Hard Drive Trade In

Pat Carlson · Post by **Pat Carlson** » 18 Jun 2004 8:37 pm

My computer recently died,had to replace something called the hard drive to make it work again. Gateway wants the old one back.Can they get any of the data off of it? Or is it completely done? Also I thought all memory in a computer was held on microchips not actual moving hardware?

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The Lone Prairie Steeler Pat

John Fabian · Post by **John Fabian** » 19 Jun 2004 2:09 am

At the bottom of this link there is a simple explanation of how a hard drive works;
http://library.thinkquest.org/25168/harddsk.html

There are ways and techniques that can be used to recover data from hard drives that go bad. Most of these techniques are expensive and time consuming. Not really worth it if you don't have mission critical data on the drive.

John Fabian

Bobby Sparks · Post by **Bobby Sparks** » 19 Jun 2004 7:20 pm

Generally speaking, all of your computer's memory is on chips. The hard drive is not memory, but is used for data storage similar to a tape drive or a floppy drive. Also, like John said, unless you have some super critical data on your old drive, it would probably not be very cost effective to have it restored.

Bobby

Dave Boothroyd · Post by **Dave Boothroyd** » 20 Jun 2004 12:59 am

I'd guess that when you bought your PC it had Windows already installed. Gateway has a licence from Microsoft to do that. If they sell you a new hard drive, they want your old one back to make sure that you have not installed Windows on another computer without paying another licence fee.
The Microsoft police are everywhere!

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Cheers!
Dave

Bill Crook · Post by **Bill Crook** » 20 Jun 2004 6:35 am

Keep your old hard drive.

reformat it and use it for a second hard drive.

You would be surprised how many times running F-DISK and FORMAT on a supposely dead or defective hard drive will make it hummmm like a new one.

Been There ----- Done That !!!

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http://home.comcast.net/~crookwf/

http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/crookwf/my_photos [This message was edited by Bill Crook on 20 June 2004 at 07:36 AM.]

Pat Carlson · Post by **Pat Carlson** » 21 Jun 2004 8:27 pm

Thanks to all for your input.Gateway said if I did not send the drive back it would cost $56.

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The Lone Prairie Steeler Pat

Miguel e Smith · Post by **Miguel e Smith** » 22 Jun 2004 2:08 pm

I've been through several hard drive failures over the years. Doing regular (daily) data backups to something like a CDR is a decent way to store needed info (use good CDR's as the cheap ones many times won't recover later) and/or to a second hard drive (internal or external).

If you have a HD that won't reboot (assuming you have only one drive), and the data is critical...before you take it someplace expensive like Data Doctors (v-e-r-y expensive), disconnect the drive and put it in a zip-loc bag and then put it in your freezer for about 10-minutes. Take it out and hook up the drive again and it might just reboot so you can save critical data. I had some computer geek friends recommend this to me awhile back and it worked.

I've reformatted used drives before and sometimes they work ok. But, with the price of drives being relatively cheap these days...get a new one. The trade-in thing I'm not familier with but perhaps they are offering to retrieve your old drives data and load it into the new drive (?).

Bill Crook · Post by **Bill Crook** » 23 Jun 2004 12:29 pm

Patrick......

If the computer isn't under warrenty,then the old hard drive is yours to do whatevery you wish with it.They can-not legally keep or charge you for it. I am assumeing that the machine isn't in warrenty as they would have not ask you to return it,they would have just keep it and replaced it with a new one.

I smell a $56.00 rat here !!

(Even if you have a extended service contract on it)

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http://home.comcast.net/~crookwf/

http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/crookwf/my_photos [This message was edited by Bill Crook on 23 June 2004 at 01:34 PM.]

Will Holtz · Post by **Will Holtz** » 23 Jun 2004 2:34 pm

Lots of sensitive stuff may be stored on your hard drive, such as web sites recently visited. If you are concerned about people recovering information from your hard drive, then I recommend the utility Kill Disk. This program will fill your hard drive with jibberish by erasing the data and overwriting it multiple times.

Bill Bosler · Post by **Bill Bosler** » 2 Jul 2004 6:50 pm

Gateway is broke and they'll try anything to con money out of you.