Hard Drive Replacement-Privacy Question

Hi all

I won't bore you with the detail but my PC died last week.The machine is still under warranty (12 months On Site, 24 months Off). The manufacturer has advised that an engineer will visit to replace the internal hard drive + memory (I already made full image of my hard drive with Acronis TI9 and copied to a 300gb External SATA drive...phew !!). The manufacturer has advised that the old Hard Drive will be 'taken away'.
I believe my hard drive is 'serviceable' (the recovery partition has been deleted and an attempt at recovery partion with partition recovery software has rendered the drive unbootable, although I believe the 'C:' partition is still intact).The 'C:' partition contains all my personal data (Security Apps C/W Licence Keys, Personal emails etc etc). What guarantee's do I have that this hard drive will NOT be accessed by the manufacturer or any third party ? Do I insist on signing a document to that effect?. What protection do I have, if any ?

Cheers

ftwynne59

 

Ronjor

Good point.....the manufacturer said something about 'chargeable' (not sure if she meant charging the engineer or yours truly) if the hard drive is not taken away.I will 'phone the manufacturer again and get a detailed explanation of why they insist on retaining the drive.
Surely there must be some law regarding privacy protection. Any budding lawyers out there with a view ?

Regards

ftwynne59

 

Two solutions come to mind:

You can take a hammer to the drive or, if feasable, hook the drive up as slave in another system and wipe the drive. From your description of the drive's state, I think there is a good chance its readable, even if you can't boot from it.

Regards - Charles

 

I would definately use DBAN on that bad boy before giving it to some unidentified source. Give it the one two Gutmann, then you should be good to go(I also advise drilling holes in it, seems to work well )

Alphalutra1

 

Thanks for all responses.

I have a floppy with a utility called 'Killdisk'.(free)..what are your experiencies/views of this utility?. I have been told that this (one pass cleaning) software is effective.
Being that I cannot access Windows (the process does not go beyond the Windows progress bar pre-welcome screen), how do I use this tool ? Do I attempt to access BIOS and try to boot from the floppy by making Drive A the first boot drive ?.(does this make sense ?)
I am not a PC techy...please advise in newbie language !!

Cheers

ftwynne59

 

http://www.killdisk.com/ link to home page

http://www.killdisk.com/prepare.htm instructions on use.

Assuming that the floppy you have is the boot floppy, access your BIOS (can't tell you how - different for various OEMs).

Once in the BIOS, set Drive A as the primary boot device, then exit the BIOS - save the settings - and then re boot with the floppy in drive A.

Don't have experience with this program personally.

 

http://securityawareness.blogspot.com/2006/06/couples-supposedly-destroyed-hard.html#links

A must read.