News Samsung Germany RMA Suggests Drilling or Smashing The SSD With a Hammer

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I'm glad they're flexible in this regard. Not all Companies will go the extra mile these days (looking at you, Asus) when you explain why you can't use their process and need an alternative.

Kudos to Samsung's support on this one; totally deserved.

Regards.
 
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I worked in a secure environment. It was not uncommon to pay vendors extra for "black hole" (retain all failed parts) service agreements. Most vendors that deal with banks, or defense contractors are familiar with situations where parts can't be returned. Some required proof of destruction, some just required the serial number tag or other identifying information.
 
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Given that the drive uses hardware encryption, all it would take is clearing/resetting a single key to securely wipe the whole drive. I guess the drive must have been supremely borked if even that couldn't be done reliably.
 
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While they could probably salvage some parts at Samsung, it's probably cost related.

They dont want to spend money for the labrl to have the owner ship it and don't want to pay to dispose of it.
 
Must have been very sensitive data. I've had hundreds of failed devices over the years. I've always had personal data on drives, but I guess there is a "special" level of private and most consumers don't fall into that category :)

The most common failures being Corsair hydro coolers. (15 failures over 6 years - I have 10 PCs here).
But even MSI, ASUS and ASRock Motherboards, G.Skill, Corsair memory. A couple of monitors. Things aren't made for durability these days.

Corsair is a special case IMHO. I don't own a cell phone and they tell me that not having a cell phone voids my warranty, yet they can't produce documentation that states that is a requirement of the warranty. So I've had to replace two coolers and a PSU that were within warranty but refused RMA because I don't own a cell phone.

I had one Samsung SATA drive where the sata connector broke. Might have been an issue with space behind the drive. Samsung were very helpful. They could have argued "user mistreatment" but sent me a 1TB drive to replace my 500GB drive. Can't argue with that service.
 
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InvalidError said:
If it is anything like the last time I RMA'd a HDD, the vendor diagnostic tool generates a diagnostic code on error to be included in the RMA process and the code probably told Samsung everything it needed to know to conclude the drive wasn't worth fixing.
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That's not what I'm getting at. Usually stores or OEMs want the device back regardless. I think we might start seeing more of this as ewaste becomes a bigger problem.

Make it the end users issue.

Though seemingly minimal, Amazon is sort of doing this. Any excess packaging material like the strip to reveal the adhesive, they just throw in your package so you have to dispose of the trash.

With electronics that have to first be wiped and destroyed it's easier to just put it on us.
 
I dealt with an RMA for a broken SanDisk Extreme portable SSD (Extreme 500 240GB, the USB connectors were known to be extremely weak), and SanDisk told me it was fine to drill a hole through the drive before sending it in. I wish I still had the picture of the drive, but I put a hole right through it before boxing it up.

They replaced it with a 480GB Extreme 510, and that drive is still working perfectly over five and a half years later. The original lasted about two weeks before the connector broke.

I haven't had to deal with any other SSD replacements since then, so I guess it's not as common of a practice as I had thought. I was definitely far more comfortable with destroying my original drive than I would have been to send it in with my data on it.
 
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sycoreaper said:
That's not what I'm getting at. Usually stores or OEMs want the device back regardless. I think we might start seeing more of this as ewaste becomes a bigger problem.

Make it the end users issue.

Though seemingly minimal, Amazon is sort of doing this. Any excess packaging material like the strip to reveal the adhesive, they just throw in your package so you have to dispose of the trash.

With electronics that have to first be wiped and destroyed it's easier to just put it on us.
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You mean the strip you peel off to close the envelope? I never had that included in my packaging, neither with Amazon nor any other online vendor... on the contrary, here in Europe (Germany more specifically, like in this article ironically) they actually actively try to minimize packaging waste.

Also, reading the article, Samsung didn't even leave the drive with the customer, they said destroy and then send over:

gave the user full rights to destroy the drive before sending it off to Samsung to complete the RMA process. The official quotes from Samsung support went so far as to detail how to destroy the drive, suggesting drilling or hammering the drive to pieces.
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So no, the customer didn't have to despose of it themselves.
 
sycoreaper said:
With electronics that have to first be wiped and destroyed it's easier to just put it on us.
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The onus to protect your private information is on you. Samsung telling the customer to destroy the NAND chips before sending the drive back was for that reason - he still had to send the destroyed drive back. If you don't care about your privacy, sure, send the drive in without making sure the data is gone first.
 
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IceQueen0607 said:
Corsair is a special case IMHO. I don't own a cell phone and they tell me that not having a cell phone voids my warranty, yet they can't produce documentation that states that is a requirement of the warranty. So I've had to replace two coolers and a PSU that were within warranty but refused RMA because I don't own a cell phone.
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That's very amazing Sir, and I salute you for that 👍
 
Absolutely no surprises here. I was once asked by Klipsch to destroy a speaker worth over £200 which was still under warranty and had a faulty tweeter. I had to photograph said speaker intact and then after I had taken my trusty sledgehammer to it. All before they would send a me a replacement. Crazy!!
 
sycoreaper said:
They dont want to spend money for the labrl to have the owner ship it
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Nope, reread the article. He has to both photograph it and ship back the broken pieces. The photos are to prove the condition it was in when he shipped it (so it wasn't broken due to shipping or employee handling during unpacking. They still have to dispose of it.

We don't have full details, maybe they told him which chips have the data or even which chips to avoid damaging (like a faulty controller) which they could still use to confirm the rma fault.
 
motorcyclehead said:
I had to photograph said speaker intact and then after I had taken my trusty sledgehammer to it. All before they would send a me a replacement. Crazy!!
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I had a dehumidifier that had a switch fail so it couldn't turn on. After diagnosing the device as faulty over the phone, they had me cut off the power cable and mail that back and gave me some instructions on how to properly dispose of the device locally.

I replaced the faulty switch and cut an extension cord to make a new power cable. Now I have two dehumidifiers.
 
Are you sure he had to send in the pieces after destroying them?

I've been through this RMA process before where they realize there's no gain in receiving the product, that the consumer might as well destroy it and send images. Probably to avoid you having scammed them or been wrong about the diagnostics, leaving you with 2 sets after the RMA.

It saves time and money for both parties.
 
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