Gone are the days when businesses only used paper documents for the storage of information belonging to their customers, employees, suppliers, and other stakeholders. Nowadays, almost all organisations store enormous amounts of data in the hard drives of their computers. This is why hard drive destruction is critical to ensuring that these sensitive data don’t fall into the wrong hands. To prevent identity theft and data breaches, hard drives must be destroyed thoroughly. Though there are several methods for destroying hard drives, all of them can’t provide complete protection of stored data.
Whether you store sensitive tax files or patient health information, you want them to remain private. Please remember that it is not enough to simply delete the files because it doesn’t erase the data completely. Proper destruction of the hard drives provides significantly more protection because it makes the data inaccessible.
Discussed below are the five most common methods for the destruction of hard drives.
Degaussing: Hard drives that are no longer in use can be degaussed using devices known as degaussers. These devices scatter the hard drive platter using a strong magnetic force. Hard drives store data using magnetic principles. Therefore, the drive’s magnetic direction gets altered by degaussing so that it can no longer be read. However, this method requires some degree of expertise and supervision. Also, these devices are too expensive for common users.
Wiping: This method erases all data from a hard drive by resetting it to its original state. In this method, all the data gets overwritten with random data patterns. This makes it almost impossible to recover the original data.
Melting: In this method, hard drives are destroyed by dipping them in acid. Though this is considered to be a highly effective hard drive destruction methodology, it is also very dangerous because it makes use of nitric and hydrochloric acids. Therefore, this method is not advisable, in general.
Drilling: The platter in hard drives can be destroyed partially by drilling holes in it. Though most people are not able to retrieve information from drilled hard drives, a significant portion of the hard drive platter still remains intact. Therefore, a considerable amount of data can still be accessed by expert hackers. This is why this method is not recommended for complete protection of data.
Shredding: This is the most effective and popular method for destroying hard drives. The hard drives are run through shredder machines that cut the drive into small pieces so that the data becomes useless. It is worth mentioning here that shredding is the only method that provides complete data security by destroying hard drives entirely. Once the hard drive is shredded into tiny pieces, they are disposed of in an environmentally responsible manner.
Whether you are a work-from-home professional or the manager in a large corporate office, shredders can be the perfect solution to all your data security-related concerns. These devices are available nowadays in many different capacities and types and you can opt for the one that suits you best.
At Mastershred, we have a wide selection of shredders designed to address all your requirements. Please contact our experts today to find out more.