3. Hard Drive Destruction (Shredding) Compared to Hard Drive Erasing (Wiping)

Destruction and erasure are both used in industry.

In our opinion, destruction is best used for hard drives/hard disks at end-of-life, for faulty hard drives, or to comply with external or internal mandates. It is also potentially more cost effective when considering the total cost of service.

Erasing, also known as wiping or cleaning, is often used in situations where the current owner wants to internally re-deploy hard drives. If a company is thinking of reselling their computers or stand-alone hard drives, some points should be considered;

• Some hard drive platters may not erase electronically due to problems within the hard drive. Examples are no spin-up (due to bad hard drive motors), faulty read heads, and hard drive printed circuit board issues. Drives may also have intermittent failures that cause them to not erase. In these situations, hard drives can potentially be repaired, making the data totally accessible to its owner.
• In contrast, physical hard drive destruction renders all information non-retrievable as the process results in material shreds and particles.
• Erasing may require software licensing and associated costs.
• Destruction by shredding occurs in seconds and is much faster than erasing or degaussing. Time to erase is dependent upon hard drive size; time for physical destruction is independent of size.