Staples Selling PCs with Old User Data Still Intact

[drwho1]

On 2 occasions I have sold 2 of my PC's to someone else, but I have (a) re-partitioned the disk (b)Full formatted twice, and (c)re installed its original OS.

Nothing left behind.

More recently I simply threw away an old hard drive, but I did again, (a) + (b)
except that I stop the formatting making the disk unreadable then open the physical drive and destroy the physical disk before I threw the poor bastard on the garbage.

again Nothing left behind.

 

[freggo]

[citation][nom]maddad[/nom]So why is it Staples' fault if u are too dumb to remove your data before turning the computer in to them? That's like trading in a car and leaving your wallet in the old one just after cashing your paycheck. Thanks for the cash and credit cards![/citation]

Windows does not have an easy way to 'really' delete data; a fact that most people are simply not aware off !

 

[Leaps-from-Shadows]

This article definitely doesn't surprise me. Companies going for the quick and easy solution that also saves labor hours is pretty typical.

 

[Prescott_666]

"On 2 occasions I have sold 2 of my PC's to someone else, but I have (a) re-partitioned the disk (b)Full formatted twice, and (c)re installed its original OS.
Nothing left behind."

Wrong! As aoneone said above

"Deleting or altering the partition tables will not remove any actual data, and a format will only remove a bit of data from the root directory of any partition. Any other data will remain intact and readable by any free or trial version data recovery software. "

But you can use Derick's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) or several other wiping utilities to overwrite the entire surface of the disk. Once should be enough unless you think whoever gets it is going to send it to a lab and spend tens of thousands of dollars to recover your data, but multiple passes don't cost anything except time, so knock yourself out.

 

[g00fysmiley]

perhaps its a brilliant move on staples part... that way when people buy stuff there they are to afraid to return it knowing all the info put into the device might get out

 

[HolyCrusader]

I use Parted Magic for my disk-wiping needs.

 

[NoCaDrummer]

[citation][nom]joe nate[/nom]...If you have a return and wipe the data off some sort of flash memory, it reduces the life expectancy of that drive - which isn't new anymore, so to resell it you'd have to discount it.Ever done a defrag on an SSD? I wouldn't suggest it. Putting it in a microwave does about the same thing to it. Doing a multiple-pass data wipe on a flash drive also really adds some wear and tear to it.[/citation]

Uh, aren't SSDs & other flash devices supposed to have 10,000 to 100,000 write cycles? I'd think that even a multi-pass wipe would involve less than 1/10 of 1% of those cycles. That's far less wear than starting up and shutting down a computer [which uses an SSD as its primary/only drive] each day for a business-month.

 

[fir_ser]

This is scary for people who are computer illiterate.

 

[rosen380]

One of my brothers old neighbors got a bunch of computers from the dump. They turned out to be old government computers [from the water department] that contained customers full records [inc SSN and whatnot].

If he wasn't a good guy, he probably could have made some money off of it or even just made a call to the local paper to publicize that snafu. He called the water department and just let them know that he had these machines and offered to give them all of the hard drives back.

And I don't believe they even took the drives back, they asked [or he offered] that they be destroyed or reformatted...

 

[rosen380]

Also-- how many people buy computers and return them after there is enough use that there would be alot of personal data on them?

I'd think that by the time you've really used it enough to build up alot of personal data on it, that you've already either decided to keep it or have passed the time period for a return.

 

[belardo]

Its the STUPID customers fault for NOT deleting / erasing the data off their computers before returning them to the store.

Simple as that. Sure Staples has some fault.... but its still the idiot customer who assumes any important info will be deleted by someone else.

 

[del35]

sounds like something iCrap users would do.

 

[del35]

sounds like something iCrap users would do.

 

[clonazepam]

Thanks to those that answered my earlier questions in a previous comment.

OK, well the solution, if I were Staples, would be to implement a plan that transfers any blame to a 3rd party. I'd take in a system, remove the HDDs, and ship them off to the mfr or 3rd party for cleaning or scrapping. I'd work out some sort of credit system so that I can get the refreshed HDDs or replacements from the mfr to pop back into the systems.

So now, as Staples, they will incur the shipping cost and labor to do removal/install and shipping/receiving. This will minimize their labor time and b/c they have a simple procedure to follow, a monkey can do it while also not having any blame befalling them.

Lastly, I have a friend who worked for a particular hdd company (well-known). His duties included receiving hdds meant for clearing or destruction. Drives came in from all avenues including government agencies. He and his department pals had quite a bit of fun dissecting all the data from these drives and learned quite a few interesting tidbits about our government and its agencies.

 

[someguynamedmatt]

[citation][nom]dogman_1234[/nom]Has anyone ever heard of removing a hard drive. If you can't remove it...why were you using a computer in the first place.[/citation]

Hmm... let's think here, now. Remove the hard drive. Okay, now what happens when you take it back for some reason? Are they gonna take it without a hard drive? Think before you post, buddy...[citation][nom]del35[/nom]sounds like something iCrap users would do.[/citation]
Your double post on that was just out of place. Really? Apple bashing right now? What the hell does Apple have to do with anything whatsoever? I for one completely support Apple - they're doing one helluva good job at being a company. I'd like to see you become more successful.

 

[Guest]

My best guess here, from some retail experience a few years ago, is that the manufacturers don't make it easy to restore to a disk that's been zero-written any more. I don't know how much is just inconvenience to Staples and how much might genuinely be impractical though. At the very least, a retailer needs to burn a set of restore discs first. I don't even think all brands allow that anymore, instead using an approach that creates a full system backup *of its current state*. And I remember HP had this "tatoo" thing that made it hella tricky to do system restores, but that might have only been when the mainboard had been swapped. But yeah, we just restored without doing a zero-write back then. Most of us didn't know any better. The rest of us assumed the new owner wouldn't know or care enough to take a file recovery util to their new PC.