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Comment by danielodievich | Hacker News Reader

When I had to replace my old Thinkpad's screen, I really liked that the repair shop explicitly said that they didn't need the credentials to my bitlockered drive and in fact offered to take the drive out physically and give it to me. They could boot off USB into a portable Linux install and do whatever and in fact they did.

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Lenovo offers a "keep your drive" warranty option. I thought this upgrade option was needed to keep the drive when something (drive or other) fails, but maybe it is only relevant in case a drive fails and is replaced under warranty?

"keep your drive" option is for people that need to physically shred their drives when they fail. Many financial organizations utilize this policy and document it in their SOC1/SOC2 controls and sometimes in their customer contracts. I was in a cloud provider that did this with over 50k servers.

I’ve seen one of these shredders in action. You can just throw in a handful of full 3.5 inch drives and they just fucking vanish.

Indeed. In our case mobile shredding services would pull up to our datacenters around the world and DC Operations would bring them out on a cart. They scan the serial numbers and then same deal, into the machine, out as tiny specs of metal.

Ever do a whole chicken or pig? You know, for science?

There wouldn’t be much science. It would definitely just vanish.

That's an upgrade option now? It used to be standard, I think even suggested that you remove your drive before sending in your thinkpad. Granted, the last time I had to do that was 2009 or so.

It sometimes is included in the warranty depending on how you buy it

I know when we were RMAing drives as a company there was an $8 option to not return the drive. As it was free shipping to return it we’d just send it back - no sensitive data.

If you really need to be secure you encrypt AND shred. But you have to encrypt before it fails of course.

Harder for mobile repair since they often need access to test things. I'd suggest just factory resetting things before bringing them in. Apple pretty commonly just hands you a new device and sends your old one to be repaired in a cheaper country.

Toshiba once "repaired" our laptop by replacing swapping in a completely different motherboard. They asked for the drive, but I pulled it myself before mailing it in.

The resulting computer could no longer boot Linux, or the windows factory recovery disk that came with the machine (or stock windows).

That (and the shoddy initial design with a half life of 6 months) is the reason I will never buy a Toshiba laptop again.

Ah yes, the factory recovery disks, such a low point in computing. I remember it not working when needed (and if it did, it would wipe the machine), having to use Windows XP/7 CD-Roms from older computers to fix my installation. Microsoft handing out Windows 10 for free and OEM keys being available for 10€ on Ebay ended this weird time when Microsoft had piracy-anxiety even though Windows came preinstalled on new computers, while at the same time the hype around the Apple's MacBooks was at an all-time high.

Good news! They no longer make laptops

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