This is the type of situation where the FTC should step in as the consumer rarely learns that this type of breach of their personal information has taken place.

The same thing happened to me a few years ago. Best Buy saying that this was "inconsistent with their standard procedures of disposing hard drives" is a load of crap. My computer broke, I had the warranty, and then a few mos later a kid messaged me saying he had my old computer - even mentioned the sticker I had on the side of the machine that was still attached. He then sent me my old pictures, essays, etc. that was on it. Fortunate enough for me, he burned everything onto a disc and then wiped it out himself, but had my hard drive fallen into the wrong hands...

As with the auto industry, the consumer should be allowed to have the parts that are replaced. If the hard drive was inoperable and needed to be replaced (as Best Buy alleges it was), then there should not have been a problem with returning it to Mr. Gerbus.

Same thing happened to my sister's laptop. It may have wound up in Lebanon.

Why doesn't it surprise me. After all you are dealing with the jerk squad at Best Buy. Best is a great entertainment center. But don't waste your money on repairs and warranties. They'll only upset you and tell you what you don't want to hear.

My workplace has all drives either wiped or degaussed before they are sent for warranty or decommisioning. At least corporations know better!

Some companies (like Dell) now offer the opportunity to buy the right to keep your hard drive if it fails under warranty. It does raise the price a little bit, but considering the alternative it's probably worth it.

Possibly the most criminal thing happening is that the hard drive was replaced when it obviously still works. A "hard drive crash" can be either hardware or software in nature. If his data were severely corrupted, the correct procedure is not to remove and replace the hard drive. There is an incompetent Geek Squad member at the very bottom of this-at least it was under warrantee and nobody charged Mr. Gerbus for the serviceman's ineptitude (although it happens frequently).

What a frightening story. I think it's important to pass this along to our friends and family.

This is what happens when you shop at Best Buy! I have heard so many terrible stories about them and their service from friends, co-workers, and family. This story, however, goes above and beyond anything I have ever heard before. If consumers respond with their wallets and/or pocketbooks, these companies will eventually learn!

or a very powerful industrial magnet - that'll wipe it!

I always wipe any drive I send in for warranty work. If it's broke, the warranty dept. won't care what it had on it or if it is securely wiped. Secure wiping utilities are cheap insurance.

How hard could it be for Best Buy to 'verify the warrenty'? Couldn't that be done in the store? And then, if so, immediate hardware destruction could take place. It would be faster and cheaper for everyone.

No more Best Buy for me, or my company.

Dell Computer has the same policy. They refused to replace my fully warrantied hard drive when I refused to let them leave with the old one. When I complained that the hard drive had personal information on it, the Dell repair technician said it was company policy to take your old hard drive and left without replacing the crashed hard drive. I had to do it myself and have never purchased and extended service warrany since then. When I had a friend examine my 'crashed' hard drive later on, he determined that the Dell technician diagnosed 'crash' was actually a Windows problem and fully recovered the data on my old hard drive. As anyone else could have done if I had let Dell leave with it.

Does anyone know the standard procedures at Fry's Electronic? I bought a hard drive from them along with warranty. The hard drive broke down and I got exchanged. I am wondering the whereabout of the broken hard drive.

I bought a "refurbished" computer at Best Buy. I asked repeatedly if it was restored to original and they assured me that they went through a several step process of cleaning and reformatting the hard drive. Whe I turned it on, it was registered to the old owner with his personal info still on it ... I clean it myself.

Frankly, drilling a hole into a drive is not sufficient if it contained sensitive data. Someone determined could still get the rest of the information off of the drive. Would you like that to be yours?

I have heard that some agencies in DC are using a new technique to sandblast the magnetic coating off of the drive platter, then shredding the platter; that would make the data irrecoverable.

In any case, until secure data policies are widely adopted, we are all at great risk. The parties responsible for this are woefully absconding from their duties.

I take a hammer to my old hard disks before they go to the scrap heap. I'd never trust that data to what appears to second rate repair service.

Large hard drives are cheap(under $100) these days and you can have someone replace it while you watch if you're not capable of doing it yourself. Warranty or not, take the old one home and smash it. It's much cheaper than if someone stole your personal data...

Yeah, just bought a Gateway laptop a few months ago and I've got to call MS this week and tell them that when I updated my OS on Friday (security patch) it wouldn't update because, according to the error screen, the version of Windows XP Media Center on my computer is not authentic.

Now, I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation (ie stupidity), but it's annoying, nonetheless. Darn Best Buy! ;)

This is not atypical behavior for Best Buy. My wife and I stopped trading with them years ago. Their people are "slick" and customer service is non-existent.

Best Buy(er)Beware!

there should be a law suite agains best buy

Perhaps the tech at Best Buy knew the drive was good, and chose to replace it under warranty in order to give himself a used one to sell. In any event, one should either wipe the drive before going to Best Buy, or bring a cordless drill.

BS. Any moron who does not erase his harddrive before installing a new one deserves that he or she gets.

I thought congress passed a law last year that businesses could no longer throw away paper or digital items that contained data otherwise it was a felony. I remember getting word here that we had to shred all documents containing customer info and to use a hammer on the disposed of drives to be in compliance?

I would be careful about assuming hyou have successfully removed data by using even a power industrial-strength magnet. while this technique, known as degausing, is used used by professionals -- it can be difficult for the average user to determine succesfull or not. More effective is the use of programs iike autoclav, which are designed to overwrite the data with random bits over several passes of writing.-

D.T. IT PRO

This is just another downside to an industry that has completely gone awry. If the public asks for more protections, it will just lead to more spying, more loss of privacy, and possibly we are told a firewall between levels of data accessible and governed probably by illiterate spys. The Computer Industry and its accompanying problems were not thoroughly thought out before foisting this many faceted monster upon the world.

Nobody has mentioned Circuit City in this article. Their performance is about the same. Especially the store in Dothan, AL. Totally inept store management and installation dept!

I completely agree. The consumer is trusting the retailer that the hard drive will be disposed of and none of the consumer's personal information is being compromised. If this continues, hackers or other computer-savvy con-artists could catch wind of this phenomenon and use it to their advantage. The consumer should have some guarantee that what they're being told is being carried out.

The average computer user doesn't have any idea to even think about this issue. My family may be relatively computer saavy, but we know many who are not and would just trade in their old for a new drive or systerm and think nothing of it.

The reason the warranty can't be verified in the store is that the manufacturers already know what you're saying here -- that Best Buy can't be trusted!

Best Buy is about to lose some serious business. I certainly hope that they offer Mr. Gerbus more than a $250 gift certificate in the end.

It seems to me that Mr. Gerbus realized the extent of his vulnerablity. Best Buy never really satisfied his concern. In that position, others might have acted more assertively in their own behalf. At the very least, he should have insured that the disk was cleared of data before turning it over to Best Buy. It is always a mistake to trust when you suffer the potential of a serious exposure, and know it in advance.

GreenDisk has been protecting businesses and individuals from this kind of problem for nearly 14 years. The company started as a service to the software industry that markets all of this information technology. Recently it has expanded its service to include the people who use that technology. This never needs to happen.

