It’s no secret that businesses store a lot of important digital data. While losing data comes with its own set of problems, keeping private information on old equipment after you get rid of it can wreak havoc on a business. It’s not easy to clear a hard drive, but you must take the proper steps to protect yourself and your business’s data. Consider these hard drive destruction methods.
Degaussing
Degaussing is using a magnet to erase information from your hard drive. However, a basic magnet won’t do the job—you’ll need an extremely powerful one. Additionally, you should know that your hard drive won’t be usable after this process, as the magnet will destroy the inner workings of the device. If you don’t need to use the hard drive, this might be a great option to consider.
Caution
Because solid state drives (SSDs) use flash memory rather than storing data magnetically, this method won’t work to delete the information on them.
Shredding or Disintegration
Shredding and disintegration are some of the best methods for hard drive destruction if you don’t plan to resell the device. You can try to destroy the hard drive yourself, but it’s better to hire a professional to conduct controlled destruction. Typically, a disintegration machine cuts the material into smaller pieces so nobody can put them back together; as a result, your information is unusable.
Melting
Melting is yet another method for destroying a hard drive. It entails dipping the hard drive in acid to destroy the device, which is incredibly effective. However, you should know that this is also very dangerous, as nitric and hydrochloric acids are harmful to the human body. You should not try this on your own and instead look for a company that offers this service.
Wiping
Wiping is a great method if you don’t want to destroy the hard drive. That said, you must do this correctly, or else some information may remain on the device. This includes overwriting the information, sometimes more than once, to ensure none of the data is usable. Unless you have experience doing this, you should seek a professional to erase the data.
Deleting or Reformatting
Deleting and reformatting are common choices for removing data, but they’re not effective. Although this method will make your information unavailable to ordinary people, IT professionals and hackers will be able to find and use your data. For that reason, this isn’t a great option to use as a sole solution—you need something else to remove data from your hard drive completely.
Hopefully, knowing a few hard drive destruction methods to consider will help you make the right decision when it comes to data erasure. Whether you’re considering e-waste data destruction in San Jose or reselling your devices, erasing or destroying the data on the hard drive is a vital step.