03-09-2009, 11:37 PM
BL was referring to using powerful magnets to damage the HD.
And no, you can't really know the firmware version with out mounting.
If the drive won't boot on a PC, you *might* be able to carefully remove it from the enclosure and see if it will boot if connected as an internal drive, or in a different enclosure.
These days, I'd almost consider an HD warranty worthless if you keep anything of value on the drive. Since you can't know when a drive will fail, you will almost never have a chance to back up and wipe the HD before it dies.
If your HD has personal financial information or *special* pics, you might want to consider it disposable and smash the HD with a BFH, Kate.
I don't know if a microwave would damage the platters or just the circuit board.
And no, you can't really know the firmware version with out mounting.
If the drive won't boot on a PC, you *might* be able to carefully remove it from the enclosure and see if it will boot if connected as an internal drive, or in a different enclosure.
These days, I'd almost consider an HD warranty worthless if you keep anything of value on the drive. Since you can't know when a drive will fail, you will almost never have a chance to back up and wipe the HD before it dies.
If your HD has personal financial information or *special* pics, you might want to consider it disposable and smash the HD with a BFH, Kate.
I don't know if a microwave would damage the platters or just the circuit board.