Wow, same thing happened to me with Best Buy. It was eerie to have someone call me and tell me they had all my personal info. But I thought Best Buy handled the situation extremely well, doing whatever was possible to fix the situation. The reality, there were no real damages. There could have been, but there weren't. It is in Best Buy's best interest to improve it's procedures before something goes wrong and liability issues arise that cause real problems. In the meantime, whenever I walk into the store, they roll out the red carpet. I love Best Buy.

This is typical for best buy...
so called "open box" which are 2 year old tv's that
were considered unrepairable at some point, Then repaired? and resold as New? If best buy is following what other large big box stores are doing the drive replaced was under best buy warranty and after replacement was shipped to a BB wharehouse and sold for salvage. look on ebay and you will see page after page of "used and refurbished electronics" they have to come from somewhere.. with margins on electronics so slim these days you have to find ways to make a buck on the backend of sale everday.
maybe MSNBC should follow this drive back to where it came to get the compleate story

Pardon me for waxing philosophical, but this kind of incident and all the problems with controlling illegal actions on websites and identity theft, etc., all suggest that every single person who ever had anything to do with a computer was so excited about the power it gave them, that we all forgot how much power it gave other (and less friendly) people.

My company would NEVER do that! Dell and Best Buy are incompetent at best. If you want safe, secure and honest service, go to www.gementerprises.com

Anyone check w/ Maxtor? If it was sent back to the manufacturer, Maxtor would be the one at fault, but they're not mentioned in the article.

This is mearly a case of an unreliable employee. I work for Best Buy, and have watched computers be trashed into the compacter, when told to. If a customer wants a new one and their old information transfered onto the new one. Then they ask for the old one to be destroyed. I've had to watch computers with 2GB of ram,300GB hard drives, just be trashed when I could use the parts. Depressing but it's for insurance reasons.

It isn't just Best Buy that does this. Companies in general are not concerned with the protection or the rights of the consumer. I recently had a similar situation, but before sending the "dead" drive in for replacement, I used an industrial magnet to wipe the drive. Sophisticated methods of data retrieval would still find the data, but not an average Joe who buys it at a flea market or such.

I have also heard that you can use a good sized hammer and beat on it until it is bent and smashed. Not only does this destory the hard drive, but it's great therapy to unload your frustrations on your computer for crashing.:-)

I find that a hammer to the plates works nicely - especially if disposed in numerous locations. ;-)

Yet another reason NEVER to shop at Best Buy - or to user their repair service.

Best buy also has problems with telephone numbers being used to identify customers. If you use your own telephone number and it belonged to someone else prior, you will have a mess as I did. I was told I could not get information on my own account because the telephone number they were using belonged to me but belonged to someone else prior and that is whose name they had on the account. They sent all of my gift certificates to the wrong individual.

better yet - DO NOT STORE PERSONAL INFORMATION ON YOUR HDD; why would Mr. Gerbus even have SSN's from his children and grandchildren on his PC - did he do their taxes???
In today's unpredictable Internet climate we all need to be much more vigorous in protecting our personal info - we can't rely on anyone else to do it for us, like the FTC; they are all drowning in red tape. Mr. Gerber should have copied sensitive info onto a thumbdrive and then fdisk the hdd before going to the repair center. Even then the true "professionals" are able to reconstruct some data. Of course hindsight is 20/20.

This reminds me of cell phone issues I have had. When you return an old phone for equipment replacement, make sure you erase, if you can, any and all information on it. I got a call from a guy who'd gotten my old phone after it had been refurbished, he had all my info, phone numbers, email addys and passwords. It is scary to know that companies don't see this as an issue and erase your info off of returned phones and hard drives.

I think that each company that doesn't follow procedures for protecting your information, should be held liable for all damages and for cleaning up your credit if you are a victum of identify theft because of their negligence. Also the company should be forced to pay for ID Theft Insurance.

Best Buy really means "Bad Buy" I wouldn't trust these people to take out my garbage!

Call me old-fashioned or paranoid, but I save all important/sensitive data to floppy or cd-rw, instead of my hard drive. You just never know what's going to happen.

To Mr. Garbus-
Don't settle for the $250 gift card! Best Buy has a lot of products to offer; however they lack in the arena of customer service. I have had several issues with Best Buy- none of which I feel were resolved properly. I do sympathize with you for I have never had a "scare" such as you have. Best Buy and other companies that has implemented such lack procedures needs to be "taught" to be more respectiful of people...and, not the people just on money!

I never let a HD with my info out of my reach unless I have wiped it or physically destroyed it.

I've purchased PC's and drives that have plenty of info I wouldn't want out of my reach if it were mine. I always wipe them before use, but I'm always amazed at what's on them: SSN's, Tax returns, Account #'s, CC#'s. Everything necessary for an ID thief to ruin someone.

If more states were to enact strict Security Breach/Credit Freeze legislation, consumers would have far more options in scenarios like these. I think as citizens 's crucial that we possess effective tools to prevent these types of scenarios from happening BEFORE they occur. However, currently, the biggest problem is the Federal government. They are looking at revising the Fair Credit Reporting Act to the extent that it will preempt states from enacting legislation of this type. It will also forbid state attorneys general from protecting citizens of their own states!

I work in a computer repair store. We always give the parts back to the customer and if they don't want them we format the drive and then run a degauze over the drive. As for the "warranty" you do need the physical drive to send to the manufac. but it should be cleaned before it goes.

Just wonderful how Best Buy allows someones information to be possibly stolen, and only offers $250 Best Buy gift card. Best Buy usually offers thousand of dollars to the employees to rat on each other for stealing. I guess it is just completely wrong to steal from Best Buy, and it is ok that Best Buy allows the possibilty of persons information to be stolen. The store is cheap, and Best Buy shouild offer more money for the stores "mistake."

Easily, the best advice here is: 'bring your own drill'.

you probably work there

Great heads up. I'm a Purchasing Manager at this company and will stop all transactions with Best Buy.

Companies should be held liable for these stupid mistakes such as these. If not, they would just continue with making the same mistake, then simply saying "sorry" and try to compensate you with a gift card. That DOES NOT in any way, compensate for the worry and trouble they may cause.

Would one of those high powered 110V magnets that were used to wipe floppies work to wipe the hard drive as well?

I had a Dell technician come out to replace a hard drive under warranty when I asked to keep the old hard drive he gave me the same story, so I politely asked to see it for a moment, I then took it out to the garage and beat the heck out of it with a sledge hammer

Isn't it really more interesting that they replaced a drive that was still working? That's how they make extra warrenty repair money. Who can today imagine that someone else is going to worry about anybody elses security - you have to do it yourself.

