Hard Drive & Data Destruction [What You Need to Know]
Does your company have old desktop computers, laptops or other hard drives just sitting around? It’s pretty common among many businesses.
It may seem harmless to keep these electronics in storage, but it’s better to have them professionally destroyed to eliminate potential huge risks.
Why Old Electronics & Hard Drives Should Be Professionally Destroyed
Your company’s data is valuable, and it’s an asset that can be stolen very easily in the technological age we’re living in. Important data can be duplicated, recovered or restored whether you’re using it or not, so leaving items in storage is dangerous.
For many years, IT departments would wipe or degauss disk drives, tapes and other used magnetic media and data storage devices in a process called sanitization.
The problem? These methods might not be secure enough with the fast rate of technological advancement. For this reason, it’s becoming widely accepted to physically destroy the storage devices themselves instead of simply wiping them.
5 Devices That Require Destruction Services
Media storage devices and their data should be destroyed according to NAID standards and practices. They also need to be destroyed using specific methods based on their material components.
Here are five forms of media storage that should be destroyed (and how our company destroys them):
- Disk Drives: Mobile shredding or off-site shredding vault.
- Solid-State Drives: Mobile shredding, off-site shredding vaults or off-site vault pulverization.
- IT Media (Data Tapes): Mobile shredding or off-site shredding vault.
- Microfilm: Can only be destroyed with vault pulverization.
- Flash Media: Can only be destroyed with vault pulverization.
Need Data & Hard Drive Destruction Services? Get Your Free Quote!
Shred Right is your locally-owned leader for secure IT asset destruction. We were the first shredding company in Minnesota to take on large-scale hard drive destruction projects and are the only one with a dedicated IT destruction team that specializes in hard drive and magnetic media destruction.
Our mobile on-site shredder and off-site Shredding Vault™ are AAA NAID-Certified and endorsed for hard drive and non-paper media destruction. We can conduct a complete project inventory by documenting all volser numbers (for data tapes) or serial numbers (for hard drives) being destroyed and linking them directly to your Certificate of Destruction.