Dell wants my hard drive back?

The 500 GB Seagate hard drive that I had in my 1647 completely died on me two weeks ago and I lost all of my data. I chatted with Dell Customer Service and the rep agreed to send me another hard drive. It came the next day, which surprised me, and I got everything back up and running. The prompt customer service helped ease the anger I was feeling for losing all of my data.

This afternoon, I got a call from another Dell rep stating that if I don't send the faulty hard drive back, they'll charge me for the new one that they sent a couple of weeks ago. The original rep that I chatted with never mentioned anything like that (I even have the email to prove it).

The reason I am concerned is because the drive is completely dead and I wasn't able to wipe my personal data from the drive. The Dell rep said they want to thoroughly test the drive to see what went wrong. If they manage to get the drive to work again, they'll have access to all of my personal data. Is this how the warranty coverage works with Dell? I can understand that it's probably just to make sure I didn't get a free hard drive out of them, but I just don't feel comfortable sending them a hard drive filled with personal information about me and my family. Any ideas?

 

Just whack it with a rock and then if they ask, blame it on poor transport on their side. Unless they can be bothered to scan the disk with an electron microscope (very expensive) then there's no way in hell they'll ever be able to read it.

 

Unless you have some sort of top secret government database of whatever on your HDD, you really got no reason to be upset. Dell isn't interested in pictures of your family, no matter how nice they are.

 

Magnet. Simple, easy.

 

Except for the fact people like me keep all their financial data on the computers.

 

Yeah, or are ashamed of all the 'bad 'stuff' they forgot to erase!!! Lol. Hmm didn't know you couldn't write the p word in the forum. As in O R N

 

That's what I'm afraid of. I don't really care about the pictures, music, etc. I've got a lot of financial data on the hard drive as well as saved login and password information. If some Dell employee did get it up and running and went poking around on the drive, there's some seriously sensitive information on it.

 

You’ll need to Degauss the drive.

What is Degaussing:

Degaussing is subjecting your drive to such a strong magnetic field

that all the sectors on your drive lose their data. It’s quick,

painless and works. It’s also relatively inexpensive. However you’ll

have to take the drive to either a TV / Electronics or a Computer

repair shop to get it done. Corporate data destroying companies also do

this, but usually for large amounts of drives or backup tapes.

If you really wanted to do this, it would probably work to wrap the

drive itself in a few hundred turns of wire, and then connect that to

an autotransformer, plugged into AC power, and start it up at some high

voltage and then run the voltage slowly down to zero. That would

probably be enough to ensure saturation, and then complete elimination

of data as you diminish the field and randomize the platters from

inside to out.

But really, there's a reason why people dealing with sensitive data in

the real world don't do this; it's hard to prove that you really

destroyed the data without destroying the drive.

The nail/battery/magnet thing will not work. First, I doubt that the

field it produces is strong enough to degauss a hard drive platter.

Second, even if it is, a unchanging magnetic field won't necessarily

wipe media -- to really erase, you need a fluctuating field, and then

you need to slowly diminish its intensity, so you leave

infinitesimally-thin 'layers' in the media in opposite directions. And

third, the hard drive is in a metal box; a nail and a 9V aren't going

to penetrate that very well.

How to avoid ever needing this?

What you can do to avoid a headache like this is to use encryption.

Now in the case of a completely dead hard drive, any type of data

recovery is next to impossible with encryption. Why? Because in

addition to dealing with the pain of standard data recovery, whatever

is recovered is encrypted.

 

I'm just curious why dell would want a 500GB drive back considering it costs next to nothing for them. And I find it hard to believe they would want to "test" it unless they've had repeated failures and want to figure out if its the drive or something else. In that case, why not ask for the whole machine back.

I would just tell them that you want to try to recover your personal files before sending it to them. I'm sure they can understand that.

 

Dell qouted me a price for my hard drive after replacing my system-$712.73. I thought it was for the whole system. After contacting them on the phone and a few emails, I found out it was JUST the drive. The whole system was 3299.78. So if you want to buy it, you will be paying a pile of $$$ for it.

 

US dollars? SSD? Is that an Alienware thing? How did you have no idea of the price of the full system? So many questions.

Anyway, I would imagine Dell would want $60 to $120 for a 500 GB HDD for the SXPS 16.

 

Funfact: A Seagate 500GB OEM HDD costs $54.99.