Laughable: as poor as my spelling so too it seems is your attention span. do you all live in the sand under your feet. in my world you cant swing a "pollitically correctly killed cat for the purpose of this analogy" dead cat without hitting someone who has in one way or another been touched by some type of crime or another. and yet if thats not enough you can just catch the news bites inbetween your shows on tv to see the local drama jocks boasting their exclusive coverage of the days greatest stories happening in the town you live in...which happen to be acts of violence and such...to top it off in my opinion you take your 30 years of experience to the local electronics outlet to shop for something you have no idea how to use or repair, then you hand a 17-20 year old all of the hard earned plastic youre so concerened about and as they overcharge the hell out of it for you you justify believing everything they say to satisfy yourself thats they have taken the liberty to educate themselves to prepare for the unlikely event that god forbid someone may come to their store and buy something they do not know how to use...Laughable, and in my opinion you should have taken the drive out of the case and shot it with a gun drove over it with the home SUV flushed it in the toilet for a few hours then shorted it out in the tub with a hairdryer.... carry the smoking hunk of metal to the counter and ask them what the hell they sold you this obviously malfunctioning piece of imported crap. while they are trying to think of the reason they wont have been trained to answer you with you get on the phone and call yer wife and ask her in front of the person if the Dr thinks youll be able to use your arm again since the electrical burns on her hand are so bad from holding the mouse that was connected to the computer that had that drive in it when it obviously malfunctioned. be sure to look the 19 year old clerk in the eye when you say "oh yeah and keep the drive just give me the new one ill put it in myself..."
can i get a witness.

I think the Federal Government needs to step in and regulate this issue. There should be steep fines and penalties for corporations that do computer repair and do not properly destroy or clean equipment that could contain sensitive information that could be used by someone who is out to steal the identity of people.

I've had my own issues with Best Buy in the past; this just confirms the rightness of my choice not to deal with them. Another loser is Micro Center. A few years ago I took my computer in because it was crashing a lot. I told them that the guy who built the computer told me it needed another fan. They scoffed. I didn't hear from them for a couple of days, and when I called they said they had played the games that caused the crashs for hours without crashing. So I picked up my computer, paying $75, and brought it home, still crashing constantly. I finally took it to a small, well-respected computer store in Denver, and they said, "Yeah! It needs a new fan!" I will NEVER deal with the incompetents and crooks at Micro Center again. I've absolutely had my fill of big box stores that hire kids off the streets.

I bought refurbished lapto fporm sony direct.
If had the orginal user info in place.

To save save the few dollars it would take to reinstall the OS they would just as soon give your ino to someone elss...it no skinn off their backs.

This is very disturbing to me. My wife and I have been victims of identity theft and I think these major companies should be held liable for mistakes like this. We are just a number to companies like this.

A frien of mine took his computer in to be worked on at a local computer store and not only did they lie to him and tell him it was completely fried, they swapped his orginal hard drive with an older bad one when they gave it back to him. I repaired it for him and informed of the swap and the loss of his personal information.

Best Buy was caught red handed and should be held accountable for possibly ruining this man and his family's life. Identity theft is a serios matter and it is time the courts start levying liabilities.

Several years ago, I bought a box of about eight hard drives at a Goodwill store in Olympia, WA. Just for kicks, I unformatted a few to see what sort of things were on them. According the personal accounting software, two of them belonged to average Joe (and Josephine), the remainder were from Boeing (yeah, the aerospace and defense contractor!). Afterwards, I wiped all the disks myself.

There is a simple solution to this. DO NOT PUT PERSONAL INFORMATION ON YOUR COMPUTER!

These stories pop up all the time on news sites, and people just dont get it. Never ever put your SSAN, credit cards number, anything that has anything to do with your personal life on your computer. Write it down and put somewhere readily accessible.

When I exchanged the hard drive on my Dell laptop (under warranty), I deleted everything, then deleted the partitions, then formatted the drive. I don't absolutely know if that was enough, now that I'm reading this. :-(

I have been on the opposite end of this. I took my laptop to Best Buy to be repaired last year, and it was returned to me with a “Refurbished hard drive”. This drive still contained all of the previous owner’s data and even her copy of windows. I called the store, and was told that it was normal for drives to be recertified at the shop and returned to service if they passed certification. They did apologize for not reinstalling the OS though.

Why is it that whenever, buy unbelievable coincidence, the corrupt action is discovered, it is "inconsistent with our standard procedure"? Fess up, Best Buy! This IS your standard procedure! And if it is not, YOU bear the burden of proof!

Laughable: as poor as my spelling so too it seems is your attention span. do you all live in the sand under your feet. in my world you cant swing a "pollitically correctly killed cat for the purpose of this analogy" dead cat without hitting someone who has in one way or another been touched by some type of crime or another. and yet if thats not enough you can just catch the news bites inbetween your shows on tv to see the local drama jocks boasting their exclusive coverage of the days greatest stories happening in the town you live in...which happen to be acts of violence and such...to top it off in my opinion you take your 30 years of experience to the local electronics outlet to shop for something you have no idea how to use or repair, then you hand a 17-20 year old all of the hard earned plastic youre so concerened about and as they overcharge the hell out of it for you you justify believing everything they say to satisfy yourself thats they have taken the liberty to educate themselves to prepare for the unlikely event that god forbid someone may come to their store and buy something they do not know how to use...Laughable, and in my opinion you should have taken the drive out of the case and shot it with a gun drove over it with the home SUV flushed it in the toilet for a few hours then shorted it out in the tub with a hairdryer.... carry the smoking hunk of metal to the counter and ask them what the hell they sold you this obviously malfunctioning piece of imported crap. while they are trying to think of the reason they wont have been trained to answer you with you get on the phone and call yer wife and ask her in front of the person if the Dr thinks youll be able to use your arm again since the electrical burns on her hand are so bad from holding the mouse that was connected to the computer that had that drive in it when it obviously malfunctioned. be sure to look the 19 year old clerk in the eye when you say "oh yeah and keep the drive just give me the new one ill put it in myself..."
can i get a witness.

I work in the financial sector, and there are strict regulations for us on Customer information security (GLBA & SOX acts to be specific). Perhaps it is time to bring the retail industry under the acts as well.

Its Simple. Take your geeky friend to the store and buy parts to make a computer. Don't get one already made from someone. The only computers I own that are manufactured are Laptops. I build all of my PC's from scratch. That way I know whats going in them, what breaks in them and how to replace it properly. Course besides the fact of drilling holes through platters dropping it off of my third floor balconey taking of the backplate and physically ripping the read/write head off

Just to add one point of insight(?). For those of you bashing Mr. Gerbus for not clearing his drive before turning it over, remember his machine had crashed. I assume he could not boot his computer to run the software to wipe the drive, even if he had the software. Had he taken the "hardware" approach (drill), then there would have been no way to troubleshoot the problem at the store. An alternate approach would have been to take his hard drive home after the diagnosis and destroy it himself while paying for the purchase.
Like other techincal advances, cheap computers have given rise to unintended consequences: this is not as bad as disposal of nuclear waste but worse than alcaline batterys. What's the half life of your hard drive?

Most of the drives I have had fail over the years failed catastrophically, giving no opportunity to wipe the data before RMA. I do keep sensitive stuff encrypted, so while I strongly suspect NSA could get the data, I doubt anyone at a flea market could. If you keep stuff on a laptop, or portable drives encryption is even more important.

