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Well my SSD isnt working and i've sent a request to get it RMAd. Im pretty sure that the drive is dead
When i send back my SSD, are they allowed to read it if they can with their special tools? since i got some semi-sensitive information on it and i dont want some random person to be able to read it. Is there like some privacy laws or something?
When i said the SSD is dead, its not recognised in the BIOS of 2 two computers, so hopefully the SSD cant be read. It was working before until the PSU fried up and killed the mobo, is it possible the SSD can get fried as well? making it permanently un-useable?
EDIT Drive is a OCZ Vertex 2E
Seagate seems to delete the files before working on the drive so im not sure about OCZ
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Vatican City State1650 Posts
True story. One of my friends work in Geek Squad, and there's a colleague of his that goes through the HDD of every computer that comes by his way for porn and copies them for his use. Point is, don't expect any privacy when you send anything in for repairs.
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On January 18 2011 00:36 orgolove wrote:
True story. One of my friends work in Geek Squad, and there's a colleague of his that goes through the HDD of every computer that comes by his way for porn and copies them for his use. Point is, don't expect any privacy when you send anything in for repairs.
This is every single geek squad employee or anyone else in the computer repair business
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Some light relief: a customer requests a data transfer, mostly his photos. He opens My Pictures. First picture: him and his wife, circa 1985, naked on the beach, and he has the biggest schlong I've ever seen. I laughed for about a minute straight.
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On January 18 2011 00:55 floor exercise wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2011 00:36 orgolove wrote:
True story. One of my friends work in Geek Squad, and there's a colleague of his that goes through the HDD of every computer that comes by his way for porn and copies them for his use. Point is, don't expect any privacy when you send anything in for repairs. This is every single geek squad employee or anyone else in the computer repair business
You can expect some amount of peaking no matter what, geek squad may just be disgruntled people who will go a searching for crap. It's OCZ and it's closer to just a refurbish job then repair and recover so it just really depends on their policies
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Well theres obviously gonna have no porn on the SSD but even if its company policy it seems impossible to make sure that they even do it.
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If the PSU killed the mobo, it could have killed the SSD as well. But it's possible that it just killed the controller or interfacing through, and that the actual flash memory itself is okay and readable.
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On January 18 2011 07:17 Myrmidon wrote:
If the PSU killed the mobo, it could have killed the SSD as well. But it's possible that it just killed the controller or interfacing through, and that the actual flash memory itself is okay and readable.
crap does that mean they can actually read the data?
and does any1 know OCZ policies on RMA and SSD/HDDs?
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SSD's are normally broken from the controller going bad. In this case the memory is still readable if they install a new controller.
That being said, unless there are legal issues with security you can be almost certain they will wipe the contents without looking at them during an RMA. Now, if the hard drive were working fine and you asked them to copy the contents then what people say here is true, but with a dead drive I think you're safe.
If there are legal issues I would not RMA the drive, plain and simple. Buy a new one and physically destroy the old one. Then tell your boss you need the new hard drive encrypted with truecrypt. It's the only way to be sure. Well worth the $500 to not have a legal issue.
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On January 18 2011 07:30 ghen wrote:
SSD's are normally broken from the controller going bad. In this case the memory is still readable if they install a new controller.
That being said, unless there are legal issues with security you can be almost certain they will wipe the contents without looking at them during an RMA. Now, if the hard drive were working fine and you asked them to copy the contents then what people say here is true, but with a dead drive I think you're safe.
If there are legal issues I would not RMA the drive, plain and simple. Buy a new one and physically destroy the old one. Then tell your boss you need the new hard drive encrypted with truecrypt. It's the only way to be sure. Well worth the $500 to not have a legal issue.
Its for my own PC so if i had money i would break it and get a new one but i dont. im not sure if i should RMA w/o being certain that that dont read it
Even if i did have money i would probably wait for something newer like the G3 intel or the SF 2
Why would someone get some1 to copy the contents of thier drive when you can do it manually? unless it some special way
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Couldn't you do a 7-pass military grade format on the drive before RMA'ing it? There are plenty of boot disks that would let you do that. See: http://www.dban.org/
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On January 18 2011 07:41 AceOfBlades wrote:Couldn't you do a 7-pass military grade format on the drive before RMA'ing it? There are plenty of boot disks that would let you do that. See: http://www.dban.org/
its not detected in bios so i doubt this program will even be able to see it, thats the problem.
Pro for a Data stalker
im in a lose-lose situation, broken drive and unable to delete the data. -_-
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On January 18 2011 07:41 AceOfBlades wrote:Couldn't you do a 7-pass military grade format on the drive before RMA'ing it? There are plenty of boot disks that would let you do that. See: http://www.dban.org/
OCZ has Sanitary Erase for SSD but I doubt he's looking for that or DBAN considering that his drive is dead.
