Ask Slashdot: How To Deal With Refurbed Drives With Customer Data? 385
An anonymous reader writes "I just received 3 'refurbished' SATA drives from Newegg. All 3 had some sort of existing partition. Most appeared to be factory diagnostic partitions, but one had a full Dell Windows XP install complete with customer data. How big a deal is this? Should I contact someone besides Newegg about this?"
knowledge is power (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Two choices... (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of choice 1 and choice 2, I would say step 1 and step 2:
1. Inform Newegg that there's a problem with their process (considering this is on Slashdot, this may already be done).
2. Erase the drives.
3. ???
4. Profit
Happened to us once (Score:4, Interesting)
Quite a few years ago we bought an allegedly new drive from a bay area electronics retailer, and found it to contain some sort of raw partition containing a list of the names of approximately HALF THE PEOPLE in the United States along with some "number". Those of us who were listed in the data were unable to figure out what the number might be (an account number etc.)
Eventually we got bored with the data and put the drive in service for its originally intended application.
I wrote up the event and sent it off to the RISKS list, especially as Peter G. Neumann, the moderator of RISKS, was listed in the data, but they didn't publish it.
G.
Re:Two choices... (Score:4, Interesting)
This.
Refurbishing a drive means (among other things) a full media test which means writing every sector.
These drives were probably plugged in and "OK, works, ship it!"
Re:knowledge is power (Score:5, Interesting)
Until you find out it had kiddie porn, and simple possession is pretty felonous these days.
Re:Newegg: Many problems. Recommend others? (Score:4, Interesting)
Oddly enough I have a story involving both Newegg and Memory Express.
I recently moved away from a city which was home to my favourite store (Memory Express) and needed to buy micro SD cards. I couldn't buy from ME's online store because they didn't handle my method of payment, so I bought a card from Newegg for a bit more money and a lesser known brand. (the same brand was way more money on Newegg). I tested the card, and it was a class 4 card with a class 10th label on it. Of course Newegg only refunds price not shipping, so I'm out a lot of money and still no decent SD card. I'm holding out until my next road trip.
Moral of the story: Don't trust Newegg. Even if they do return the money, they aren't worth it.