I'm upgrading the disks in my custom-built Linux desktop. I went from two 16 TB drives to 22 TB drives. While the first new drive copied all the data without issues, the second one started having write errors after transferring about 10 TB out of 14.5 TB, eventually freezing and becoming unresponsive. Now, even though SMART reports some bad sectors, I can't mount or format the drive. I plan on returning it to Newegg. If they refurbish this Seagate drive, what happens to the 10 TB of data I had on it? Do they perform a low-level format on returned drives? I've had other drives fail before, but this is the first time it's happened during the return period after I've written data to it.
2 Answers
Honestly, you can't guarantee anything. If there's any sensitive information on the drive, you should avoid returning it. Self-encrypting drives are popular for a reason—they handle encryption in hardware and come with no performance hit.
You really can't know for sure what they'll do. That's why it's a good idea to use full-disk encryption for sensitive data. It’s an extra layer of security just in case things go awry.
Absolutely! And make sure to use a strong password. If you're really wanting to make sure no one can access the data, physically destroying the drive is the way to go.