 

Do not damage the drive in anyway.. that's upsurd. Degaussing? What happens if Dell decides that's what you did to get a new HDD? I would not be concerned about your personal data on the drive too much. There are tons of privacy regulations for big companies like Dell, and if you had a password for the windows log-in it's pretty much guaranteed you're safe. Defective parts return is 100% standard procedure for Dell. There's nothing abnormal about them asking for you to return the broken unit. Mostly it's done so they might have a chance to get some credit from seagate or to refurbish the unit.

after working in a retail environment where people return laptops without wiping them all the time I can assure you.. no one is going to go through the trouble and risk their job(or being sued) for your information. They probally test tons of equipment per day, and it's not like they go into a locked room all by their selves to test this stuff.

that would only work if there was damage to the box, and if you damage the box, UPS(or fedex) will not accept pickup.

 

What if he had something incriminating on there? I'd think $55 would be a cheap price to pay for insurance on not going to prison.

 

Okay, what's wrong with not sending it back at all? You just tell the rep exactly what you just said, that there's sensitive material on the drive and you would rather not send it back. Chances are they'll wave the fee anyway. Physically manipulating the drive is not the best way and it will just arouse suspensions from Dell.

 

Yeah, you're right. They probably will wave the fee if you find the right rep and ask nicely.

 

When I was buying my new Dell Vostro a couple of weeks ago, there was a £13 (~$18/$19) option to allow me to keep my hard drive in the event it becomes defective.

If the rep's won't waive the fee, perhaps ask them if this service/warranty option could be purchased?

Agree with the others as well - it's standard to send back the defective parts, that's possibly why the agent didn't mention it (it's standard and possibly in your T&C's as well?).

 

There are very few things that are illegal to have on a HDD. A huge collection of stolen music and movies wouldn't be enough to cause a fine or jail time by US law. Besides, even if there was enough information to prove that the movies/music were "illegal copies", if they were not in a blatant place such as your desktop, you would be protected since Dell had no right to go through your personal documents. You could also just say "those are not mine, someone else put them here."

The only possible way to get in trouble is if you had lets just say an "illegal image" as your desktop picture or the thumbnail was on your desktop.

 

Chances are they wipe the drive right away and test it that way anyhow. But I'd do what I could to be able to keep it, especially if you had personal info or other questionable stuff on there.

Although its funny how if you asked if you should wipe your drive before selling it in a laptop everyone would be "oh yeah, definitely, you never know what someone can do with your data". But goes back to Dell, it's "it'll be fine.. no worries".

 

actually kind of hilarious, I have had a few referb laptops come in which had not been wiped worth a darn and I recovered them with a simple recovery program, and a couple were not even reformatted. Apple sent out a refurb Time Capsule with a customers data and backups INTACT on it too.

 

That would be because the Drive he's sending back to Dell is completely dead. Unless someone is removing and switching platters and recompiling all the data(which takes a lot of effort and special software) there's no way they're getting to his information. I didn't say if it's going to Dell don't wipe your HDD evar. What I said was, you should not physically damage the drive to make sure it's beat to nothing and there's no physical way to get to it.. That's just asking for trouble. If the Drive is working (which.. I would wonder why you would be sending it back anyway) you should always do 2-3 wipes.

 

Just before my warranty was up on my XPS 1710 the HDD died and yes I had to send it in and why . Well for one thing they want to make sure the drive came out of the system you say and not from another. It just keeps everyone honest. WD and Seagate does the same thing and if they don't get the drive back they will bill your credit card. You might be honest but they don't believe it until they see the bad drive

 

I am telling y'all, they sent me 2 different e-mails. One was for a 500Gb HDD for 712.73 and the whole system for 3299.xx. Freaked me out too. I even called 2x to get confirmation. If I had kept the part(s), they would have charged me the full cost that the replacement cost Dell-3299.xx! Crazzzzzzzy!!! I know!!!

 

When I said $55 I was thinking you'd buy your own replacement drive and send their replacement drive back.

 

the OEM Dell price for a 7200.4 is ~$160. It's right on their website under parts and accessories, so you should have no problem coming down to that price, and then if you argue a bit more after explaining that they're $80-100 retail, you'll probably get a $50-100 coupon code or something. They *can* take a certain amount off parts and accessories too, but the coupon is easier. There are two versions of the drives, one with the advanced free fall sensor and the one without, the difference is ~ $15, and I'm fairly positive that Dell doesn't use the Advanced free fall drives.

 

Yeah, that would make most sense. Just pull the drive out yourself, and buy a new one on your own with Dell none the wiser.