I have a seagate hard disk which is under warranty for next 4 years. I always had a problem reading this hard disk as I had to tilt the usb cable for it to make proper contact with the pins. However, for last 2 to 3 months, it has stopped working altogether.
fdisk -l does not yield any device info apart from the partitions on the internal hard disk. However, the hard disk does light up when I successfully connect it (that is, by tilting the USB cable)
My problem is that I can not simply give my hard disk to the seagate customer support for replacement as there are some personal pictures and scanned images of almost all identity cards possible and educational certificates.
Is there a way to somehow erase the data on this hard disk without opening it (as that would void the warranty)? Magnetic degaussing comes to mind, however, as this guy has mentioned here, it requires industry grade magnets to do it. I know I should have encrypted my data and I learned it the hard way, but is there a way out so that I can erase the data and make use of the warranty as well?