Any risk to company if replace work desktop HDD with SSD?

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#1889550 25-Oct-2017 20:56

That covers it : ). Only thought of one more. IT has to arrange disposal of your old HDD. If it's not a repair or disposal of machine that might be a paperwork headache and additional cost.

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#1889831 26-Oct-2017 14:09

Batman:

Got an SSD lying around the place. Asked the IT department if I can swap the HDD of my desktop with my SSD. They said no can't be done.

Is there any risk to the company in doing so?

they said YOU cant do it , thats not the same as it cant be done (It can be done)
Often, staff make requests of IT without any sort of authorization. If you want it done, management can request IT to do it
Or ask management if you can do it (I would expect no)

IT said no because
- they would have to sort out any mess, issues
- IT dont know if you have the skills to even attempt this . They wouldnt want staffers doing their own hardware upgrades.
- you dont have authorisation to request this : (otherwise answer would be yes)
- IT may be under orders to only do work requested/authorised by management . This is common, staff ask for all sorts of things from IT .
- IT dont know the history of that used SSD
- some laptops have up to 6 , non standard partions . Pc's could have non standard partitions(less likely) , they can cause issues when cloning HD's
the list goes on.

Tinkerisk

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#1890870 26-Oct-2017 15:49

More and more companies don't buy their h/w. They lease it for a certain time and have to give it back after useage. As the non-owners of the h/w, they simply aren't allowed to modify it.

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#1890877 26-Oct-2017 16:18

You could offer to install your personal 2nd hand turbo and ECU in one of the company cars.

Starscream122

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#1890885 26-Oct-2017 16:43

tehgerbil:

A few reasons:

1 - Every man and their dog now complaining that they want an SSD.

2 - You might be the type of guy who complains about everything, and they're being d1cks to you.

3 - Driver issues to do with the specific build they're running. (E.G. We had about 5 hours worth of work getting our SSD's to work with our Win 7 32bit builds)

4 - Time/budget it'll take to transfer your stuff/perform the work as a once-off activity, which probably wouldn't be covered under BAU and would have be funded from a discretionary budget (which they clearly don't want to do).

5 - They don't want to introduce an unknown component into their hardware fleet, just another thing to worry about warranty.

6 - They don't know how old the SSD is, or how many write cycles is has left, and would rather not task a risk on an older component.

I'm sure I could think of more.. But there are plenty of reasons for them to not want to do it.

Edit: thought of a few more..

7 - Potential down-time for you while they're swapping out your machine.

8 - The device is still owned by you personally and it's not worth the legal departments time or energy 'buying' it from you for legality sake.

9 - Even wiped it still used to contain your private data and they don't want anything personal on their network that may able to be restored.

10 - Some viruses can reside on MBR and survive formats, so potentially bringing in a foreign virus on your machine.

I work for a governmental agency, and we have to be so stupidly careful with stuff like this.

To be honest I'd reject your request as well. Or at least have to make your bosses very well aware of all of the points above.

I do not believe point 10.

graemeh

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#1890889 26-Oct-2017 16:58

Tinkerisk:

More and more companies don't buy their h/w. They lease it for a certain time and have to give it back after useage. As the non-owners of the h/w, they simply aren't allowed to modify it.

If they do modify it the company leasing it to them is likely to charge for a new hard disk and for an engineer to install it. Some of these leases even include keyboards and mice and if you don't return the correct brand of accessory they charge for a new one (at a very expensive price).

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#1890893 26-Oct-2017 17:21

Starscream122:

tehgerbil:

10 - Some viruses can reside on MBR and survive formats, so potentially bringing in a foreign virus on your machine.

I work for a governmental agency, and we have to be so stupidly careful with stuff like this.

To be honest I'd reject your request as well. Or at least have to make your bosses very well aware of all of the points above.

I do not believe point 10.

In general, you should. https://www.wired.com/2015/02/nsa-firmware-hacking/

Starscream122

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#1890895 26-Oct-2017 17:36

Tinkerisk:

Starscream122:

tehgerbil:

10 - Some viruses can reside on MBR and survive formats, so potentially bringing in a foreign virus on your machine.

