When you send a drive back for RMA, its none of their concern whats on the drive...

[Marcos]

right?

[Disturbedguy]

I think its against laws for companies to check the contents of discs, but im not 100% sure.

[Splash]

I guess you need to encrypt your porn just to be on the safe side?

[killie99]

right?

that's what Gary Glitter thought

[razer121]

right?

May i ask what spurred this question?

[Benihana]

There is usually data protection act to cover this, but sometimes if during a data transfer a technician see's a suspicious file name they can investigate and call the police depending on the content. Think thats how Mr Glitter was caught..

[Marcos]

that's what Gary Glitter thought

Nothing dodgy like that , just DVDs that i may find difficult to find their physical copies

[[GSV]Trig]

I always backup the contents of a drive and 0 it then do whatever smart tests to show its actually failing..

[Biscuit]

think about how many people take their laptops into computer shops with tonnes and tonnes of 'misplaced hard copy films'. If the computer shops reported every single one i imagine the police would start getting quite narked! Honestly, i reckon they will copy any off to an external drive for their own home cinema and then leave it as it is

In future i would follow in trigs footsteps, depending on the usage of the drive, thats what i tend to do.

[kingpotnoodle]

right?

Going back to manufacturer? I doubt they even plug it in to a PC, they probably have a test platform that runs some embedded OS to put the drive through it's paces, assuming it fails they issue you with a new one, the data on the old one is trashed.

They never send you back your old data on a new drive, you get a blank new or reconditioned drive. Your old drive might be repaired, or it might be binned, either way it'll be very well wiped.