Hard drive kaput - Applecare or Amazon?

[alleycat]

I've had a hard drive failure on my Mac Pro this week. I'm somewhat flummoxed by reading Apple's TOS from Apple Care. You can exchange parts, but they get to keep the old damaged part. In this case my OEM hard drive supplied by Apple, a Seagate 160GB. I didn't have a chance to zero it out and remove my data before the hard drive failed. Do the Apple stores destroy the old drives, or are they subject to tinkering with the techs in the back room? Has anyone had any experience with the Apple store on hard drive replacements? Otherwise I think I'll just be happy to spend $44 at Amazon for a new hard drive and keep my private data private.

Thanks in advance.

 

[goodcow]

Tell them you have sensitive business data on the drive and refuse to send it back to them. See what they'll offer.

 

[AppleNewton]

They usually dont do anything in regards to them at the apple store.
they send them back to "applecare" depo center and probably will destroy them or send them back to the manufacture at my best bet.

But generally if you ask to speak to someone at the genius bar you can try to ask a manager if they can offer you some form of deal with keeping your drive and replacing it under applecare.

 

[Carolus Rex]

Don't think that..

...you need to worry. Imagine the vast amount of broken stuff they get in to their depot. And going through all that stuff.... That is the first thing.
Second thing is that IF Apple would search through data from their clients, they would be in BIG trouble if it was discovered! The data is ofcourse your property. The physical HDD that you send in will be theirs. But they will destroy/recycle it. It is WAY to much troubles arguing with Apple about this, although it might be successful, but for what purpouse for you?

The main reason is ofcourse that they want to be certain that people don't try and scam them getting HDDs for free, by claming back the old goods.

Just send it in is my advice!

 

[iVoid]

For a 160GB hard drive, you're better off buying a new bigger drive than risking sensitive data being out in the wild.

There have definitely been reports of service techs going through and finding stuff on computers they were repairing. Chances are Apple will just send it back to the HD maker for refurbishment/destruction, but there's always a chance some knuckle dragger will snoop (assumign the drive is readable, of course).

You should also consider using Filevault and/or encrypted disk images for sensitive documents.

 

[mward333]

In our family, an iMac hard drive died recently, and the AppleCare people refused to let us keep it, but we got an all-new iMac. Also, since we bought the top-of-the-line iMac at the time of purchase (back in 2007), Apple replaced it with 2009's top-of-the-line iMac, which had much faster specs.

Note: Apple first tried to replace the drive, but the replacement new drive didn't work in the old iMac, so there was a deeper problem than the hard drive itself. We had already tried to resurrect the data on the old drive (in another hard drive enclosure), and we couldn't get anything off the old disk after 2 days of trying, so we let Apple take the old disk, the old iMac, and give us an entirely new system.

Except for the data lost, we are happy about the way it turned out.

 

[akadmon]

If the data on the drive is that sensitive and you can't bear the thought of someone getting access to it, then why not just eat your losses and buy a new drive? It's not like a 160 GB is worth anything these days.

Replace your dead friend with a nice 1TB WD (they're quiet and easy on the wallet) and sleep well at night.