Cantbecanit wrote:
For those returning drives I recommend you use Discwizard first to do an FBI grade format before you return it, as some drives are re-issued as replacement refurbs and all your details will still be recoverable unless the company is prepared to leave returned drives formatting for days on end, which I assume they don't, so beware if the drive still functions, fully clean it before you send it in, or you might just find someone else who is a bit knowledgeable now has your bank account numbers, and believe me it can be done.
I don't think that there are ATA commands that let the computer get at the error sectors that have been replaced by spares. So I don't imagine that any program, including Discwizard, can wipe those sectors.
A determined foe might well be able to get those sectors. This would involve undocumented access: through the disk firmware console, through undocumented ATA commands, or though mounting a different controller on the platters.
Summary: for the truly concerned, RMAing is not a choice.
Some drives are encrypting. If you use them, and don't disclose the key, then RMAing ought to be OK. Assuming you think that there is no "key recovery" backdoor implemented by Seagate.
In the good old days (before SCSI and IDE) more direct access to the raw data was provided. A "low level format" would probably do the job. But even then, some claimed that there would be residual signal left untouched unless you wrote multiple patterns multiple times.
Things are even worse with SSDs: wear-leveling can hide your old sectors in more complicated ways.