I work for a governmental agency, and we have to be so stupidly careful with stuff like this.

To be honest I'd reject your request as well. Or at least have to make your bosses very well aware of all of the points above.

I do not believe point 10.

In general, you should. https://www.wired.com/2015/02/nsa-firmware-hacking/

Wait so now our Bios can get a virus?

So Ransomware could get to a new level... we may end up needing to reflash our bios/replace motherboards

MadEngineer

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#1890896 26-Oct-2017 17:40

... or just stick with gigabyte motherboards w/dual bios :p

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Starscream122

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#1890899 26-Oct-2017 17:43

MadEngineer:

... or just stick with gigabyte motherboards w/dual bios :p

I have a GA 270X Gaming 5, it has dual bios :)

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#1890910 26-Oct-2017 18:16

Starscream122:

tehgerbil:

A few reasons:

1 - Every man and their dog now complaining that they want an SSD.

2 - You might be the type of guy who complains about everything, and they're being d1cks to you.

3 - Driver issues to do with the specific build they're running. (E.G. We had about 5 hours worth of work getting our SSD's to work with our Win 7 32bit builds)

4 - Time/budget it'll take to transfer your stuff/perform the work as a once-off activity, which probably wouldn't be covered under BAU and would have be funded from a discretionary budget (which they clearly don't want to do).

5 - They don't want to introduce an unknown component into their hardware fleet, just another thing to worry about warranty.

6 - They don't know how old the SSD is, or how many write cycles is has left, and would rather not task a risk on an older component.

I'm sure I could think of more.. But there are plenty of reasons for them to not want to do it.

Edit: thought of a few more..

7 - Potential down-time for you while they're swapping out your machine.

8 - The device is still owned by you personally and it's not worth the legal departments time or energy 'buying' it from you for legality sake.

9 - Even wiped it still used to contain your private data and they don't want anything personal on their network that may able to be restored.

10 - Some viruses can reside on MBR and survive formats, so potentially bringing in a foreign virus on your machine.

I work for a governmental agency, and we have to be so stupidly careful with stuff like this.

To be honest I'd reject your request as well. Or at least have to make your bosses very well aware of all of the points above.

I do not believe point 10.

Ouch, I've just done a search on the last 8 years of emails, this is the 5th ticket logged ... I guess IT departments put d1ck labels after the 2nd ticket?

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Tinkerisk

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#1890911 26-Oct-2017 18:17

Starscream122:

Tinkerisk:

In general, you should. https://www.wired.com/2015/02/nsa-firmware-hacking/

Wait so now our Bios can get a virus?

So Ransomware could get to a new level... we may end up needing to reflash our bios/replace motherboards

Your HDD's (or SSD's) BIOS can - yepp.

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#1890912 26-Oct-2017 18:19

gbwelly:

You could offer to install your personal 2nd hand turbo and ECU in one of the company cars.

Umm why would you do that to a Toyota Corolla that has no capacity for any more power?

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#1890928 26-Oct-2017 18:46

If I worked in your IT department I would likewise decline. For all the reasons others have mentioned plus the simple fact there is a correlation between machines others don't play around with and much improved reliability.

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Lias

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#1890955 26-Oct-2017 19:37

Starscream122:

Wait so now our Bios can get a virus?

So Ransomware could get to a new level... we may end up needing to reflash our bios/replace motherboards

Nothing new really.. way back in 1999 there was a virus called Chernobyl that corrupted bios's thus bricking motherboards.

Back in the late 2000's security researchers trying to inject a bios level rootkit for research purposes found a commercial one already in place

More recently we've had a variety of EFI/UEFI malware, both Commercial and nation-state, thunderbolt malware, USB malware,

Many of the more complex attacks are only in the realm of nation state's, but between the 5 Eyes nations, Israel, Russia, Iran, NK, etc there are plenty of nation states actively doing nasty things. It wasn't so long ago that our own GCSB was advertising for a position that basically screamed "firmware malware author" in the last year or two.

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