What is a Hard Drive Destruction Service?
Hard drive destruction services
If you’ve ever wondered, “Is there a company that does hard drive destruction near me?” you may be one of those individuals or organizations that’s looking to safely dispose of IT equipment or infrastructure that you no longer have a use for.
A hard drive destruction service can be a valuable partner in achieving this objective and a trusted advisor when it comes to deciding what to do with old systems, storage media, and hardware.
If you’re in the Ontario area, TechReset fits the bill for a “hard drive destruction service near me.” In this article, we’ll be talking a little about what we have to offer in this regard — and a lot about the principles and practices of hard drive destruction.
Why Data Destruction Matters
These days, computer systems and other digital and electronic commodities are designed with a deliberately short service life to induce users to replace or upgrade their equipment as manufacturers and vendors bring new and improved models and systems to the market. Devices may have an active life of a few years at most.
During the course of each day, individuals and corporate bodies build up an impressive cache of information on paper, digital, and electronic storage media. Photos, documents, videos, passwords, financial details, customer transactions, credit card and social security numbers, and other sensitive data are routinely consigned to a range of storage devices and formats.
To cyber criminals, fraudsters, identity thieves, and saboteurs, any or all of this information could be a potential source of great wealth or influence. So these bad actors are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to harvest valuable data for their various purposes.
In the many industries where data privacy and security laws apply, unsanctioned information disclosures and malpractice can lead to hefty fines, damage to consumer trust and brand reputations, or even jail time. So to remain compliant with all the relevant rules and regulations and to protect your enterprise from serious damage, it’s essential to sanitize all information storage media before replacing or getting rid of them by effectively destroying any data that they still contain.
The question then arises: What do you do with the old systems, storage media, and hardware?
Make an Informed Decision
What is Hard Drive Destruction Service?
A hard drive destruction service is a commercial organization that engages with clients to securely destroy old hard drive data and equipment on a contract basis.
If you initiate a web search for “hard drive destruction service near me,” the results should throw up several alternatives within your local area. But how do you know to pick the right one?
In today’s market, a computer hard drive destruction service is very cost-effective, with prices trending lower for physical destruction as the volume of hard drives to be destructed increases.
Note that degaussing or magnetic data erasure from hard drives is an expensive and specialized process, for which volume discounts don’t generally apply. If you’re a small corporate or an individual looking for a personal hard drive destruction service, this technology may not be your most economical option.
How Hard Drive Destruction Service Works
The typical safe procedure for hard drive destruction follows this sequence:
- Destroy the data that’s resident on the hard drive.
- Isolate the hard drive from its surrounding hardware.
- Physically destroy the hard drive.
- Safely dispose of the waste products.
Wiping out or destroying the information that’s been stored on a drive is the work of HDD shredder or hard drive data destruction software. Some devices and operating systems offer specialist commands or tools for data eradication, such as Secure Delete or Secure Erase.
As we’ve observed, hard drive data destruction is paramount for information security, as today’s data recovery tools and data forensics techniques are capable of reconstructing information from intact storage media — in many instances, even after multiple passes with data wiping software.
So for truly secure disposal of hard drive assets, shredding or pulverizing the hardware in a hard drive destruction machine is the safest option. A comprehensive hard drive destruction service should provide physical destruction as a part of its offering.
For data security, legal, and regulatory compliance purposes, the service should provide Chain of Custody documentation (paper, photographs, and video) charting the course that each item of your hardware takes while under their supervision. They should also supply a certificate of destruction for each item they destroy, listing its serial number and other identifying details.
With this certificate of destruction, hard drive disposal under the management of your hard drive destruction service will provide the documentation you require for compliance audits, your own organization’s data destruction policy, and any other legal obligations you may have.
The hard drive destruction service you choose should offer a range of data and physical destruction options at a functional level, including on- or off-site services, at an affordable price. Before settling on a particular company, be sure to perform due diligence to discover what their previous clients made of the service. Ask the company for referrals as well — they should be willing to provide them if they’re reputable and have a good track record.
Companies with a AAA certification from the National Association of Information Destruction (NAID) will have proved to that organization that they can observe strict adherence to NAID’s code of conduct.