I'm gonna put the conspirecy spin on this. BB corporate policy has nothing to do with warranties or proper disposal of used equipement and everything to do with checking information sources (hard drive in this case) on citizens for the government. Those hard drives are being checked, every one of them that any store replaces or services under the 'warranty'. BB nor the goverment care if your data is released to whomever, thats not what they're looking for. If they don't find anything....off it goes to where ever--most likely somewhere where it can make someone a buck. All under the guise of SECURITY. I guaruntee you that had Hank's hard drive been loaded with child porn or bomb making infomation, you'd be hearing an entirely different story with a different spin. How do you think the ones that are caught get caught? Do you honestly think that hard drives loaded with child porn are just stumbled upon during a warranty or service check? They check them ALL...every file in every directory...ALL of them! Whoa!! What was I thinking...that's not possible...forget everything I just wrote.

That Best Buy story is a bad thing obviously and the fact that the user knew his HD data was vulnerable and they overided his concerns is troubling. As far as computer data you can't blame anyone but yourself. It is like throwing out personal papers in the trash. The smart people don't. People ust need to think just a little bit. Common Sense and pay attention.

Best buy is evil, once we all accept this, we can destroy them.

This is a big deal. There are a couple of other areas of potential danger that everyone missed here.

First, there are more devices in a home these days that have harddrives, like print and file servers. Most people don't even realize what is on these as they don't think they're PCs so they don't have harddrives.

Then what about all the USB drives and SD cards and so on.

Finally, if someone gets ahold of a person's computer and disposes of it improperly, the original owner could be liable for huge fines depending on the state.

What happens to computers, devices, and their components has become far more complicated than the average person can anticipate. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Best Buy in Rockville MD refused to return my laptop hard drive, couldn't wipe it because the computer wouldn't boot, couldn't buy the old drive back because it was under 'warranty'. They promised a hole would be drilled after I complained 3 times, even to a manager, that there was data on the drive. This article makes me sick. If someone calls me with my drive I'll be suing Best Buy the next day. Jerks.

No Best Buy - EVER - They are the worse

This isn't surprising concerning Best Buy. The corporation needs an overhaul from the top down. Their service lacks customer care and suffer from an inability to stand behind and follow through with their warranty policy. We bought a $500 worth of camera equipment and purchased their 'all inclusive damage replacement' policy. The camera suffered an accident and the store refused to honor the policy. Needless to say, we share the story and refuse to shop there.

For more information on the topic, read Garfinkle's paper (linked to in the article), as well as his excellent book "Database Nation". A great tool for erasing hard drives is Eraser. Supports DoD specs as well as the more advanced patterns. At my last job I rebooted my PC on my next to last day and let Eraser clean it to DoD specs. Not "all" companies properly erase their PCs, better to do it yourself (but check the IT policy you signed when you started so you don't get in trouble!).

That's amusing and chilling at the same time!

Given what Best Buy or even the manufacturer can do with hard drives with data on them (format), I can't believe that such businesses did nothing to destroy the data on the drive.

Best Buy would want the Hard Drive back to return it to Maxtor for warranty credit.

Maxtor wants the drive back to determine why it failed, user abuse or defect. They don’t warranty user abuse. If the drive works then Maxtor is probably not going to accept warranty responsibility. Best Buy knows this and to keep Mr. Gerbus happy may find it cheaper to just give him a new HD. They now have a usable piece of equipment damaged by the operator and to cut their costs send it to the computer equivalent of an auto junk yard.

I’m not sure but I’d estimate that 90% of returned drives are still operational but something like the boot sector has been scrambled that makes the drive unusable by the average consumer.

Who’s responsible here? I don’t know. You’d need to know how the drive got into circulation. There is no question as to who let the data out of a controlled environment.

If the drive still works then Mr. Gerbus managed to make the drive so it wouldn’t work under his operation. This is unlikely the drive’s fault and is more likely either operator error or software controlling the drive.

When Maxtor overhauls and recertifies the drive they wipe all data. That’s not a guess I have Maxtor recertified drives. When a drive truly mechanically fails there is still recoverable data on it, but it is very expensive and difficult to recover.

How often does this happen? Well I’d ask Maxtor how many drives get returned for warranty? How many are Maxtor’s fault and how many are operator error? I’d guess 99% are not Maxtor fault. All of these drives have data.

I have bought a refurbished Laptop from a Name manufacturers that had user data on the HD. No I’m not in the business and have only bought 7 laptops total in my life.

What you are dealing with here is a responsibility issue. It’s user data, they but it on the drive. The odds are that they also made the drive unusable. They then took it to someone else and invoked a warranty claim that is basically invalid.

If a drive has an accident, wrecks a car and it ends up in the junk yard with personal info in the glove box who is at fault?

Sure it is easy to see Mr. Gerbus as a victim, it makes for a good column.

My hard drive was replaced under warranty with Gateway. I had both personnel and business info for a volunteer organization, as well as my own. They called me no less than 4 times in a 2-week period to return the broken drive. I stalled as long as I could to make sure I didn't have to retrieve anything off it, then I was going to hammer it. By the 4th phone call I asked how much to keep it, they said $60 for the new drive. It was a bargain as I've had to retrieve data several times since.

I think Best Buy sucks!

I had a similar experience with Best Buy. I'll never buy so much as a DVD from them again!!!

Best Buy... Worst buy if you ask me. I would encourage everyone out there to take a computer tech class at one point or another. The fact about computer repair is that it quite possibly is the biggest scam of all time. If you can plug a VCR into your television chances are you can unplug an old hard drive and plug a new one in. Its that easy. Next time you have a hard drive crash and if you have all of your backup disks, do it yourself. Knowlege is empowerment- and also dis-empowers jerks like Best buy.

Let me enlighten most of you poor un-informed consumers with some "defective" computer facts. The name shouldn't only be Best Buy; its Circuit City, Sears, Walmart, CompUSA, etc, etc. They are anxious to sell you a warranty when they sell anything which has 'computer' associated with it. That's where the profit is. When you bring back your item, (computer, hard drive, PDA, camera, anything, even boxes of partly used discs), it ends up being written off as "salvage" and sold to a "reclamation" center for pennies on the dollar. Rarely does it go back to the manufacturer. They assemble mixed pallets of open, box, closeouts, "warranty repairs and returns" shelf damaged clearances, etc and then quickly dump onto suckers like ourselves. We in turn re-sell to Flea-Marketeers, or much of the thousands of items you see on eBay as 'open-box' or AS-IS. Added to this mix of independant little guys trying to earn a livable income is the very same major National chains mentioned above. The only care taken by the seller is to be aware of the condition; - is it working, is it damaged, or is it saleable, rarely is any other effort performed to erase or 'clean-up' the device being offered. PROOF? Case in point! At this moment, twice a month our load comes in from the reclamation center. At present we have at least 10 desktops and notebooks all returned under warranty. Most very new. ALL with personal and confidential information on every single one. The difference with us, we wipe the hard drives clean, re-install fresh operating systems, clean-up and refurbish the units - then sell them nicely discounted "LIKE-NEW." Unfortunately, most do not. And certainly not when it is sold to the Flea-Market. Anything goes. MORAL: -yes, when returning your warranty item; bring your own drill!

