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Buy a used platter of off eBay or from your favorite reseller of refurbished equipment (and keep the receipt). Replace the disk's controller with one of your own (the one it came with was broken). Ummm, I dunno what the previous owner of this drive has done with it!

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In this era of strict liability crimes that won't help you. In fact, it may actually be more risky.

How so? By future laws that outlaw resales? Make do-it-yourself repairs illegal?

Yeah, that would suck.

I think ey probably meant “finding illegal content on the parts of the platter you haven't touched yet”.

Yes, that's what I meant. It's possible that merely having some forms of data in your possession would be considered prima facie evidence of crime -- there is no need for the state to demonstrate that you put it there or that you had any idea it was there to be convicted. That you might take content from somewhere and not look at what it is before carrying it is reckless -- and much like carrying, through airport security, luggage packed by someone unfamiliar to you.

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