Regardless of the size of your business, there will come a time when sensitive data on computer hard drives will need destroying.
Taking on the task destroying a hard drive is an often dangerous as well as time-consuming task. If you’re needing to destroy a hard drive, chances are you are wanting to ensure that the data on the drive is 100% unrecoverable.
Some of the suggested methods are often dangerous and time-consuming. Most of these methods are not suitable for the work environment. The last thing you want is for an employee to take on the task of hard drive destruction on their own using unsafe methods.
Hard Drive Destruction Services
One of the most common methods is to take your hard drives to a HDD destruction company, computer repair shop, or an electronics recycling center. The problem with these services is that although they may state that they will destroy the drives, you will really have no proof if they’ve followed through with it properly.
Data-Wiping Programs
You can use data-wiping software programs to erase a hard drives. However, if you are wanting 100% certainty that all data is unrecoverable, your best bet is to render the drive’s platters from spinning.
Dangerous Methods of Hard Drive Destruction
Melting a hard drive by burning it seems like it would be an effective method. However, there is the danger of breathing in toxic chemicals, not to mention releasing these chemicals into the environment. The same goes for choosing to microwave the drive.
Chemically burning the drives through the use of acid can release toxic fumes. Worst of all, you run the risk of getting a chemical burn. Melting hard drives is not eco-friendly and it would take quite some time to actually melt the drive’s platters.
Finally, there are brute force methods of destruction such as nailing or drilling holes through the drive’s platters. All of these methods pose the risk of injury, are bad for the environment, and are ultimately some of the worst ways to destroy a hard drive.
A Safer Way to Destroy Hard Drives in the Workplace
Phiston has created one of the first and only Rack-mountable HDD Destroyers that is safe for the workplace, data center, or server room. The MediaVise® Rackmount HDD Destroyer uses a 20 ton crusher and patented corrugated crushing plates to aggressively crush and grind together all the magnetic storage platter surfaces and sensitive read heads in HDDs, damaging every square inch of the media (not just a few holes, or parts of platters folded), rendering all data storage surfaces destroyed.
At-the-source, in-house destruction saves time and also money over outsourcing. The hard drives never leave the secure data center intact. This gives you and your employees the peace of mind that sensitive company data stored on hard disk drives is no longer recoverable.
Contact us today with questions, comments, or feedback about hard disk drive destruction.
