Well as per instruction by Maxtor, I only need to send back the top cover of the HDD with the information on it, so when I took the top off I discovered the platters were scorched as well.. Check out the pics..

Well let me go into a little detail here to explain things…

The drive in question was my main Windows Drive and contained all my Credit Card, Bank Account and all the other personal information that could pose a security risk. In light of all the latest ‘leaks’ by companies of sensitve customer data I really didn’t want to send this hard drive back and have the data floating around, so I called Maxtor and they sent me a special form to fill out and they told me all I had to do was to send the entire top of teh drive, the meatl plate with all the drive’s information on it.

I have to say this was very nice of them to do this, and they were very understanding about the whole security issue especially in light of everything going on with other companies. They are going to replace the drive for me after I send the cover back to them with the form filled out, they are replacing the drive with essentially the same drive but jsut a different model or family or production. I was really hoping to get an upgrade for all my troubles but they said no, oh well it didn’t hurt to ask I guess

Anyway, here are a bunch of pics I took of the platters after I took the top off, check out what th head did to the platters…. FYI they are  1024×768 in size.