I used a hammer and pliers to destroy my old hard drive, and my stress was relieved also. Certainly happy that I made a decision quite a while ago not to do business with Beast Buy!

Why is no one complaining to Maxtor the maker of the hard drive that would have demanded the hard drive back to verify failure for the warrenty replacement? At least this needed to be done with Western Digital and I am assuming that Maxtor has a similar policy.

I can only add to the many stories about Best Buy's computer repair department. I took my pc in for an installation of a network card and it never worked after that. they guaranteed that they would have it working in a few hours, and the next day when i went to get it back, nobody had even looked at it. I insisted on taking it back so i could take it to a reputable computer store, and they wanted to charge me for the work they had not done. stay far far away from Best Buy if you have computer problems. i ended up having to buy a new computer since my hard drive did not work after that (it worked fine when I took the pc in to Best Buy). Yes I do have the hard drive - the computer store gave it to me.

Apple replaced my hard drive last year, not a warranty repair but one I paid for in full. When I picked up my computer they refused to return my hard drive -- they told me it was "theirs" even though I paid for the repair and new hard drive. They told me for $450 they would return it. I refused since I paid for the original computer and the new hard drive. I tried to file a complaint with the Attorney General in NYS, but they told me I had to sue Apple to get it back. This story confirms my worst fears. I will never have Apple Service repair equipment for me again but rather go to an independent service provider I found who will actually GIVE ME BACK any parts removed from my computer.

Great Hornytoads! The masses want more laws - as if laws prevent things from happening. Show me a law that ever stopped anything! Let's use our heads instead. Never - let me repeat - NEVER store critical infomation on a replaceable drive! Always store it on media you can ALWAYS keep in your possession! BACK up - BACK UP - then BACK UP! Burn it to a DVD TWICE or three times! Hide them all! Then get it off your harddrive with something like BCWipe. The only other choice is to dip the harddrive in acid or burn it up!

I am a computer professional. I had a hard drive that completely failed, and which I could not access; it was definitely a hardware failure, so the use of any software tools was impossible.

I disassembled the drive, removed the disk platters, sanded them down, then cut them into pieces, and put each piece in a separate garbage bag (over the course of several weeks).

There was nothing particularly sensitive on the drive, but I would like to see someone try and reconstruct the data on that drive! I recommend that anyone with a hard drive that needs to be physically destroyed follow this procedure, rather than drilling or beating the drive with a sledge hammer. I have heard too many stories of government forensics experts reconstructing data by minute magnetic fluctuations from disk platters (even when thoroughly and securely erased, or heavily damaged) to dismiss these accounts. Hopefully, if some or most of the platters are missing, that will slow them down!

Dan in Virginia says its just an irresponsible employee - that he has watched when old computers were compacted. That itself is in violation of laws concerning the disposal of hazardous waste - of which many components in a computer are. So either way, it seems that BB needs to review its policies.

This is on called for Best Buy should have to pay restatution to this gentilman for allowing his personal data to be used illigly.

What should take place when a dirve is replaced is that the owner should be given the old drive back minus the cover plate on the drive. For warrenty issues all that is needed is the cover plate not the platters in the hard dirve. Seems some one had a plan for this drive to start with. BEST Buy needs to change it's policies.

How do you clean, what you assume, is a crashed HD? Is there anything the average Joe can do to get data off the HD after it crashes and then have it destroyed?

Couple of things, the reponsibility of clearing out data from a used hard drive falls completely on the customer. To depend on BestBuy (which actually equates to depending on some schmo making 18 dollars an hour) to do what is best for the customer is simply asking for trouble.

I have read a couple of comments basically blaming the "computer industry" for these problems. How irresponsible is that statement? It amazes me how the public can be so naive to our current technology, and then when things go awry the are ever so quick to blame the industry.

People, it is your responsibility to protect your digital assets and information. Educate yourselves on how to safely navigate the internet and remove personal information from devices that you use from day to day. You dont have to be a Computer Scientist to protect yourselves...

When I need a new wallet, guess what I do. I go to the local Wallet Supermarket and buy a wallet. I then make sure that all my credit cards, bussiness cards, personal photos, and other 'personal information' is out of the old one before I throw the old one away. Anything less than that and I might as well get a tatoo on my forehead that says "VICTIM".

Oh my wallet is the one that says BAMF on it..

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

Regarding the gentleman's suggestion the FTC step in, the FED govt is the WORST violator of personal data loss. The VA just lost every living veteran's personal information on computer media. Do you really trust them? As for Best Buy, dont EVER buy the extended warranty. When I worked at BEST BUY we were told the warranty is 100% profit because of all the hoops you must jump through to get service, most people either dont use it, or never use it again. Why do you think they push so hard to sell them?

Thank you so much for posting this story. A few weeks ago my husband and I had a hard drive crash in a brand new dell computer that we had just purchased. Dell customer service was amazing in that they sent out replacement to my husband in a day or two, but when they insisted (as best buy did) that my husband had to return it, he refused. They contacted and urged him more than once that he had to return and he argued back that the above scenerio could happen and he was not going to take that risk with all of our personal information. Dell backed down and we kept the old drive. Thanks again, this confirms that we did the right thing in not sending back and "trusting" that it would not be reused somehow.

This is very unfortunate, because as a data recovery company we also offer data distruction services that do not require the drilling of holes in drives. There are simple steps and proceedures that can be taken to avoid this. We use a degaussing method which has proven to be 100% effective at distroying all data, to the point where even we aren't able to recover anything.

I worked for Best Buy for three years. There repairs are hit and miss with your hard drive going through a lot of hands, some honest some not. I had techs that would routinely scan drives for software they wanted. I stopped the practice where I could, but who knows how much was taken off. Best Buy is a corporation with a friendly face and a bottom line heart. IF they thought they could save a buck but expose customers to problems they would do it in a heartbeat, as long as they didn't think they would get caught. I tis a shame, a lot of nice people work there, their corporation is not what it should be. The warranties they sell are nothing but profit centers, my whole career was built on selling nea worthless warranties. If you want a CD, Best Buy isn't bad, if you want a computer, buy a Dell, be happy.

A consequence of corporate seeking after huge profits and global competition is that corporations scrape up the pennies at the bottom of the barrel. If that means no customer service, or a little fudging on doing what is right for the customer, or telling stockholders little white lies, it is the price we pay for "competitiveness."

And the lesson is:
Don't store anything on your computer that is precious to you. Primitive technology often times fulfills the role of a computer. I'm talking about pens, paper and pencils.

