HELP WITH HARD DRIVE DATA DESTRUCTION.

Once upon a time in the 1980’s, a one Gigabyte hard drive would have set you back roughly $40,000. If you think that’s crazy, back then to build a two Terabyte data storage system would have been the cost equivalent of buying an entire Superyacht. When I say “Superyacht” I mean the type of yacht that comes with its own landing pad and a super cool, Bond Villain esk Helicopter!

“The only way a 2TB hard drive will cost you anywhere over $1million today, is if you fail to dispose of it legally!”

Keeping on the subject of big money, in recent news, we witnessed a certain “financial services company” being fined for failing to wipe their hard drives correctly before disposal. When I say being fined, the actual price on their “naughty ticket” was a whopping, wallet busting, knee wobbling $35m! This shocking news lends itself to ask the question: “how do you permanently wipe digital data”?

“How Hard Is Your Drive?”

Super quick history lesson, early computers like the IBM701 were built for defence, and mainly used to help detect Soviet bombers. In fact, the Cold War with Russia (then head of the Soviet Union) was such a big deal that both sides developed weapons just to take out each other’s computers!

Forged from the cold steal of war, Hard Drives have been built to survive even a EMP discharge from a nuclear blast. In fact, Solid State Drives are almost (I did say almost) impervious to electromagnetic wiping. With that in mind, if you are thinking about hard drive degaussing with an EMP then perhaps think again. The EMP would have to be so powerful that every time you flip the on switch all the nearby lightbulbs explode.

I’m sure EMP degaussing works in its own special way but what if you really want to wipe out those ones-and-zeros? Well, you could always try shredding your old hard drives...

“Are you sensing a BIG-BUT”?

Shredding is great… BUT it comes with its own set of failings. Hard drive shredding machines must shred a drive down into tiny bits in order to ensure those bits don’t become bites again. A lot of hard drive shredders don’t always make the grade. Especially when their gears get worn down.

So that’s degaussing and shredding covered, now we are just left with good old fashion hard drive wiping? I say old fashioned but that’s about to change… hold on, I’m jumping ahead. I’m sure you already know that deleting and formatting files doesn’t permanently remove them. All that really happens when you hit that DEL key is the path to the file gets deleted, making it harder to recover. If you are lucky, over time the actual file will be overwritten with new data, but if it’s not overwritten, it could be time to think about a career change.

Why take the risk, performing a military grade data wipe can be one of the most effective methods of overwriting a file. In fact, the process of overwriting an entire hard drive pretty much ensures permanent erasure, with zero chance of data ever being recovered again.

Hold on, there’s still a problem… Hard disk drives are mechanical, which means the data wiping process of overwriting can be tediously slow. If you have a data center full of drives you could be wiping for weeks. That said, there is a tide of change within the world of hard drive wiping. It’s been caused by a change in the drive technology itself. Let me explain it like this; a 1TB hard disk wipe can take around 2 hours but the equivalent SSD wipe, can take less than 6 minutes!

There is no question that server SSD is a bit pricier than HDD but it definitely performs better in many ways. Plus, SSD holds a larger storage capacity, uses less power consumption, and has a longer lifespan, which as you can imagine, is much better for the environment. With a future that uses SSD storage arrays, I think digital data destruction is going to be a process that starts with a wipe, followed up with a shred, and concluded with a THANK YOU to the IT managers for saving both their company, and our environment!

In conclusion, if you still want to buy that superyacht, give our ITAD team a buzz, or send an email. Our ITAD company buys used IT hardware like decommissioned servers, data storage arrays, networking hardware and most other data center and business IT hardware. Call 877-592-6009 or Email Support@ITAD-Company.com.