Technology has become an integral part of the daily operations of most businesses and individual’s lives. Successfully growing organisations typically depend on leveraging technology for increasing their performance and ultimately the bottom line.
Leveraging tech, is dependent on all kinds of technological components, especially storage devices such as hard drives.
The hard disk drive is one of the most common storage devices; and today SSD hard drives have become the norm due to continuous advancements in memory storage hardware. Hard drives are crucial for storing large amounts of information in a robust and long lasting format.
Because, some or all of the information may be confidential these digital storage devices must be disposed of in the correct manner when they get to their scheduled end-of-life or become unusable (failing etc.) prior to that time.
Hard drive disposal should be carried out appropriately, under the guidelines set out by the relevant authority, be that commercial or government authority. You should consider many factors with respect to the destruction of computer hardware including internal drives and external hard drives. The process should be safe and done with precision to avoid data recovery from any storage device including hard drives.
Various hard drive data recovery services use methods that can retrieve confidential information if the storage device is not disposed of properly. Thus, paying close attention to and implementing the correct hard drive disposal process is essential.
The manual process of destroying hard drives may include drilling holes or smashing their components with a heavy object such as a hammer. These methods can be dangerous, and should not be performed without proper execution with the correct tools and typically under supervision from a trained disposals expert (to make sure the job is carried out correctly).
Also, not properly disposing of the elements disassembled in the process (remnants) can put harmful contaminants like lead and mercury amongst other harmful elements into the surrounding environment.
Manually destroying hard drives can also be very strenuous work. Even when one considers the component ‘destroyed’, there could still be a chance of data retrieval; if not carried out in the correct manner.
Deleting your files from the drives or erasing the data without the correct and highly specialised programs and equipment can be a very unfruitful and costly exercise. Data retrieval experts are very good at retrieving “deleted/erased data”, meaning your data remains vulnerable to misuse… unless this process is carried out correctly!
Even if you successfully manage to destroy your storage devices manually, you should not carelessly dispose of their remains. Computers and their storage components contain toxic substances that can harm the environment. If e-waste is sent to landfill, the heavy metals can leak. The heavy metals contained in such componentry are capable of hampering brain development in children amongst other terrible consequences.
Also, recycling the waste materials of the devices can prevent them causing damage to the surrounding environment. Therefore, recycling the components is an essential process in the hard drive disposal process.
People usually destroy their hard drives when upgrading their hardware with new technology. All your information needs to be current before upgrading, to make sure you have the latest information to transfer from the old hard drives to the new ones. If you don’t backup on a regular basis and something breaks – you won’t have the latest information to be able to transfer to a new device or upgrade the storage devices.
At a bare minimum a data recovery expert will need all the systems information and files on the “dead device” to be able to work with… and if there is no current backup – that makes their job much more difficult – meaning additional cost for you, or complete failure for them (which is worse than just costing more).
You need to identify the things you want to keep or not and then back them up on a regular basis – before anything ‘bad’ happens.
After backing up you can move your files with confidence, and delete the ones in your old drive and definitely look into a data destruction expert’s services (like SHDD) if you have any confidential information that needs to be destroyed according to Government regulations.
Hiring a professional hard drive disposal service is essential as data destruction and security involve complicated processes. Hard drive disposal services ensure the process is carried out without compromising your safety or the Government enforceable law around disposal of sensitive information. These types of reputable companies also should provide e-waste recycling services so that no harm is done to the environment.
There are also a lot of data recovery software programs and equipment. These can recover your data even if there is physical damage to your storage devices like hard drives. Data can be retrieved from drives that have undergone drive failure, data which has been deleted or lost.
Removing the data with software and then destroying the hardware (like drives) with shredding or milling will ensure protection of a firm’s information on such devices. NAID certified companies ensure that they follow the strictest procedures for handling information security and will do the job safely and securely – and supply a certificate of destruction, to give you a paper trail for your records.
Therefore, to protect your information and security, you should hire a certified destruction specialist like Secure Hard Drive Destruction for your disposal service needs. We have a higher success rating with good reason – we have crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s to do the work properly and have many runs on the board with Government agencies and large corporates across Australia (like the Big 4 banks and large international companies doing business in Australia).
Secure Hard Drive Destruction is a NAID AAA PSPF certified hard drive disposal services expert that can keep your information safe as it is destroyed. We ensure that information and devices are destroyed following the information security handling requirements of the PSPF, ISM and DSPF (Defence specific requirements) that are in place to prevent data breaches throughout the process of end-of-life disposals and also transfer of information (handling ICT media and assets).
We offer all services between pickup and recycling for the complete erasure and destruction of information from ICT media and assets. Our services ensure destruction of assets like hard drives down to 2 mm particles. As previously mentioned in this article, we provide services to the Australian Department of Defence (DoD) and other Australian government agencies.
Please get in touch to discuss your next end-of-life disposal or destruction project with us and also to avail your business of our hard drive destruction services.
You can also visit the rest of our website for more information on our services.