The hard drive is one of the most important pieces of hardware of any business. It can store all manner of sensitive data that helps keep everything moving. It can also be the most vulnerable part should it fall into the wrong hands. If the hard drive is not properly destroyed, no amount of erasing methods will ever truly keep that sensitive data secret and safe. This is why the proper hard drive destruction is a necessity in order to make sure that sensitive data remains out of reach.
Destruction
Simply crushing the hard drive once is not enough to make absolutely certain that the data is truly gone. The best destruction is pulverizing the drive into bits so they can’t be reassembled or repaired. The most important part to destroy is the parts that contain the information. For the Hard Disk Drives (HDD), this is a tiny magnetic disk inside the casing. Once that disk is shattered, pulverized, or melted, that data is irretrievable. Solid State Drives (SSD) use a much different method that is much harder to effectively target. So total obliteration is the most reliable means to annihilating every bit of data. Phiston Technologies’ MediaVise Rackmount is the most effective means of accomplishing this by crushing and grinding with literally tons of pressure.
Magnets
There’s an urban legend that simply running a magnet over a hard drive erases the data on a hard drive. So physical destruction is not needed. Magnets can scramble data, not destroy it permanently. For the SSD, magnets won’t really do much beyond jumbling a little data here and there, which can be corrected by software. The effect is more effective on the HDD. The disk stores data magnetically, but the magnet will simply scramble data and not erase it. Surely a major inconvenience but not the most secure way to send data to oblivion.
If you want to learn more about data destruction and security and some products to help you out, feel free to contact us.
