is purported to be a Barracuda: http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=b9df99f4fa74c010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD)
I'm not too worried about not being able to recover the data, because there's little there I need or don't still have. However, I'm concerned about the privacy issues. What happens to the returned units. I suspect that this is a trivial connector problem that will be easily fixed, so it'll likely be repaired, re-imaged, and sold as a refurb. However, I'm worried that the data would still be recoverable. Am I just being paranoid? Should I just eat the cost of the drive and not use the warranty?
What say you all?