[SOLVED] Samsung 970 Evo M.2 has 40 lost partitions which I didn't create

[tobiasjohnson1982]

Hi if anybody could help it would be greatly appreciated as I'm confused.
I have just built a new PC in December and installed a Samsung 970 Evo M.2 from Amazon Warehouse, it was described as like new with minor damage to the packaging. I deleted a file today by mistake and used mini tool to scan the M.2 drive, when scanning, it uncovered 35 lost partitions which was confusing as when I 1st installed the drive I have only ever done a fresh install of Windows and other programs that I use.

I have working files on a second sandisk 500gb ssd drive and games files on a third firecuda 2tb drive. Have run scans on these drives as bought from new and have only ever had one partition.

While looking for the deleted files on the samsung I noticed the dates and files installed on the lost partitions. there where games that I have never played in some of the partitions, like championship manager and F1 racing, fifa, far cry 3, devil may cry 4 and Gigabytes of files that where not mine. the dates where modified before I had even built the PC but after I had received it from Amazon.
I installed windows from a surface but again have never played these games on the surface and would not explain the multiple lost partitions.

I contacted Amazon to complain about being sold a drive with somebody else's data on it and have performed a second scan and it now shows up there are 40 partitions and after viewing more there are some files in later partitions that have my name on and companies name. I have not partitioned the drive since my last scan.

Have I been sold another persons second hand drive, with all there information on?

Have I been hacked?

Has somebody physically swapped the drives over?

or am i just being dumb lol

(In my MSI Bios i did notice that I had secure virtual machine set to on and have not done this manually, but have updated the bios. Don't really understand what this does but know you can run multiple machines from you processor/ have Ryzen thredripper 1920x. And don't intend to do this.)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, Thanks in advance.

 

[Tanyac]

IMHO you've been sold a second hand drive that has someone else's data on it. When partitions are deleted they often can be recovered with tools like the one you used. What you don't know is whether the drive was returned because it was faulty and it could be refurbished. Either way, this seems like a really dodgy practice. This is my opinion only. Having not seen the drive I can only go by the information you have provided.

If Amazon maintain that the drive is new, it was only the packaging that was damaged, then I'd be taking pictures of the evidence and demanding a refund or letting them know you will escalate the matter. If they admit that it was a second hand drive, you may still be able to return it.

You should look at the endurance stats of the drive. Whilst SSDs do take a long time to run out of endurance, you don't know how much this drive has been hammered. There are a number of SSD tools out there that will give you that information.

Windows 10 typically uses 4 partitions (EFI, Reserved and two <no name> partitions). The others are deleted partitions. As you fill the drive some of that partition information will be overwritten. It's not typically a problem, as they are not active partitions and are not actually using live space.

However, if it concerns you and if you decide to keep it, having removed anything you want to keep, you can do a full clean or secure erase, which will then require a full re-install of Windows.

DISKPART is a good starting point, using CLEAN /ALL (Note this can take many hours).

Or again, google "Secure Erase" to find dozens of tools that can do this for you.

hth.

 

[mdd1963]

Samsung's Secure Erase is quick, painless...back to 'from/out of the box' condition, per Samsung...

Certainly no reason for a bunch of excess writes/cleans, formatting, etc...

(Samsung's Magician should show how much total write activity has been done; as a comparison, I've only written 12 TB in 20 months)

 

[USAFRet]

it was described as like new

This was a used drive, "like new".

Registering it with Samsung may also help find out more info.
https://www.samsung.com/us/support/warranty/

 

[tobiasjohnson1982]

Thanks for the responses I already have Samsung Magician installed on the machine and its saying 2.9 tb have been written on to the Samsung 970 EVO, I have only ever written 100Gb to the 500gb drive, so it's nearly been used 5 times over to it's maximum capacity which doesn't seem like new to me.
It just seems strange that some of the folders in some of the later lost partitions have my name on them and some folders with my company name as I have never reformatted the drive as I thought it was new and just had damaged packaging. (as this is how it was described) I will contact Amazon again and Samsung to see if I can get any more information, just concerned that if I send it back to Amazon they will just resell the drive on and somebody else might have my information on there, if this is the case.

 

[tobiasjohnson1982]

it was described as like new

This was a used drive, "like new".

Registering it with Samsung may also help find out more info.
https://www.samsung.com/us/support/warranty/

Hi thanks for getting back to me. I have registered the ssd with Samsung and given them a call but they could only give me the model and date that it was made. checked the box production date which was 2018 08 15 on the card it was 07 2018 which is also the information they gave me over the phone. they have told me to sort out the problem via Amazon

 

[tobiasjohnson1982]

Thanks for the responses I already have Samsung Magician installed on the machine and its saying 2.9 tb have been written on to the Samsung 970 EVO, I have only ever written 100Gb to the 500gb drive, so it's nearly been used 5 times over to it's maximum capacity which doesn't seem like new to me.

 

[mdd1963]

1 TB/month is moderate use, as WIndows updates, a few games installed, and routine surfing will use about that much based on my own usage with a 960 EVO.

If you got a good price on it, I'd not worry about it, they have like 5 year warranties and which you will run out of long before writing 100-150 TB in most usage cases...