Well this what happens when you relie on your computer, if you dont know whats, it capable of you should not have one in the first place, you dont place a sharp object in the hand of a moron and not expect him to hurt someone or itself. Come on people get with it. computers been around for age, this is nothing new, you can recover almost any infomation from any hard drive no matter how badly damage it seems its wont be consistance but the data will be retrievable, not all complete data, but retrievable, so when it all comes down to, is, if you dont want your information stolen or on the internet then stay off the computers, data can be comprimise at anytime. So good luck. Remember dont relie on computers we never had this problem when we were doing stuff on paper only!

Arcadian

Best Buy should receive a stiff fine for this mess. Companies time and time again only enforce their policies when they are hit where it hurts--in their pockets!!

I have always had great service at Best Buy but I also know what to do with all of the components of a computer system. The hard drive could have crashed (I have had a lot of problems with Maxtor drives). I have recovered a few of them for my friends and family by swapping out the IO controller on the hard drive. This was probably the case. Maxtor repaired the drive by replacing the circuit board on the bottom of the hard drive and then sent it out for sale. Very likely, Maxtor outsources this labor fro refurbishing the hard drives. It should have been standard procedure to erase the drive by demagnitizing it so that there would be no partition information on it. Best Buy should invest in the 'inexpensive' equipment necessary to wipe the drive.

This is totally inexcusable. There are tons of free programs out there to overwrite drives several times to Department of Defense specs (DoD 5220.22-M). Do this yourself before you hand anyone a drive if at all possible. Don't kid yourself and believe drilling holes is good enough because you can still get the data around the holes. Here are free erasing utilities

I'm not surprised with Best Buy's behavior. I complained to them about a little cashier scam that was going on in their San Diego Mission Valley store. The manager I complained to basically blamed it on me for falling for it. I will never ever waste my money at a "worst buy" store again! They are a bunch of crooks!

I had a very similar situation arise at a Best Buy in Troy, MI. I went there to have the OS re-installed on my laptop. They had to back up the hard drive before doing so and instead of restoring my data, they gave me another person's hard drive contents on my computer. I finally got my information back on my computer, but it contained tax return information, etc. I don't know who had access to that in the meantime.

Hank should sue Best Buy.

This is exactly why I use a Mac and deal with Apple Computer. My Mac is reliable and the service top notch.

I quit doing business with Best Buy and Dell yrs ago. Together they have the worst customer service ever! I agree, however, that this is a case of Buyer Beware...for those of us who are not computer whiz kids, we have to rely on the businesses that supposedly handle these issues. Thanks for some good suggestions for future problems like this.

I’ve been in the high-tech computer business for more than 30 years now, and I see many well meaning suggestions here that should be approached very cautiously. First of all, reformatting, writing random bit patterns or degaussing your drive before you let it leave your sight is no guarantee that someone will not be able to get at your data. Be aware that there is technology available (has been for quite some time now,) that enables anyone to read overwritten or degaussed data. Each bit written onto magnetic media leaves an impression that is not fully removed by overwriting or degaussing the device. Each bit subsists at lower levels of magnitude: only masked by fresher data written over the older data, which the typical hardware/software combination in your off-the-shelf PC is not designed to detect. Nevertheless, that old data is still there and can be read with the proper technology, layer-by-layer, just as you would peal an onion: with older data simply being buried at dimmer levels of magnitude at each layer as you drill down. If someone wants to read old residual data on your drive, you won’t prevent them from doing so by degaussing, reformatting or writing random binary patterns to it. Your data will still be there for all to see; only “masked” by newer magnetic flux patterns. Our Federal Government knows this. That is why, when they dispose of drives with sensitive data on them, they literally "machine" the oxide off the surface of the disk platter before sending it on its way. This is the only way in which you can guarantee 100% that your data is destroyed and can no longer be accessed by anyone. Drilling holes through the platters is the next best thing you can do for the average consumer, which is relatively inexpensive and easy to do; and forget about throwing the thing in the fire, because as long as the oxide is on the platters and the residual magnetic impressions are not completely removed, the data is still there!

I took a loptop back to Best Buy for warranty repair of the display. They replaced the hard drive! No explanation. They just replaced it. The did repair the display but it only lasted 2 weeks.

Yet another reason why I've stopped being a Best Buy patron. I always feel like I'm dealing with the Idiots of the Universe when dealing with Best Buy staff, so I'm not surprised this has happened.

As usual, businesses do not care about their customers when it comes to service. Once they have your money, they no longer care about you. The government is suppose to protect us (the taxpayer), but instead only care about big business and their money. This is a small example of a very large problem.

I am pretty surprised that there was not a law suit. When you have something in your possesion of that high of importance....that has your private information oozing out the sides....how could you trust to just hand it over to a Best Buy employee? Everyone I know that works there is in high school or is just trying to make a buck to support their addiction. Get everything in writing...I think he deserved it for not having someone sign a paper saying that his hard drive would indeed be destroyed.

this isn't the only fraud Best Buy is up to...I bought a photo printer and added the "extra warranty" for cleanings and what not. when i brought it to the store, they said I had cancelled my warranty. Only after I verified with my bank that I had not, they did the maintenance, 3 weeks later!!

I can believe Best Buy would do that. They refused to stand behind me when I puchased a computer last Christmas and didn't get a penny of the $150 refunds back. They said, "Best Buy just sells the units, rebates are the other companies." Yeah well you jerks sell it in your stores. I will never buy anything from Best Buy ever again.

When they replaced my hard drive at work abot three years ago, I asked the guy to leave the old one and said I'd give it to the manager for him. Instead, I took it to the parking lot and ran over it with my truck. Destroyed it pretty well. Then I took the hard drive back inside and put it in my desk. No one has asked me about it.

I can believe Best Buy would do that. They refused to stand behind me when I puchased a computer last Christmas and didn't get a penny of the $150 refunds back. They said, "Best Buy just sells the units, rebates are the other companies." Yeah well you jerks sell it in your stores. I will never buy anything from Best Buy ever again.

This is not as unbelievable as some make it sound. I bought a computer from Best Buy, knowing I should have built my own, and not only did they convince me I needed them to do some kind of junk to it (I said no but the look on their faces made me rethink because I had too much money to spend that day) but 2 hard drives failed. Even though I paid for the extended warranty I will never use it because I refuse to take something with all of my information on it to a pimply faced "Geek" and have it repaired by them.

I dealt directly with the the manufacturer and got a program recommended to me that took 3 days to wipe the drive each time it failed (I believe mine were actual hardware failure due to over heating because it is a poorly designed case and not enough airflow can be maintained) and then replaced it myself.

I cant blame Mr. Gerbus because he didnt realize ahead of time that they wouldnt return the drive and if it had "crashed" he may have not had the ability to retrieve the data even though it was probably just a standard Windows crash.

Even though I doubt it will ever happen I hope that laws are enacted and enforced to prevent this type of thing from happening but with the government wanting all data in tact so they can spy on us I dont think we'll ever be safe from potential identity theft.

Somebody asked about Fry's Electronics. True story: My friend and I purchased a great deal of computer equipment there for the company we were working for. He charged it to his CC knowing the company would reimburse. He also bought a candy bar which he put on a different reciept so he wouldn't be charging the company for his candy bar. As we walked out he whispered to me "watch this" and handed the candy bar receipt to the guy at the door who checks to see that nothing is in the cart that isn't on the reciept. He looked at the receipt, checked it, and out we went with $1000's in computer equip. on a candy bar receipt. Trust them to wipe your hard drive for you? I DON'T THINK SO!

