Hard Drive Shredding Equipment vs Software Solutions

Hard Drive Shredding Equipment Solutions

Suspicious paperwork, printing forbidden files in a company, top secret information in documents – those things always have been easy to destroy. For the paper, just put them in the shredder. But what to do with digitally written information such as CD’s, DVD’s, hard disc, smartphones and memory sticks?

Thanks to the 21st century technology, there are available hard drive shredding equipment solutions. Our machines ensure total security by physically destroying all the magnetic media.

IntelliShred specializes in hard drive shredding equipment solutions. Our equipment can destroy paper, digital hard drives, metal, plastics, practically anything.

Why Hard Drives Need To Be Physically Destroyed

For individuals, companies and government agencies, the possibility of digital data returning from hard drives can be very risky.

Simply deleting or formatting the hard drive doesn’t result in permanent destruction. Information such as banking transactions, pin codes, usernames and passwords, which the old owners believed they had permanently disposed of, can be recovered by those who want to abuse them.

By using a hard drive destruction service that shreds with state-of-the art machinery, it is certain the data on the hard drive cannot be restored ever again.

How Is Restoration Possible?

Namely, each hard drive has a small disc of magnetic material, on which data is physically written. After deletion or formatting, the magnetism remains. Even in some case of significant damage to the hard drive, specialized laboratories will manage to recover the data. Therefore, the process of destroying the hard disk information is not so simple.

Improper destruction can lead to the release of toxic substances, which has a great impact on the natural environment.

Why Use Hard Drive Shredding Equipment

On the other hand, the physical destruction of hard drives through the process of shredding is financially easy. There are also no negative environmental consequences. And finally, the return of the recorded data is absolutely impossible – because simply, the device does not exist anymore.

Hard Drive Destruction Service

For consumers, the standard hard drive wipe might be fine. But for businesses, this isn’t acceptable. A hard drive destruction service done by a professional shredding company is the only solution.

Here’s a case study that illustrates why this is:

The Blancco Technology Group and Kroll Ontrack did a security study that involved 200 used hard drives and solid state drives. They purchased these used hard drives from Amazon, eBay and Gazelle.com.

• 36% of the hard drives had residual (left over) data.
• Only 10% of these 200 hard drives had secure data erasure done. Secure data erasure requires a special software program.
• Deletion attempts were made on 75% of the drives with residual data.

The deletion attempts were largely unsuccessful because common but unreliable methods of data deletion were used.

This potentially could have left much sensitive information available to cyber criminals. A cyber criminal only needs the right software and know-how to access deleted data from a used hard drive.

So if conventional data removal methods aren’t effective, what can you do?

Proper E-waste Solutions

The goal of this post is to show you that there’s a 100% reliable and practical method to properly destroy a hard drive or solid state drive.

This is most important for businesses that handle confidential information from customers, including important information like credit card numbers. For this type of business, a hard drive destruction service is necessary.

Properly Upgrading

The challenge that many businesses face is when they have to upgrade their computer systems. They carelessly throw out old hard drives or computers, and this leaves them easily accessible to computer hackers and thieves.

The safest and most practical course of action for a business is to utilize a hard drive destruction service from a professional shredding company. A professional will come to your office and remove the hard drives from the computers for you.

Don’t Manually Delete Data

As we mentioned earlier, the most commonly used methods of data removal: manually deleting files, hard drive wiping, formatting, are not effective enough, and a business certainly needs to do better than that. Not just for the sake of the company and the customers, but to also comply with business regulations, a hard drive destruction service is necessary.

Again, manually deleting data doesn’t work. It doesn’t delete the data from the hard drive; it only hinders the ability of the device to locate the data. However, the actual data is still on the device and it’s recoverable.

And when it comes to formatting a drive, results vary because each operating system is different. The “quick format” is also unreliable.

How To Properly Dispose Of Old Hard Drives

When you have a fair number of hard drives to dispose of, a shredding company’s hard drive destruction service is the best option.

There are software programs that can do a decent job of erasing data, but this requires some upfront knowledge, and more importantly, a lot of time if you’re dealing with several hard drives. Modern hard drives are getting larger and larger, which makes erasure programs take longer as well.

Physically destroying the hard drives is the safest and most practical option. A proper hard drive destruction service will physically destroy the hard drives so that they are nothing more than tiny little bits and pieces of metal. Afterward, you will receive a certificate of destruction showing proof that the hard drives were properly disposed of.

Contact us today for a shredding quote!