Privacy Issues with Returning a Bad Hard Drive

My dog knocked my external drive off my desk (among other things) and now it doesn't work. It's under warranty though and I could send it in and have it replaced. A Seagate technician verified over the phone that it's dead. However, I'm worried about sending it in and some technician getting personal information off of it.

It was used for backing up. I had RoboForm backup on there for all online passwords. I had QuickBooks and Quicken on it without passwords and a lot of work documents/medical reports (I'm a medical transcriptionist so it would be a HIPAA violation if someone bothers to do this). I don't have a password on Windows either. I know I should but no one in my house is going to bother my computer and I'm terrified of forgetting the passwords or not being able to find my list that I'm supposed to hide so no one finds my passwords. Anyway, what do you think the chances are of anyone wanting to get into returned hardrives under warranty? This is a Seagate drive. Do you think they would have pretty good policies in place at the company against this kind of thing?

 

Welcome to the forumI'm amazed they're allowing you to return it harddrive warranty's dont cover accidental damage

The chances of someone getting the data from the drive are infinitesimal,when a drive is damaged through shock the read\write heads contact the platters,the only way make the drive work again would be to replace the heads which would need a dustfree enviroment,then you would have to disassemble the drive which I'm not even sure can be done by hand at least without damaging it further

Trust me the drive will be thrown in a skip and destroyed for ever its not worth tryna find out how each drive died

Dont worry about,return it before they change thier mind

 

Thank you Rikky. I feel much better about returning it now.

 

No problem