Commercial Hard Drive & Digital Media Destruction Service
Commercial hard drive shredding is the only 100% secure method of disposing of digital information or media on old computers, laptops or hard drives. Whether you’re a business owner who needs to clear out some old computers or a student who is getting rid of an old laptop, carelessly disposing of digital media can lead to identity theft, privacy complaints and even legal action against you if your negligence causes someone else harm.
Hard Drive & Digital Media Storage Risks
People tend to think that leaving old computers or laptops sitting around the office isn’t a big deal, especially if the devices have been reformatted or they don’t turn on anymore. But the truth is that it’s very easy to extract data off of an old or broken computer. All a person needs is an IDE / SATA adapter cable and a device to connect to like a cell phone or laptop. Within a matter of minutes, someone could access the entire contents of hard drive or laptop, without needing to power the computer on or login using a password. Leaving old computers or laptops sitting around carries numerous risks:
- Identity Theft – Hard drives often contain personal documents, contact information, credit cards & passwords. All pieces of data that can lead to your identity being stolen.
- Customer Data Leaks – If your computer or laptop was ever synced to a customer database, all of their confidential information could be accessed and stolen.
- Legal Prosecution – Mishandling customer information is a violation of several national privacy policies. If someone in your business is responsible for your customers data being stolen, you could be liable for all ensuing damages.
Having old computers, laptops or hard drives sitting around is essentially the same as leaving paper documents out in the open, except a hard drive can contain hundreds of thousands of documents in a small piece of hardware so it’s crucial to ensure that they are disposed of properly.
The Reformatting Dilemma
Most people think that deleting a file from their computer or reformatting a hard drive permanently erases that data, but this is a very common misconception and a dangerous one at that. Deleting or re-formatting a hard drive typically only erases the directory listing or file allocation table, it doesn’t actually erase the data on the hard drive. The actual hard drive still has the binary 0’s and 1’s written to the disc in the same order, so all someone needs to do in order to recover the data is scan the drive with any one of the numerous data recovery tools. This is where commercial hard drive shredding comes to the rescue. It’s the only 100% secure method of ensuring that the information contained on any hard disk drive (HDD) or digital media is safely disposed of.
The Commercial Hard Drive Shredding Process
There are two options for hard drive shredding: On-Site and Off-Site disposal. With Off-Site HDD shredding, your hard drive is collected and taken away for destruction, creating a risk for your information to be accessed or stolen at some point in the process. With On-Site hard drive destruction, your HDD is destroyed at your location and in your presence, making it the most secure way to dispose of your sensitive digital information.
On-site hard drive shredding is a pretty simple process:
- One of our state of the art mobile shredding trucks arrives at your location.
- Your hard drives, CD’s and other digital media are collected and transported in a secure storage container to the truck.
- The digital media is deposited into the mobile shredding truck.
- The hard drives are securely shredded into tiny bits and pieces using our professional industrial grade rotary shredder.
Think about some of the information you have saved on your devices right now. Sensitive personal data, photographs, emails, financial statements, credit cards, etc. You wouldn’t just leave that information sitting on the kitchen table or in some corner of your office. And you wouldn’t casually throw it away in the garbage without shredding it first. So why should digital information be disposed of any differently with old computers, laptops or hard drives? Commercial hard drive shredding is absolutely the safest method to securely dispose of digital information for good and protect yourself or your business from privacy compliance violations, identity theft, fraud and more. Contact us today to schedule an onsite hard drive shredding visit.