This is why I only do buisness with a local PC store in the town I live in. I have come to have a repore with the store owner and his workers. I feel very safe and am always offered my old parts back.

I'm one of those people who builds and repairs computers as a hobby and would never think of letting my hard drives get into the hands of others without making sure that they are scrubbed using DOD level cleaning.

I have found that 'failed drives' that are used as boot drives often have 'failed' because the operating system crashes. If these drives are installed as secondary drives, you can usually pull data off them. That may be what happened in this particular case.

Thats why I build my computer.If they need a physical hard drive back for warranty they should drill holes thru it, while you watch.There are no usable parts in a crashed hard drive so that shoulkdn't be an issue.I also back up my files, that way if the hard drive crashes,I wouldn,t lose the data. Or for what's worth spend the money for a new hard drive and destroy the old one, less trouble in the long run.

They should have offered you a lot more than a stinkin $250 dollar gift card, get yourself a lawyer and take it to court

HA! Don't call a Geek. Call a professional!

I work for a system builder. Under the circumstances I think $250 is generous since Best Buy probably didn't do anything wrong and this guy shouldn't have his private info on the hard drive when he gets the system repaired.

Returning broken parts to the customer is typically not an option for the system builder performing a repair under the warranty, because the hard drive mfg. usually requires that such items be returned in order for the system builder to be reimbursed for the replacement. If the system builder could not return such products, then the warranty would cost much more, perhaps prohibitively so.

This also means that Best Buy is probably not the party that released the hard drive (although I have had numerous issues w/ them over the years and agree that their customer service is lacking). It is probably the manufacturer.

The posts on here from computer repair people that say they always give the drives back are probably not the ones who manufactured the system in the first place or otherwise are not in a position to receive an offset for returning the drive and passing on the reduced cost to the customer.

Finally, smashing the drive with a hammer will probably make the memory unreturnable since such damage is not covered by the mfg. warranty. Thus, it is not a viable option.

As costly as computers may be, these are items typically sold in volume with low margins. Measures contemplated by some of these posts would make computers much more expensive.

I am a little disappointed that this column was not better researched.

I'm not ususally one to "boycott" a store, but I've promised myself never to have any more dealings with Best Buy ever since I bought from them my last TV. The sales guy flat lied to me about a few things. I emailed them several times and never received any response.

This on happened to me and I was shocked - Dell replaced my hard drive once and sent me a "refurbished" hard drive that ended up being from the FBI. I couldn't login, however the initial login banner said something to the effect of this computer belongs to the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Any unauthorized use...blah blah blah. It didn't appear that the drive had been cleaned by Dell at all.

Only thing I could still not understand is why consumers are so attached to this store though circuit city is a better alternative in terms of service, products, prices etc.. When will the mindset of consumers change that some companies are living in their old fame and has nothing worthwile these days

They should have offered you a lot more than a stinkin $250 dollar gift card, get yourself a lawyer and take it to court

This behavior doesn't surprise me one bit. I filled out a credit application for a new TV at Best Buy with zero interest for a year. My credit was spotless, yet I was declined and the Best Buy employee refused to give me the application back even after he had entered everything into their computer system. I bought the TV at a local retailer for a better price for zero interest no problems. Then I check my credit report about 90 days later to find out someone has stolen by identity, purchased something from Best Buy on the other side of the country for the exact same amount as the TV I was going to buy. Coincidence? I think not. I couldn’t prove anything, but I always had a feeling some counter jockey was making a few extra bucks without thinking of the consequences or just not caring what impact it would have on my family. I consider myself fortunate because I was able to catch it after only about $5,000 had been spent in my name to Best Buy and several cell phone and utility providers in Florida. It took about 4 months to get my credit cleaned up, which required filing police reports in cities I’d never been and mailing certified letters to every party involved. Best Buy and other companies need to do a better job of policing themselves, the government shouldn’t have to step in all the time.

This article is very disturbing to read. I worked for BestBuy part time for 5.5 years, as I'm a Network Engineer in the daytime. For a while when we used to swap out hard drives in customers machines, & it was standard practice to throw their old drives into a bin. The bin was then shipped once a week to a warranty service center where they supposedly disposed of the drives. I believe sometime in 2003-2004 we changed that policy and would give customers their old "failed" drives back, which makes me wonder why the technicians told the customer they had to send the drive back to a warranty center. I've got a $100 that the technician / technicians were selling the used drives to flee markets.

Best Buy follows the old sales scenario of "Beef
up your results by taking advantage of those who
don't know any better."

TO ME THIS IS A SIMPLE FIX EACH STORE OFFERING REPAIRS SHOULD JUST PLACE A MODIFIED DRILL AT THE COUNTER OR SOME OTHER AREA AND DRILL THE HARD DRIVE IN FRONT OF THE CUSTOMER... IF DRILLING A COUPLE OF HOLES IN THE HARD DRIVE IS ALL THAT IS NEEDED TO MAKE THE HARDDRIVE USELESS THEN ONE (DRILL)SHOULD BE AT EVERY COUNTER AT BEST BUY OR ANY OTHER ELECTRONICS STORE IF WARRANTY VERIFICATION IS ALL THAT IS NEEDED AND NOTHTHING MORE THEN THEY SHOULD ADOPT THIS POLICY.. BEST BUY ARE YOU LISTENING?....

Why not just buy a cheaper computer and forget the extended warranty. When the computer goes bad just replace it with a new one. You can buy a good computer for under $500.00 dollars. The cost of giving out your information to others will cost you more than $500.00 dollars trying to clear your name and may take years to recover. If you need a bigger computer than what you can get for under $500.00 dollars than you have a greater working knowledge about computers and should be able to replace the hard drive yourself.

This is an eye opening story. Best Buy should be held accountable for its actions. To the least, they should provide the customer with ID theft insurance.

Since Best Buy has 110% price match policy, I tried to price match a few times. Every time, they will deny it saying the model number is not a match. What they do is to create a unique model number for their PCs and other big (size) items from the same manufacturer. The model number might be just an extra character to the end.
Also, their price is not the best. You can shop at newegg.com or outpost.com (Fry's Electronics). The customer service from Fry's is as bad as any other electronic retailer. At least, the price and options are better.

Under the circumstances the best thing to do is to back up your data and use a restore program to put it back after drive service or replacement. There are many free programs that will clean your hard drive. Other options are: encrypting your personal data and placing all personal data on an external USB drive that you keep at home when bringing the computer for service.

Don't worry so much about that info on your hard drive. Wells Fargo, The VA or some other entity with lax security procedures will lose your data for you - then send you a letter telling you they're sorry and steps YOU can take to prevent identify theft!

Hats off to Hank for realizing the potential danger this hard drive presented in the open. Many people would not have even realized this danger. Best Buy should be thrown under the bus on this one - risking someone's identity to make an extra few bucks? Unacceptable.

