[Big Mac]

I've experienced my first hard drive failure in many years, and it has failed under warranty. This was my TM drive. The drive doesn't even mount anymore, but I do wonder a bit about data security when sending in the drive for warranty replacement. Since it was mounting previously I was hoping I could get to zero out the drive, but that's not possible now. It's not like I need mission critical level security, but I would like to know what people's views are on warranty replacement of drives that have potentially sensitive information on them.

[OreoCookie]

What do you mean, `potentially sensitive?' You're not a terrorist, are you? Just kidding, of course

I guess you have go guarantee that they will not extract data from your drive. But on the other hand: I can't fathom they're interested in checking out faulty harddrives for juicy data.

[shifuimam]

I doubt they're going to go to the effort of recovering data from the platters of some regular guy's dead hard drive.

If you're overly concerned, you could contact the hard drive manufacturer and explain your concern, and ask them if it's okay for you to further damage the drive before sending it in (damaging the platters, taking a magnet to it, etc.). I know someone who drilled holes through the drive before shipping it back for an RMA, because it contained sensitive data about students (SSNs and whatnot).

[reader50]

What drive model is it?

[mduell]

Is the data worth more than $75? The hard drive probably isn't. Don't RMA it.

Next time, encrypt your potentially sensitive info.

[Big Mac]

Yeah, I've thought exactly along those lines, mduell, but it's a tough call.

I tried salvaging data through Data Rescue, and of the TM backups I was able to recover there was nothing that I found to be usable. There was one particular file I was looking to recover, but of all the TM backups I recovered of it they seemed to be corrupted anyway. Encrypting my home folders would have made sense except for the fact that I don't trust File Vault; it seems that TM is dicey enough without introducing File Vault into the equation.

Since so much of the data was corrupted, I don't know how much of it would be worthwhile. I value my data but I doubt Samsung would. On the other hand, there's the small chance that someone could find something on there. My password files were all encrypted, but email wasn't.

Would they really care if I took a strong magnet to the drive?

Incidentally, I had installed smartmontools and was getting constant errors from it in my Console pointing to one of the two eSATA connected drives I have. I never thought a young drive would die like that, so I chalked the errors up to smartmontools simply not being able to access the smart data for drives connected through a third party eSATA card. On that basis, I decided to uninstall smartmontools. If I had considered it more, I would have remembered that smartmontools didn't always nag me with those errors. I'm pretty sure it was telling me that the drive was dying. Pretty stupid, I know.

[ghporter]

It would take a VERY, VERY strong magnet to affect the platters without opening the drive first. If it were mounting, I'd say zero it out for the sake of calming your nerves. But since it isn't mounting, it would take extraordinary measures to recover data from it-time consuming, expensive measures.

Now the vendor doesn't know you at all. There's no way that they could "target" you and go that extra several miles to even try to recover your data. The drive is effectively blank at this point, with a few connected bytes here and there. There is an extremely high probability (something on the order of "ten nines") that if the vendor does anything at all to the returned, dead drive, they will test the board on the drive to find out if it is what failed, and if not, disassemble the rest of the drive to identify failure mode, and then DESTROY it. Platters are actually not terribly valuable-they'll be destroyed first if the vendor disassembles the drive at all. All they even MIGHT want is to know how the drive failed.

Yes, it's possible that someone in the chain between your hands and the drive shredder might decide to take a whack at recovering your data using more sophisticated tools than most of us have access to. There is also a possibility that you will win eleventy-bazillion® smackeroos in some lottery today. I think, given how borked your drive is, that your chances are higher for the lottery.

[mduell]

Shredder? They'll probably refurb it.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by reader50 

What drive model is it?

It's a Samsung F1.

Originally Posted by ghporter 

It would take a VERY, VERY strong magnet to affect the platters without opening the drive first. If it were mounting, I'd say zero it out for the sake of calming your nerves. But since it isn't mounting, it would take extraordinary measures to recover data from it-time consuming, expensive measures. . . .

Thank you for the information, Glenn. That's made me feel better about RMAing it. Someone could theoretically go to very great lengths to pull data off the drive, but whatever they would salvage would be of very little value (and any undamaged files would also be in Mac format). If anyone's that intent on pulling some of my files of the drive, they deserve to get them.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Shredder? They'll probably refurb it.

Only if the problem is the circuit board rather than the hardware guts. And a circuit board problem usually doesn't show up slowly, it just fails-either the arms don't move the heads to the right place, or the platter rotating motor doesn't run when it's supposed to, or it can't sync with sector zero. Internal hardware problems are a lot of work to fix, almost as much work as building a new drive. Refurbs seem to be almost exclusively interface circuit board replacements or returns that can not be sold as new drives.

