How to Safely Discard Hard Drive (External/Computer)

Overview

The Hard Disk Drive/ Hard Disk or Hard Drive is one of the commonly used data storage devices for storing and retrieving digital information, which uses rapidly rotating disks (platters) coated with magnetic material. People use their hard drives for storing old emails, important official documents, personal details, images, videos etc. Therefore, it is very much necessary to make sure that the used Hard Drive is destroyed so that no one can recover data that was saved earlier in the drive. In this page, we will be discussing the techniques on how to discard the External Hard drives or destroy the hard drive safely.

Why Do We Need To Discard Hard Drive?

With increasing rate of data recovery software present in the market, deleting the data from hard drive is not enough. An assurance is needed that no other person is going to recapture a bit of data from the discarded drive. In government sector, discarding Hard Drives properly is necessary because used hard drive may contain critical information related to state secrets, financial and tax records and internet purchases. There is high risk of information theft or loss if the used hard drives fall into wicked hands.

Techniques to discard Used Hard drives

There are several methods for safety removal of data present in Hard Drive, which are as follows-

1. Overwriting the Drive: The overwriting technique or “Disk-wiping” software is used to replace the stored data contained in drive with a pattern of meaningless characters. Various versions of software are present depending on drive to be overwritten. The step is mainly for drives bound for disposal, prior to degaussing or destruction. However, one overwriting pass is not enough so this method is very time consuming and must be carried out by person who is patient and careful.
2. Degaussing: Degaussing is the process of reducing or eliminating unwanted magnetic field or data stored on hard drives. There are two ways of degaussing to safely discard the hard drive. The first method permanently erases the data on hard drives when they are exposed to powerful magnetic field of a degausser. The second method uses powerful electromechanical pulse that instantaneously generates a powerful magnetic field in an enclosed chamber that completely erases data from drives. Degaussing method assures complete hard drive erasure and data is destructed in such a way that it is guaranteed that information is no longer retrievable. This method is more effective than overwriting but it needs proper training to use the degausser.
3. Crushing : The method destroys drives by subjecting them to extreme pressure from a canonical steel punch to pierce drive casings and platters. It is good for destroying low number of drives & for safe disposal of hard drive. After crushing, the information residing on a deformed hard drive is still intact but it is very difficult to retrieve.
4. Shredding : Hard-drive shredders are used to rip drives to shreds that can destroy multiple types and sizes of drives. These shredders are capable of destroying cell phones, PDAs or other data storage devices. The largest shredder can destroy 2500 drives per hour which can be termed as safe discard of storage system. Though the information is still intact after shredding, it is more difficult to retrieve as the drives are shredded into several randomly size strips which can be recycled later.
5. Disintegration : In this method, a heavy-duty disintegrator is used to cut drives into smaller and smaller pieces until they are unrecognizable. For hard drives, this is done after shredding. Disintegration is almost similar to shredding although the pieces of drives are much smaller and damaged making it harder to recover. The maintenance of disintegrator is greater than that of shredder.

Conclusion

In this blog, various methods have been discussed for safely destroying or discarding data in hard drives. Though these methods are effective, some experts still advise destroying the data in hard drives using two-stage approach i.e. by combining degaussing with crushing or shredding.