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    Returning Laptop - Need Advice on Personal Info!

    Discussion in 'HP' started by andre09, Jul 28, 2010.

  1. andre09

    andre09 Newbie

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    Hello, my envy 14 came in the mail yesterday and everything seemed fine and dandy. However, when I woke up this morning I was greeted with the "A disk error occurred" message. So I called HP and they agreed to send me a replacement laptop. The only thing is, I already imported my firefox user profile, which has the saved passwords for a bunch of sites. Usually this wouldn't be a huge concern to someone, but I happen to work online and a lot of those passwords are to my web hosts and whatnot. So I am basically afraid that when they receive the laptop, they might recover the data, and who knows what a corrupt technician might do! So my question is, should I even worry about this? I could change the passwords, but it would be a hugeee load of work.

    The ideal situation would be that I just reformat the hd, but the damn ssd drive is not showing up when I use a windows installation disk, nor when I use HP's built-in recovery system (F11).

    So does anyone have any recommendations on how to wipe the disk before I return it? Should I even do that?
     
    andre09, Jul 28, 2010
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  2. cyphkev

    cyphkev Notebook Enthusiast

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    You can do a low-level format of the HD. Or you can go in and just clear your firefox settings. That's good enough for most people. I doubt these technicians will have forensic software to look up your deleted data. If you're paranoid, low-level format. I doubt you need it though.
     
    cyphkev, Jul 29, 2010
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  3. Wall of Voodoo

    Wall of Voodoo Notebook Consultant

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    SSD? You're probably screwed. If it were a HDD then you could run a wipe utility that should be safe but solid state has shown to retain data even after wiping. HHDs FTW!

    Get an RMA for the first one. Order a second one and then let them know you'll ship the first one after delivery of the second one. Swap the SSDs and you should be good.
     
    Wall of Voodoo, Aug 1, 2010
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  4. nikeseven

    nikeseven Notebook Deity

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    I wouldn't swap the ssd's since "A disk error has occured" is the reason for sending it back. If you have information you are that worried about, zero out the drive and change your passwords, but if the information isn't critical enough that you trust saving the password onto your computer in the first place I wouldn't worry about it
     
    nikeseven, Aug 2, 2010
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