What’s that?

A hidden problem for auctioneers & liquidators?

Recently we picked up a few desktop computers from auction, all listed “hard drive removed” well i’m not so sure about that. At a closer look you can see these devices are fitted with more modern hard drives, difficult to recognize and more awkward to remove.

Empty for a reason.

Looking at the empty space above, in the past this is where you would have expected the main hard drive. However this is for an additional drive and the main drive (smaller these days) is below, slotted into the main board. This is how these are fitted from new, unfortunately in this case it lured this auctioneer into a false sense of security that the devices were safe for sale.

Luckily enough for them that we picked these devices up and can erase the data safely! Avoiding a potential data breach, phew.

The Future - As technology advances this will only become a more common problem, some new drives cannot be removed from the motherboard at all! This shows the importance of contacting the experts.