I work for CompUSA and this sort of thing happens everyday. We tell customers that their old hard drive must be shipped back to the warrenty center and that they cannot have it back. We also tell people that we cannot delete their data because it is not covered under the warrenty. Also, CompUSA gets all of its parts from a company called preowned.com. Nune of the warrenty replacment parts CompUSA puts in your computer are new, They are all used.

There are a lot of confused folks here, due in part to the tone of the article. This is not a "Best Buy Issue" folks! The point is, your hard drive and the precious info in it are vulnerable when you turn it over to someone. do you really believe all the other major and minor electronics outlets are looking out for your best interests? Get real. And take responsibililty for your actions. Maybe you didn't realize the danger prior to this article. But consider yourself warned. Don't be so feeble-minded as to think that switching from Best Buy is going to make you safer.

It is just so easy to say "you need a new hard drive", rather then hunting for the problem in the orginial drive. See it's like this, If your car is having problems starting, why not put a new engine in it, than you know for sure you fixed the problem and made an additionl sale. This is what the world is coming to.

As a former store manager for Best Buy, I can tell you that their strategy and focal point is essentially to exploit their customers for as much money as humanly possible by any means available. Products that are “lemoned out” are refurbished in several service sites throughout the U.S. and sent back to stores to sell to customers in some cases. Going back several years ago, it was virtually the same situation when we had to push 3 year commitments to the MSN internet service. Any and all means to get customers to commit to this product was used. I left the company because of their shady and unethical business practices that I was personally asked to do. I highly suggest that any person that feels uncomfortable with a sale or interaction with this company use as much caution as possible.

There are many opinions in here saying he should have used a utility to erase the drive before returning it. If the drive was not functioning at the time due to any reason, hardware or software, I don't think any wipe or format utility would work either. And hitting it with a hammer would obviously invalidate the warranty. So it is up to Best Buy to come up with a degausser at the counter where the drive was replaced.

Along the same lines as the BestBuy incident, I once bought an answering machine from OfficeMax in Mayfield Heights, OH. This machine was packaged new. When I brought it home, it had personal messages on it, apparently to a physician in Cleveland. I returned the machine to OfficeMax and explained that it had sold me a "used machine" packaged as new. To this day I don't know if OfficeMax repackaged the machine and sold it to me after a customer had returned it or if the supplier for OfficeMax sold it a "used machine" as opposed to a new machine from the factory. Sorry, but I can't remember the brand name of the machine.

I work for CompUSA and this sort of thing happens everyday. We tell customers that their old hard drive must be shipped back to the warrenty center and that they cannot have it back. We also tell people that we cannot delete their data because it is not covered under the warrenty. Also, CompUSA gets all of its parts from a company called preowned.com. Nune of the warrenty replacment parts CompUSA puts in your computer are new, They are all used.

The average Joe having problems with his home computer does not back up the data on the hard drive regularly enough, so if he had computer problems he is going to take it into the store and ask them to fix it without wiping the hard drive. This average Joe thinks they are going to fix his computer for him and give it back to him data in tact. It is after the fact that he gets to learn the lesson that he may loose all of his data and then something like this occurs. Best Buy should be sued!

As a computer professional, I would like to address a couple of items:
1. Hard drives often become unusable as a primary drive due to a bad "spot" on the platter's surface, but still can be installed as a second drive in another computer to enable the data to be read.
2. I work in the IT department of a government office and when a hard drive under warranty dies, we simply remove the top cover of the drive and ship that back to Gateway as per their and our policy. We then remove the platter(s) from the defective drive and scratch the surface with a sharp instrument and then cut the platter into small pieces before discarding.
3. I'm not sure of Best Buy's educational requirements for their computer "Technicians", but some big box store's only requrement is a COMPTIA A+ certification which can be obtained by anyone by memorizing a few concepts that they may or may not understand and then paying to take a test.

A free utility called DBAN will also overwrite a HD with all zeros. Unless the NSA wants data from it, you should be ok. Also, for those of you unwise enough to be running ex pee, turning on encryption will give you a little more security.
Best Buy sucks. I won't deal with them because of they way they do business. This is just one more reason. I hope someone from BB is reading all this, and I hope this guy sues their corporate pants off.

Many of the comments posted admonish Mr. Gerbus for not erasing his hard disk before turning it over to Best Buy. The whole lot of you that state this are so ignorant. There is absolutely NO WAY for any non-tech to do that if the pc has stopped working! If he did take a drill to it then Best Buy would have though the holes were the cause of his problem. I'm sure he didn't have an industrial strenth degausser at hand, either! Oh yeah, for "nv" - you are the "moron"!

I see a lot of comments about whacking the HDD to make it useless.. the problem is that the platters which contain the data still can be used - transplanted into another assembly. The best bet for any home user or corporate is to use encryption.

I've workd tech for years and never have I heard of drilling holes in the drive and honestly I don't think it would be that effective. Yes it would make it impossible for the average joe, and most average geeks to get any information from it, but with the right level of knowledge and determination data could still be recovered from the hard drive platters.

Best bet, get a program that writes 0's to the drive and use that on any drive you are getting rid of. If the drive is not operational enough for that program to write zeros to it and your really paranoid about these things, take the thing apart and sand the platters.

I recently had a hard drive failure on my new HP laptop.HP insisted that I return the drive in order to get warranty coverage and told me they would charge my credit card $600 if it wasn't returned intact within 30 days. The drive was not functional so I had no way to remove the data without destroying it and thereby voiding the warranty. Their warranty policy fails to adequately protect the consumer from the possibility of data theft.

Most PC users don't know how to save their datas or wipe out a PC. So, how could Mr. Gerbus first try to do it, when his hard drive CRASHED !!! That's one of the reasons "why" it is brought to Best Buy, otherwise, a simple "crash" might be repairable by software techniques, not hardware! Mr. Gerbus or any PC users couldn't know what to do then! Hello?

I've found that removing the drive disc, drilling it, and then dropping it in a lake is a effective way of disposal. I haven't let a hard drive out of my sight since the DOS days, and don't plan on it EVER!!!! Best Buy should be made to explain how this could have happend, and then institute a policy with oversight to make sure it don't happen again........

Do we know the "terms" in which Ed sold the drive back to Mr. Gerber? This could be a great blcak mail sting? (Buy all hard drives you can at low prices (ie. flea markets, etc.) and search them for "peronal" information. Then contact the effected person for the buy-back offer of a life time?

Is there no end to greed in this country? Is it really necessary for companies to resell old hard drives? Do we have to squeeze the last bit of profit out of everything? I am totally into recycling but not a hard drive containing my personal information. Warranty or no warranty, my hard drive should stay my property forever!

There are free programs that will wipe the data from the drive just do a Google search for "free DOD drive wipe programs". You want to do at least 7 wipes of the drive to ensure that all data is gone! Degaussing may not remove all of the data on its own. Taking a hammer may make some data irretrievable but not all Wipe and then physically destroy!!! So always wipe a dr