Hard Drive Issues

[Jaggie]

My Maxtor 100 Gb hard drive recently died. When I power up I hear rapid clicking sounds and my my system is unable to recognize it. The drive is about a year old and is still covered under warrenty. I wanted to send it in for an RMA, but I have sensitive data on the drive. I have backups of the data, but I do not want the people at Maxtor or anyone perusing my banking files. What would be my best bet?

 

[redbeard1]

Your best bet is to not send it in for warranty, and destroy it via a large amount of destructive brute force. If you can't access the data on the drive in any manner, there is no other way to ensure your peace of mind.

 

[kursplat]

i've never had to send a maxtor back (fingers crossed) , but western digital told me (insert salt grain ^ here) that once they get an RMA'ed drive back it goes straight to the rebuild shop and gets torn down\rebuilt and nobody bothers to try to boot it untill then. they just don't have the time to look at every drive to look for goodys .
but like redbeard says , the only true peace of mind is total destruction.
good luck

 

[Jaggie]

Well I have no qualms destroying it except that I need a replacement!

 

[Jaggie]

Anyone else?

 

[jhites]

You might download the MaxBlast software.

If MaxBlast can recognize the drive, you can use it to destroy the data.