There's a vague possibility that some makers reuse chassis, covers, or other simple parts, but the platters aren't worth their time.

And yes, there are machines that shred whole drives. Talk about data security!

[Big Mac]

I still haven't decided whether to RMA the drive or not, but I found a person who had the exact same experience with the exact same drive, and who had the exact same concern:

Originally Posted by beyond.co.uk reviewer

In general I have been a big fan of Samsung electronics over the years. I have a Samsung plasma at home and 2 Samsung LCD monitors that are great. My problems started with Samsung when I purchased two internal SATA II hard drives in November of 2008. I use the hard drives with a Thermaltake hot swap drive bay for my rolling backup system at home. Everything worked great until April of 2009 when one of those two hard drives failed. Not a big deal; hard drives fail, that's why I have redundancy built into my backup plan. The fact that it failed after only 6 months is a bit concerning, but occasionally you get bad drives, and that is why there are warranties.

Here's where my problem begins: this particular hard drive has financially sensitive information on it. So I don't want to blindly ship it off somewhere for RMA and never see the drive again. I would constantly be wondering in the back of my mind whether some random guy/gal got hold of the data on the drive and used it maliciously. So, I called Samsung support and spoke with them about the issue. To my shock, the support representative acted as though this issue had never come up before! No one has ever had concerns over the security of their data when submitting their hard drive for RMA? Are you kidding me? He forwarded me to Total Tech Solutions, Samsung's vendor who handles hard drive RMAs. Now as if Samsung's response wasn't bad enough, Total Tech Solutions was even more of a joke. The person I spoke with there gave no illusions of data security what-so-ever. His response to my inquiry was that the hard drives are received, checked and then immediately shipped to Korea. No way to have the drive shipped back to me, no way to secure the data, no way to do anything but to trust random people halfway around the world. Are you kidding me?

So, I called Samsung support a second time, described the scenario to another representative. The person then referred to the support manager present at the time, but wouldn't let me speak to them. The response was that they could not help me. I tried to suggest several alternative means by which I could RMA the drive and still have some assurance of data security (take it to a local repair shop or Samsung dealer, have the drive shipped back to me after inspection, just trust the customer that the drive has failed and send a new one). No go. So I'm out a hard drive and the Samsung warranty is useless. I asked if there was anyone there who I could appeal to and was told flat out `no'! Seriously, are you kidding me? My next step was to track down, Jon Kang, the president of Samsung Semiconductor, on LinkedIn. I sent him a message, but have not heard back. I don't really expect to here back given the track record that Samsung has shown me above. So there is my sad story. I've learned my lesson. Never buy Samsung hard drives, and I might extend that to never buy Samsung products in general, but we'll see. Secondly, I've learned that I should encrypt my backups even if they are supposed to be leaving my possession.

Strangely I found no way to register for that site (perhaps they block foreign IPs), so I couldn't post a reply agreeing with that review. I bought two of the exact same drive, and one failed after about six months. I am also a fan of Samsung generally but had no experience with their hard drives. This review could have been written by me. Go figure.

Meanwhile, Western Digital reportedly has a better policy in place, at least if this posting can be believed:

"Ensuring customer confidentiality is a priority to Western Digital. When a drive is received, it is put through a rigorous testing process for analysis. During this process, all data on the drive is completely erased, and subsequently irrecoverable. For recertification, each drive must pass an extensive testing process, a comprehensive physical inspection, and is updated with the latest available firmware revision. If a drive does not pass any of the checkpoints during this process, it is scrapped and not recertified."

The Samsung Spinpoint F1 drive has a 63% 5 star rating on newegg, so most people are very pleased with it. I'm just surprised to have found another post with a story as close to mine.

[ghporter]

I'm willing to bet a doughnut that EVERY drive maker does basically the same thing as WD, even if Samsung doesn't explicitly say they do.

It's also nice to see that WD specifically says they do basically what I said drive makers do with RMA'd drives, although not in the detail I theorized above.

[Big Mac]

I called the hard drive division of Samsung customer service and asked what their policy is on handling data on RMAed drives. The rep said that the drive isn't hooked up to any computer and is only connected to a device that tests and erases the data that may be on there.

[ghporter]

That's good to hear. I wish all the drive makers would publicize their practices so more people would consider the security of their data even after the drive is out of the computer.