Man's personal data still on "new" hard drive
Posted by Unknown on 17 July 2004 - 16:12 · 21 comments & 3015 views
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#1 Posted by Mister Lamar on 17 Jul 2004 - 16:25
- and u said it was new?
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#2 Posted by Jon on 17 Jul 2004 - 17:11
- I wonder did they mean 'can of worms'.. =)
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#3 Posted by axious on 17 Jul 2004 - 17:12
- Dixons group are well known for selling returns "as new". They have ben done for it several times over the years.
I always check this security label to see if it covering up any tears/rips etc. If it does...it goes back on the shelf.
Naughty nuaghty PCW.
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#4 Posted by aristotle-dude on 17 Jul 2004 - 17:33
- Do the brits have a different idea of "new"? The least the should do is run a sanitize program on the drive before putting it back on the shelf.
At work, we always run a military grade sanitize program on the drive before donating equipment or selling used equipment to employees.
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#5 Posted by happymonkey on 17 Jul 2004 - 17:38
- I always buy WD...but never had this problem
, never buy from pc world though!
It must be a dixons issue...they're a bit dodgy...does anyone remember years ago (1960s (I think)) they were done for hypnotic tv adverts...I think I was that the word dixons was said to many times within the advert, in an unorthodox style.
sort of d...d...d...dixons (over and over)...what a joke
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#6 Posted by egar on 17 Jul 2004 - 17:44
- I had a similar problem in the mid-90's. I bought a "new" PC and when I got home and started exploring the disk I found files belonging to someone I had worked with a few years earlier. I called the guy and he had returned the PC because it had intermittent hardware problems causing a it to reboot every few hours (I had the same problems). Both the previous owner and I went to the computer retailer and confronted him. Needless to say, the retailer was pretty embarassed for not reformating the drive before reselling the computer and for selling a defective computer as new. I got my money back and on top of that both the previous owner and I got an additional $100 as an "apology" from the retailer.
The previous owner also learned a lesson about leaving data behind on disk drives.
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#7 Posted by Ash on 17 Jul 2004 - 19:40
- So thats what WD probably did with my firends HDD. A couple years ago my friend sent his HDD into WD for repair while under warrenty and he never got it back. They insisted they sent is but couldnt track it for some reason, and he never got the HDD or comensation for it. WD probably just resold it to someone else.
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#8 Posted by chacho on 17 Jul 2004 - 20:07
- PCmag has often run stories about the dangers of supposedly "erased" hard drives...they preach physical destruction of the drive as being the only way to truly get rid of it.
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#9 Posted by lylesback2 on 17 Jul 2004 - 20:42
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just shows why somethings can be deceving... it may say "new" but been used for over a year. it's like on eBay.. they may post "new" but not factory sealed? ohh it was "tested" ya.. for a year or so.
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#10 Posted by lylesback2 on 17 Jul 2004 - 20:42
- just shows why somethings can be deceving... it may say "new" but been used for over a year. it's like on eBay.. they may post "new" but not factory sealed? ohh it was "tested" ya.. for a year or so.
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#11 Posted by erf on 17 Jul 2004 - 22:02
- I buy hard drives of ebay to see what data I can restore on them
I have found a few interesting items on them such as bank details & credit card numbers.
People should be more careful when selling stuff that stores data...
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#12 Posted by Randall_Lind on 18 Jul 2004 - 01:46
- you can always format the hd but format doesn't always mean earse. I don't know how to do it but, a lot of people can take a formated hd then find and recover data on it.
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#13 Posted by AquaDex on 18 Jul 2004 - 04:37
- Mmmm I suppose the personal data's not on the drive, as in the screenshot I see Citrix is running, so I think it's just the username and password for that Citrix account was saved on the PC so the new owner of the hard disk can access that company's servers.
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(1 reply)
#14 Posted by AquaDex on 18 Jul 2004 - 06:10
- Mmmm I suppose the personal data's not on the drive, as in the screenshot I see Citrix is running, so I think it's just the username and password for that Citrix account was saved on the PC so the new owner of the hard disk can access that company's servers.
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(2 replies)
#15 Posted by jackass_wanabe on 18 Jul 2004 - 08:44
- lol
wat if it was a drive full of porn..
now wouldnt they be in trouble... -
#15.1 Posted by BGM on 18 Jul 2004 - 13:43
- i take it you mean dixons..
porn isnt illigal or anything
except for if your garry glitter, rofl
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#15.2 Posted by Randall_Lind on 18 Jul 2004 - 18:53
- That happen I believe at a Circuit City store couple years back. A man brought a new pc and the hd was loaded with porn. When he called to complain they told him to format the hd. I havn't heard anything else.
The guy was ticked all I remember.
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#16 Posted by Large on 18 Jul 2004 - 15:43
- mmm, Interesting story !
It would not matter if the drive was full of porn though because as BGM said, its not illegal to have porn on your hardrive unless of course its illegal underage material !
But just imagine finding credit card details, etc . . . If I had too return a hardrive I would definatley sanatize it first !
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#17 Posted by deadmonkey on 18 Jul 2004 - 16:28
- gdisk 1 /wipe /dod
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#18 Posted by timelimit on 18 Jul 2004 - 23:10
- ha!
i worked at that store for 2 days days about a week after it opened. realised most of the people there didnt actually know that much, and that they try to get people to buy the most expensive crap even when product "y" will dso the same job but will cost half the price of product "X". I quit straight away. as a rule of thumb i avoid the dixons group
The story so far. We bought, yes bought, a drive from PC World in Tottenham Court Road, found all sorts of data on it, rang the DSG group, then contacted Western Digital, the latter confirming the drive was sold to London distributor CMS. WD is a commendable company - see the tracking slip below.
If you are not interested in participating in this special program, you should install the regular .NET Framework redistributable package from link below instead. The .NET Framework Code Coverage Edition runs slower and consumes more memory due to the overhead of the data collection.
Important: You cannot install this alongside the normal .NET Framework version 2.0 on the same machine, and should avoid installing this on a machine with any version of the .NET Framework already on it. You should also reformat your machine after you’re finished with this product, or create a restore point prior to this install so you can restore it once you’re done.