Sent in my laptop for hardware repairs and they wiped my HDD

I sent in my laptop as I had a few more months left on my warranty and I thought it wouldn't hurt to send it in for a checkup. Unfortunately it seems despite me warning them not to touch my hardware they went ahead and did so. Their reasons were that apparently my system was repeatedly crashing yet this is completely untrue since I have been always frugal with what I install and maintained my hardrive well. It ran perfectly before I sent it off.

What can I do in this case, I've tried running file recovery software and nothing is coming up. Worst of all I had all my personal files on a different partition.

Is there anything I can get from Lenovo in a case like this, do they at least try not to lose your files? This has never happened with me with any other laptop vendor when I've sent them in for repairs.

 

Back up your files before any machine is sent off for repairs.

 

it's pretty standard to wipe the software when a machine is sent for repair regardless of the issue. if you can prove they never warned you there could be data loss you could probably get a free data recovery service out of the but that's basically it.

 

If the data was important to you, you should have removed the drive or at least backed it up. Why are you sending it in when everything is working, it's wasting your time and their time. The tech working on it can't be bothered to troubleshoot the million variables with all the programs each person installed. They have metrics they need to meet and the simplest thing is to reimage the drive so he can at least have the default software as a constant.

I think you have no recourse. Pretty sure they warn you it's a possibility the reimaged drive might happen.

 

Sorry for your loss of data. But golden rule number one is backup backup backup, and backup again. Data is precious, and thankfully inexpensive and easy to duplicate/backup. I doubt there is any recourse you can take. There are several good and free drive image and backup options out there. I recommend Acronis True Image Free. But the paid version as well as O&O backup are well worth their cost.

And I guess what were you expecting Lenovo to do if your system was running fine and not touch your hardware? There is nothing that they can do unless there's an issue. It's like checking for what's causing a flat tire when your tire is not flat.

 

It's pretty common for hardware techs to do this. It actually happens pretty frequently that a machine is misbehaving because of some software configuration problem that the user created (e.g. malware, bad drivers, unstable applications, etc).

The laptop tech is looking to just fix the problem as fast as possible, and ship the laptop out the door, so they can work on the next defective unit. And it's a lot easier for them to just reimage a drive back to factory configuration, than it is to try and individually diagnose each possibility (e.g. malware / virus scanning, disabling services, downloading new drivers, etc).

If they re-image a drive back to factory condition (a known-good state), and the problem still persists, then they know the issue is hardware-related and will perform the hardware replacement at that time. Replacing hardware is costly and time-consuming (parts and labor), so they try to avoid replacing hardware whenever possible.

 

They should have told you to either back up your files or not ship the computer with the drive if you wanted to retain your data. It actually is SOP to wipe the drive to help in the troubleshooting process. In fact I used to see we would ship a laptop out for a motherboard issue, and it would come back with a new drive too (it was determined as failing and was replaced at the same time) and they did not return the old drive. Rule of thumb? If it leaves your sight, make sure you have a backup.

 

Authorized service centers are oriented towards fixing acute problems. They don't provide random checkups or optimization services to help your PC run better.

If you send in a laptop that's working perfectly, you're basically asking them to look for a nonexistent problem. Depending on the operating procedures of the service center and the metrics that their techs are evaluated on, at best they'll just send it right back to you without doing anything and at worst you could potentially be inviting a disaster upon yourself, which is what seems to have happened in this case.

 

sheesh -- this group is like the biblical "Job's sorry comforters".

do you want to recover?
first, are you sure the drive you sent is the one that came back?
if so, the easy thing to do is download and run Recuva.
here: http://filehippo.com/download_recuva/
The link, and the package, are bug-free but if you're paranoid you can right click and scan it.
once loaded, just go for the Deep Scan version and let 'er rip for a long time.

If what you recover with Recuva is not adequate, there are more insidious ways to get at the "wiped" data.

 

Yes , It is possible to recover data form a wiped HDD unless its "nuked" or ran by a huge electromagnet , If that was the case then you're out of luck.

Get a data recovery software like Stellar Phoenix , R-Studio , ZAR , Data rescue pc , Seagate File Recovery ,etc

If that doesn't work for some odd reason then call a data recovery company and they'll do the work for you but they charge a lot of money for it.

 

I tried Recuva and did a deep scan but it came up with nothing. Ill try calling them up and arranging some form of data recovery.

Are there any other recovery software I can try that may be able to go deeper?

 

Don't bother. Just accept the data as lost, and move on.

They probably swapped out the entire drive with a newly imaged drive. The drive in your laptop isn't even the one you sent in. And your drive is probably in someone else's laptop too.

Plus, data recovery services cost THOUSANDS of dollars. There is zero chance Dell will pay for that... Especially since they have it in writing that you should protect and back up your data before sending your machine in.

Your beat option here is to just accept the loss, and move on. Because realistically, there isn't anything that anyone can do at this point.

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

 

This is the lesson people still forget - they aren't in the business of data backup the user is the one responsible for all their data backups.

They most likely told the person this but this is missed when they are in a hurry to get it fixed. I read where it says before sending it to them to take out the HDD or backup your data should - your drive be reformatted or repaired and they aren't responsible for data loss. Failure to read these Instructions is the users fault.