What's your preferred method for testing a hard drive?

I guess all I can say is do what you are comfortable with. Consult your local laws... you may be responsible for
the data once the machine comes into your shop. If it's lost due to something you attempted, and it causes a
major loss for the customer, you could be on the hook. Again, losing those photos from last years beach trip is
one thing, losing data that causes a business to shut it's doors is another.
 
brandonkick said:
If it's lost due to something you attempted, and it causes a
major loss for the customer, you could be on the hook
Click to expand...
Surely anything that's done in the workshop has risk of data loss. We're only discussing relative risks. There is no legal issue here (at least for a break/fix business) as the customer already has a computer fault and if they have no backup they've already risked their data before the technician is involved. Customers get this.

I appreciate that the linux/imaging approach has merit, I'm merely looking at this from a pragmatic point of view for my clientele (home and small business) in a country town that would baulk at the extra costs associated with taking the perfect approach to ensure success in the small minority of cases.
 
Yep, this was a big issue with my customer's when I first started my business out here in east london, many know nothing about computers or hard drives, only the fact the turning it off and on sometimes works. Whenever I get a customer describing symptoms of no boot disk found or slow bootup, or blue screen or even just stuck, I always get the hard drive out in front of them, (previously I never did this and I got the blame a lot for their failed drive). I would plug it in externally into my desktop that I use for testing and use a program called HD Tune which is free. It allows you to do a quick sector scan and a separate speed test. Speed test is done over a small period of time and can be stopped at anytime and shows a graph, this gives me an indication that this drive is failing if the graph is all over the place or gradual slowing down. Then I will do a quick sector scan. All this in front of customer, in most cases with the symptoms described, it is a bad or failed drive and will in some cases not even initialize to access it, I can then show them straight away that you drive has failed and there's nothing I can do, they get upset but at least you've saved your bacon by pointing the blame away from you. In some cases you can still access the drive even tho its clicking etc and give them the option you can get as much data out as poss before complete failure.
 
Ok... well like I said. It may be very well worth your while to just ask for legal consultation in your area. It probably won't cost you a lot, and if you have a lawyer friend it might not cost you anything (maybe a few beers). Getting some information can never hurt.

You could be 100% right, that in your area your not on the hook for anything. In other jurisdictions, you could be held liable for the data depending on the actions you took. Like I said, if it causes a company to shut it's doors... I wouldn't be shocked if they didn't seek legal council to see if they have a case or not. If there is any chance that the data loss was caused by your recovery attempt, you could wind up in court.


Again, I understand the premise of your post. You do a lot of break / fix for residential and most of the time it's picutres, home work and other stuff that in most cases isn't the end of the world to lose. Just consider how important the data is before you decide to start working on a drive at all, and especially working on one without creating an image and working from that.
 
brandonkick said:
Ok... well like I said. It may be very well worth your while to just ask for legal consultation in your area. It probably won't cost you a lot, and if you have a lawyer friend it might not cost you anything (maybe a few beers). Getting some information can never hurt.

You could be 100% right, that in your area your not on the hook for anything. In other jurisdictions, you could be held liable for the data depending on the actions you took. Like I said, if it causes a company to shut it's doors... I wouldn't be shocked if they didn't seek legal council to see if they have a case or not. If there is any chance that the data loss was caused by your recovery attempt, you could wind up in court.


Again, I understand the premise of your post. You do a lot of break / fix for residential and most of the time it's picutres, home work and other stuff that in most cases isn't the end of the world to lose. Just consider how important the data is before you decide to start working on a drive at all, and especially working on one without creating an image and working from that.
Click to expand...

We have a data loss liability waiver in our T&C that every customer signs. That's good enough in our jurisdiction, but remember anybody can sue for pretty much any reason and it will still cost money to fight it. After consultation with our attorney, we added language to our check in sheet that essentially asks customers whether or not they'd like us to make a backup (for a fee) prior to any work or diagnostics, as an extra CYA precaution. Rarely does anyone take us up on it, but it gives us proof that we specifically offered to make a backup and they declined. Even so, if I suspect a failing drive, I usually stop and either remove the drive before continuing, or contact the customer to recommend we backup immediately.

As far as testing drives, we like to use GSmartControl in PartedMagic. It does a pretty good job, but if my gut feeling doesn't agree with it's results, I go with my gut and replace the drive anyway. I may look into HDDTune for systems where symptoms point to HDD failure, but all the SMART stats still look good.
 
Just wanted to thank everyone who has participated in this discussion as it includes answers to many questions I have had on how to handle potentially damaged hard drives.. Very much appreciate all of you sharing your wisdom and experience with others. If any of you ever find yourselves on the island of Oahu, I will be happy to buy you a beverage with a little paper umbrella in it (or whatever your beverage of choice is).

Mahalo!

Harry Z.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

britechguy
Today's BSOD, Code BAD_SYSTEM_CONFIG_INFO - What's actually going on here?
Replies
13
Views
1K
fincoder
fincoder
thecomputerguy
Client basically told me he's dying and I really didn't know how to respond. How would you?
Replies
9
Views
650
Mike McCall
Mike McCall
britechguy
The Domain and Defederation (from GoDaddy) Dilemma
2
Replies
21
Views
2K
Sky-Knight
Sky-Knight
HCHTech
My month for hard drive failures plus head's up about Dell's outlet
Replies
13
Views
2K
HCHTech
HCHTech
britechguy
For those who'd like to have the Traditional Spelling and Grammar Checking Dialog back in Word 365 . . .
Replies
0
Views
773
britechguy
britechguy
Back
Top