See how much your IT equipment is worth
Hard Drive Destruction and Recycling Solution
Many of the materials used in making IT equipment and electronic goods can be recovered and reused. These include plastics, glass, metal, and aluminum. Hard drive recycling is a sustainable and ecologically friendly alternative to simply throwing old equipment away or disposing of unused hardware through potentially polluting techniques.
As part of your corporate data governance, you can draft a formal policy on IT equipment disposal and recycling, in line with all relevant state, local, and federal laws, industry-specific mandates or regulatory compliance regimes, and your organization’s own stance on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
However, as with data wiping and hard drive destruction, it’s necessary to take precautions. To preserve your own information security and observe all the requirements of the data privacy and governance rules that apply to your industry:
- Remove hard drive before recycling computer equipment.
- Erase hard drive before recycling.
- Destroy data on hard drive before recycling.
- Engage with data destruction services or a dedicated hard drive destruction service to implement the best ways to dispose of hard drives and other IT equipment securely.
If you’re unsure how to “remove hard drive from the computer before recycling” or any of the other prescribed workflow items, you can entrust your hard drive recycling to a professional service.
Many non-profit organizations and local communities offer options to help in the recycling of old electronics and IT equipment. The Environmental Protection Agency website provides an engine that lets you search by product or company for recycling programs run by electronics manufacturers and IT equipment retailers, such as Western Digital hard drive recycling.
Within your own organization, you can boost the recycling effort by setting aside prescribed drop-off points for various classes of hardware. For example, you might allocate a recycle bin for external hard drive units that are still fairly serviceable, a separate Recycle Bin: corrupted external hard drive, and similar classifications for other devices.
Hard Drive Destruction Process
The hard drive destruction process typically involves combining software-based or magnetic methods to destroy data on hard drive and electronic storage media, followed by techniques that physically destroy a hard drive or storage device.
Some of the methods available include:
An alternative to software wiping, this process applies a very strong magnetic force to storage media that rely on electromagnetic technologies to disrupt their existing magnetic fields and effectively erase their resident data. It’s one of the most efficient ways to remove data from hard drive and is often used in scenarios where you wish to erase a hard drive before recycling or as a prelude to physical destruction.
Hard drive shredding machines typically use a combination of slicing and punching techniques to break a storage device down into tiny pieces that are virtually impossible for anyone to put back together: the smaller the resulting shards, the less chance of their being able to yield usable data. Customers are often given a choice of shred sizes by companies offering the service. Traditional hard drives store information on magnetic metal disks called platters. Shredding mechanisms that destroy hard drive platter material are the best way to ensure that the data on the drive is unrecoverable.
A hard drive crusher is a special machine that can destroy HDD and other storage media through the application of extreme physical pressure. Typically, the mechanism will repeatedly punch holes in the storage medium housing to degrade the platter and internal electronics, then use a hydraulic press to deform the hardware to an unusable state.
Hard drive disintegrator machines have a conveyor belt system and cutting knife, which slices hard drives and storage media into small particles that cannot be put back together. This technique is often employed by organizations that have to destroy storage media holding highly classified information.
Destroying a hard drive by melting typically involves immersing the hardware in a powerful acid bath to destroy the magnetic platters and drive housing. Concentrated hydrochloric and nitric acids are most commonly used, is a highly effective but also very hazardous process that requires specialist handling of the materials and specialized waste disposal techniques.
Your TechReset Option for Hard Drive Destruction
If you live in Ontario or its environs, TechReset fits your requirement for a “hard drive destruction service near me.”
TechReset specializes in the secure and sustainable disposal of electronic waste (e-waste) and secure erasure or eradication of all confidential data through hard drive shredding or certified data cleansing. We use industry best practices to repurpose older or unwanted IT assets in an environmentally friendly manner, providing our clients with peace of mind — and often money back in your pocket.
We provide our clients with a unique Certificate of Data Cleanse or Destruction on each individual drive that guarantees all sensitive information has been securely eliminated from your devices, as well as a Certificate of Landfill Diversion that attests that your equipment has successfully avoided disposal via landfill. TechReset also offers responsible, hard drive shredding and disposal, a service that ensures complete data destruction, accompanied by a certification guarantee.
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