In recent times an increasing number of companies and corporations have reported that they have experienced a serious data breach, often exposing the personal data of hundreds of thousands of customers, suppliers, and clients. One of the ways to reduce the risk of this happening is to make sure that old and obsolete electronic devices are efficiently destroyed. While this can be done by shipping the equipment out to a recycling facility, many companies prefer to use an on-site hard drive shredding service. This has the obvious advantage that the company personnel can watch the process and verify that the destruction of the media is complete.

Many people are under the impression that deleting data from a hard drive and then reformatting it will be sufficient protection against it being misused but the fact is that with modern forensic recovery techniques a disk that has been reformatted and even overwritten numerous times can still be reconstituted. The only way to be certain that the data is irrecoverable is to physically destroy the storage media on which it is held.

Whether you send the media to a recycling facility for disposal with their hard drive shredding machines or have a mobile team visit your site with a shredding truck is largely a matter of either personal choice or corporate policy.

What Is Hard Drive Shredding

Hard drive shredding is exactly what it sounds like: the drive is fed into a powerful shredding machine that breaks it down into small pieces that are impossible to restore. This process guarantees that any sensitive data that were previously stored on the media are completely eradicated.

At Potomac eCycle, as part of our mobile recycling service, we inventory the equipment to be destroyed, record all model types and serial numbers, document the chain of custody, and provide a Certificate of Destruction. This constitutes a complete audit trail to confirm that the disposal was handled professionally and that all data were destroyed. It also allows the reconciliation of the corporate asset inventory records.

On-Site Shredding at Data Centers and Large Offices

Small to medium size businesses may be satisfied with an off-site disposal of old IT equipment using a recycling center, and the process and procedures are the same as those described for on site hard drive shredding, including the provision of audit records, but many large organizations, or those that are particularly security-conscious, prefer to have their end-of-life equipment destroyed on their premises.

With our hard drive shredders we can handle hundreds of drives a day, crushing them into tiny particles that are beyond recovery. We can handle all types of storage media, whether they are magnetic hard drives (HDD), solid state hard drives (SSD), or magnetic tapes.

All of this is done under the direct supervision of the company personnel, assuring them that they have safely avoided any potential misuse of their data.

In summary, our on-site hard drive shredding services include:

  • Provision of an inventory of the devices destroyed
  • A record of model types and serial numbers
  • Physical destruction of all media drives
  • Disposal of the shredded hard drives
  • Recycling of the remaining material
  • A Certificate of Data Destruction.

This offers significant benefits:

  • Secure asset disposition on your premises
  • Large quantities of hard drives can be shredded each day
  • Absolute 100% guaranteed destruction of data
  • Possibility of payment for reusable equipment
  • Full reconciliation of inventory for audit trails and records
  • Provision of a Certificate of Data Destruction

How Can I Find Hard Drive Shredding Near Me?

If you are in the Washington D.C, Maryland, or Virginia (DMV) area Potomac eCycle is a natural choice for hard drive shredding. We are local, certified to the industry’s highest standard (R2/RIOS), and have the capacity to handle assignments of any size. Call for details of our on-site service or to schedule a pickup.

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