Incredible Connection : New used HDD

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kilobits

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Hi All

My brother purchased a new 1TB Seagate drive from Incredible today... R689. I installed it for him only to find it contains some person's personal data, documents, banking details, pictures etc. Apparently he is a lawyer... judging by some of the docs.

When Incredible Connection sold it to my boet, he questioned the seal being broken and the sales guy claims it "is broken because they test all the hardware 1st" before selling.

* BS *

Now my brother has all this stranger's personal stuff on a "new" drive bought from Incredible Connection. He says he is going to contact this bloke and let him know that all his info is on some drive sold by Incredible Connection. Then he is going to let Incredible Connection know and wants to hear their damage control.... he is also married to a journalist who thinks that there is a story here perhaps.

My my my, tomorrow is going to be quite a day at Incredible Connection I am sure!
 
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That is not the only questionable search conducted !

LOL.

His firm's case files are here too... so much info.

Need I remind you all of safe data practices people... Turks, Russians and Nigerians would love this sort of info.

Fudzy said:
Awesome... have you searched for any questionable .jpg files? :D
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I have taken 3 of those drives back in the past 3 weeks. The USB interface just keeps on packing up. I'm worried about the data on two of the discs. The manager could not give me any clear indication as to what measures they will be taking to ensure that it is wiped. I could not open the units to connect them to my PC in order to format them, because that would invalidate the warranty.

Pretty sure it is not my drives though ... I don't have lawyer type documents on my backup! :)
 
This one is perfectly functional - it is not an external, it is an internal drive! The dude lives in Cape Town bloem guy, so no worry.

I keep an old speaker magnet out back... and if a drive fails and needs to go back for an RMA, then it sits on the magnet for a while... I have never had a warranty rejected and trust me, the data is truly foooked.

BloemGuy said:
I have taken 3 of those drives back in the past 3 weeks. The USB interface just keeps on packing up. I'm worried about the data on two of the discs. The manager could not give me any clear indication as to what measures they will be taking to ensure that it is wiped. I could not open the units to connect them to my PC in order to format them, because that would invalidate the warranty.

Pretty sure it is not my drives though ... I don't have lawyer type documents on my backup! :)
Click to expand...
 
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kilobitsperyear said:
I keep an old speaker magnet out back... and if a drive fails and needs to go back for an RMA, then it sits on the magnet for a while... I have never had a warranty rejected and trust me, the data is truly foooked.
Click to expand...

Be careful, they might void the warranty if they discover that's how the drive has failed. Then again, given what's happened I doubt they would go to that effort.
 
Hectic man! That lawyer is not going to be a happy camper when he finds out, bad day for IC!
 
kilobitsperyear said:
... he questioned the seal being broken and the sales guy claims it "is broken because they test all the hardware 1st" before selling
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LOL :D .... That is way the manufacturer sealed it in the first place .... it was tested .... found to be in (QC) order & sealed :whistle:
That seal is there for the customer, Not for them .... if they break seals, why don't they re-seal it with their own packaging & company logo :confused: :erm:
 
Hey Fudzy... I meant that if a drive had to fail it would only then sit on the magnet - before being RMA'd... the magnet has never been the cause of a failure. It makes me feel a tad secure that my data will not be accessible to some stranger somewhere.

Fudzy said:
Be careful, they might void the warranty if they discover that's how the drive has failed. Then again, given what's happened I doubt they would go to that effort.
Click to expand...
 
kilobitsperyear said:
I keep an old speaker magnet out back... and if a drive fails and needs to go back for an RMA, then it sits on the magnet for a while... I have never had a warranty rejected and trust me, the data is truly foooked.
Click to expand...

I somehow doubt that. A spinning drive might be a bit more suspectable to the magnetic fields, but will probably only cause the head to crash into the platter. The data will still be there. Zerofill is the only surefire way to destroy data imo.
 
Hi Id13

The effect of my speaker magnet on a hard drive is one of complete data corruption.

I tested this on an old hard drive that had not failed. The drive still worked after a few brief magnet passes, but error after error and complete rubbish. NOTHING could be read completely or retrieved. It seems to trash the data quite beyond any hope of actually getting anything off it. I think it trashes the magnetic platters bits and bytes and also possibly does something to the heads.

The old drive still spun up, was detected by the BIOS but nothing could correct the errors or be read from the drive no matter what tool I used.

Foooked beyond recovery.

If a drive suffers some mechanical failure it cannot be zero filled before RMA... so I use my little speaker magnet to ensure that any data thereon is just a mess.

Linky

ld13 said:
I somehow doubt that. A spinning drive might be a bit more suspectable to the magnetic fields, but will probably only cause the head to crash into the platter. The data will still be there. Zerofill is the only surefire way to destroy data imo.
Click to expand...
 
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As far as I know, it is illegal to sell used items as new. So you've probably got grounds for a lawsuit.

kilobitsperyear said:
The effect of my speaker magnet on a hard drive is one of complete data corruption.
Click to expand...

One of our professors at Tuks told us they had some saboteur in a company a few years back and they had to forensically determine how data was damaged on floppy disks and various other magnetic storage mediums. End result was that normal magnets don't cause much damage. It was discovered the guy used a sub-woofer magnet and it still only corrupted part of the data (less than 50%). He described it to us visually as a vertical line through the disk that contained damaged sectors. They discovered this by personally testing with various techniques and thereafter testing the damage. Sub-woofer magnet matched the damage exactly.

So yeah not the best solution but yeah better than just handing it over.

Disk might also be permanently damaged (and they may refuse to swap it out after it comes back from diagnostics). Disk drives store firmware info on the disk itself, if that data is corrupted the disk no longer functions. Naturally a disk vendor will question why that data has become corrupt.
 
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ld13 said:
I somehow doubt that. A spinning drive might be a bit more suspectable to the magnetic fields, but will probably only cause the head to crash into the platter. The data will still be there. Zerofill is the only surefire way to destroy data imo.
Click to expand...

Personally I prefer a 10 lb hammer.
 
Hey all....

The drive seems to contain data from BG Bowman Gilfillan Inc... it looks as if it is some ex employee's drive as there is also a C.V. etc on it as well as data from other attorneys at the firm. This data is very personal and contains details of divorce settlements of clients, payments made, received, personal banking stuff, etc. I doubt that BG Bowman Gilfillan Inc would approve of this info even leaving the firm.

It also looks as if someone at Incredible was using it as a dump drive... pr0n, movies, mp3's etc. folders all over the place.

He has the attorney's contact info, as well as the ex-employees (his CV is even on the drive) and will phone them this morning, before phoning incredible.

Wendy Knowler may also catch hint of this and may want to quizz Incredible on their client-data-privacy type policies they practice and also why obviously used stock is making its way to the shop-floor for resale as new.

So... as soon as I know more info, I will update here.
 
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