And I think that everyone here can only speculate what OCZ's actual policy and procedures are regarding your data security. Your best bet is to contact OCZ directly or post on www.ocztechnologyforum.com and see what they say.
Otherwise, I would just say to trust OCZ that out of the many RMA's they get, they're not going around copying your data.
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On January 18 2011 07:41 AceOfBlades wrote:Couldn't you do a 7-pass military grade format on the drive before RMA'ing it? There are plenty of boot disks that would let you do that. See: http://www.dban.org/
SSD's don't run using anything magnetic, so once the data is gone, its impossible to recover (literally, everything is written to 0 like it never happened). You don't even need 1 pass, because the controller itself does whats called garbage collection (aka TRIM), meaning, it takes all the old deleted data and writes 0's to those blocks, so that when it has to be written again, its fresh and new.
Don't worry about data issues. Your perfectly fine to RMA. As the controller is most likely dead, and the cells are already worn, they will most likely ditch the drive all together, instead of refurbishing it. It would cost them more then the price of the drive to fix whats wrong, instead of just making a new drive.
Also, because the controller is dead, everything will mostlikely be corrupted so hardcore, that only a few grade S super hackers could recover the/any data.
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On January 18 2011 08:05 hellsan631 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2011 07:41 AceOfBlades wrote:Couldn't you do a 7-pass military grade format on the drive before RMA'ing it? There are plenty of boot disks that would let you do that. See: http://www.dban.org/ SSD's don't run using anything magnetic, so once the data is gone, its impossible to recover (literally, everything is written to 0 like it never happened). You don't even need 1 pass, because the controller itself does whats called garbage collection (aka TRIM), meaning, it takes all the old deleted data and writes 0's to those blocks, so that when it has to be written again, its fresh and new. Don't worry about data issues. Your perfectly fine to RMA. As the controller is most likely dead, and the cells are already worn, they will most likely ditch the drive all together, instead of refurbishing it. It would cost them more then the price of the drive to fix whats wrong, instead of just making a new drive. Also, because the controller is dead, everything will mostlikely be corrupted so hardcore, that only a few grade S super hackers could recover the/any data.
Thats sweet news, probably was gonna RMA regardless since SSD arent cheap but hearing that makes me feel better.
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On January 18 2011 08:05 hellsan631 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2011 07:41 AceOfBlades wrote:Couldn't you do a 7-pass military grade format on the drive before RMA'ing it? There are plenty of boot disks that would let you do that. See: http://www.dban.org/ SSD's don't run using anything magnetic, so once the data is gone, its impossible to recover (literally, everything is written to 0 like it never happened). You don't even need 1 pass, because the controller itself does whats called garbage collection (aka TRIM), meaning, it takes all the old deleted data and writes 0's to those blocks, so that when it has to be written again, its fresh and new. Don't worry about data issues. Your perfectly fine to RMA. As the controller is most likely dead, and the cells are already worn, they will most likely ditch the drive all together, instead of refurbishing it. It would cost them more then the price of the drive to fix whats wrong, instead of just making a new drive. Also, because the controller is dead, everything will mostlikely be corrupted so hardcore, that only a few grade S super hackers could recover the/any data.
Unless I'm very mistaken, this isn't how garbage collection on SSDs works at all. Care to elaborate? Also, the controller dying doesn't mean that the flash memory is damaged. If you were to destroy a controller and replace it with an identical one, the new one would be able to read and write to the flash just as the old one did.
The flash modules are pretty expensive and are worth recovering if usable. The majority of an SSD's cost is the flash itself, especially for higher-capacity drives.
Regardless, I wouldn't assume that OCZ will read the data, though there's a possibility, if it still can be read. File copying/backup services often work very differently, as already pointed out.
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If you're windows account had a password to log in i wouldn't worry too much either. It should be protected to some amount.
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windows passwords only prevent you from system access, they don't encrypt data. That's all still there, readable in plain text. The only thing a windows password secures is that noone can log in to your windows account, which is no good for anything, except to cause unprofessional data-snoopers about 30 minutes additional work.
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On January 18 2011 08:31 semantics wrote:
If you're windows account had a password to log in i wouldn't worry too much either. It should be protected to some amount.
no password since its pretty silly in my case, and it mainly delays boot time
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On January 18 2011 08:47 MisterD wrote:
windows passwords only prevent you from system access, they don't encrypt data. That's all still there, readable in plain text. The only thing a windows password secures is that noone can log in to your windows account, which is no good for anything, except to cause unprofessional data-snoopers about 30 minutes additional work.
The little things deter recreational theifts anyways, why bother with the drive that takes a few extra steps to steal data from when i have 10 other ones that are easier. Anyways a user password on the admin account doesn't cost any performance and proves a layer of protection. I don't care about the 3 secs to type in to get to windows i only boot like once a day if not less.
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EPT
