What is a hard drive shredder, how does it work, and why does it work? In this article, we’ll take the time to answer all of these questions and more about hard drive shredders. Since most Canadians use a computer both at home and in the workplace to store multitudes of documents, including personal information, it is important to know how to keep the information stored on your hard drive safe. To learn more about hard drive shredding and destruction, contact the security experts at Blue-Pencil today!
How Does A Hard Drive Shredder Work?
Hard drive shredding physically destroys a hard drive using a heavy-duty shredding machine specifically built for electronics such as hard drives, cassettes, and CDs. Hard drive shredders completely destroy all parts of the hard drive, which ensures no information left on the drive can be recovered.
To see how hard drive shredding works, watch this quick video below showing Blue-Pencil’s hard drive shredder in action!
A hard drive shredder works by completely grinding up and destroying every single part of a hard drive using a heavy-duty, industrial shredder designed for electronics and other non-paper products.
Some people choose to destroy their hard drive the DIY way, by using a hammer or drill, for example. Unfortunately, simply destroying portions of the hard drive may not be completely effective.
Methods such as drilling holes in your hard drive can actually leave some tracks intact, and therefore information can potentially still be retrieved from those small bits of hard drive that are still readable (source). A hard drive shredder crushes and destroys every piece of your hard drive, leaving no section readable.
When you are finished with your hard drive and have removed all important documents and information that you want to keep onto the cloud, an external hard drive, or other form of storage, securely destroying your hard drive is the best way to keep your information safe.
Why Does Hard Drive Shredding Work?
Hard drives often contain significant amounts of personal information, which is why identity theft can so easily happen with old, improperly destroyed hard drives. Your hard drive may be storing information like:
- Your name, address, date of birth
- Bank numbers and information (if you’ve used online banking)
- Credit card information
- Business information or files you’ve saved on your computer
- Online shopping or social network information
- Personal photographs
- And much more
Many people think that if you delete your files from your hard drive, or even hire a professional to overwrite existing files, that your information is permanently deleted. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. If a hard drive is left intact, there is always the chance that information can be retrieved – even information you are convinced is long gone!
Since hard drive shredding actually destroys the physical component, there is absolutely no way that information can be taken off the drive once properly shredded and destroyed. Though you may believe you have properly wiped your hard drive, there is software available that makes recovering data easy for cybercriminals and identity thieves. Hard drive shredding works because it securely, permanently destroys the physical hard drive, which in turn destroys all recoverable electronic data.
What Is A Hard Drive?
Now that you know how hard drive shredding works, you may want to know what exactly is a hard drive. Though you may have heard of a “hard drive,” and even use one on a daily basis, many people aren’t exactly sure what it is! The hard drive of your computer is actually called the hard disk drive. It is often shortened to just “hard drive” or “HD.” The hard drive is usually the largest data storage device component of your computer. This drive is hardware, which means it has it physical component you can actually see, touch, and remove from your computer.
Hard drives store almost everything on your computer, including your operating system and most software. The hard drive on your computer likely stores every file you have saved since you began using your computer. Even files you have deleted are likely still retrievable by professionals (or hackers). Hard drives can store a significant amount of data – some can even store up to 500 GB of data or more!
Hard Drive Shredding Options
Hard drive shredders are not like your average paper shredders, which you can easily pick up at any office supply store. They are heavy-duty, specialized machinery and as such, comes with quite the price tag! For example, hard drive shredders from Whitaker Brothers range in price from around $11,000 to over $30,000!
If your company shreds hard drives on a daily basis for whatever reason, then it may be worth it to invest in your own hard drive shredder. However, in order to make owning your own hard drive shredder an economical choice, you would likely have to shred hundreds to even thousands of hard drives!
For most business as well as personal computers, working with a secure shredding service to take care of your hard drive is the easiest, safest, and most economical choice. With Blue-Pencil’s hard drive shredding service, you can sit back and relax while your hard drives are securely and expertly destroyed with our high-quality, professional grade machines.
With professional shredders, you can also rest assured that the shredding process is done correctly – so your personal information is guaranteed to be safe and secure. Our hard drive destruction services are completely secure and confidential. We employ our NAID-certified process (National Association for Information Destruction) to ensure the best shredding possible.
Blue-Pencil’s E-Destruction Program
If you are worried about hard drive and electronic disposal, you can rest assured that Blue-Pencil cares about you and the environment! At Blue-Pencil, all shredded material is recycled and processed into recycled products or energy.
We also have an E-Destruction Program that sends shredded hard drives to a facility for material separation and recovery. Products we handle are destroyed via shredding or Waste-to-Energy Incineration, and shredded waste is disposed of through Waste-to-Energy Incineration, not sent to a landfill.
Securely Destroy Your Hard Drives With Blue-Pencil!
With Blue-Pencil, you rest assured knowing your hard drives and media are securely shredded and disposed of. Blue-Pencil helps empower Canadian organizations to reach new heights with friendly and efficient document management services. Customer service is not only a slogan but something we practice by investing in our strategic partners.
Located in Oakville, we have grown our document security business over the past 10 years, serving more than 6,000 organizations including small and medium-sized companies as well as Fortune 500 businesses.
“We highly recommend Blue-Pencil. The service is excellent and the guys that come out are so nice. It’s a pleasure dealing with them.”
– Mozelle C – More testimonials here!
We have recently launched two new divisions; Documents Storage and Records Management division and Document Imaging and Scanning Solutions division. This allows us to offer full circle, comprehensive solutions for information security management. We service the GTA and surrounding cities – click here for a full list of our service areas. If you’d like to learn more about us and what we can do for you contact us today!
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