How To Safely Dispose Of Your Data
If only people understood how hard it can be to totally delete data from a hard drive they would really be a lot more careful, especially in these days of identity theft and identity fraud. Data recovery companies are well skilled at restoring data, but then so are the computer criminal specialists, and if all you have done is a simple reformat or deletion then your personal data can be much more exposed than you would like to believe.
So what lengths do we need to go to in order to ensure that our data is securely removed?
The answer, in short, is that there is no easy method of permanently removing data from a storage media. This does not make it impossible, but does mean that you will normally have to obtain expensive software to help in the task.
In order to completely erase data on a drive it is best to overwrite the original several times but not necessarily using the same methodology on each rewrite. Using a method that involves numerous passes over the data either using specialist software or with a manual process that adheres to recognized data erasure standards will under most circumstances guarantee that the data has been successfully erased.
There are many companies that can provide such data elimination services, and there are also a number of software applications that can serve the process including Evidence Eliminator, M-Sweep Pro Data Eliminatior and R-Wipe software from the company behind R-Studio Data Recovery Software.
There are also more permanent methods of data destruction, few data recovery companies can retrieve data from a hard drive where the disk’s platters have been physically destroyed.
If you wish to attempt this yourself, it is important to note that the platters within the device should be completely destroyed, this means bending, scratching, smashing, shattering or whatever else seems reasonable to completely annihilate the hard disk platter.
There will always be those that are less educated in the filed of data recovery that will have you believe that simply formatting your drive or even conducting a low level format will do the trick. Sadly this is simply not the case. Another common myth is that reinstalling the operating system will suffice but that will remain the myth that it is.
Not all data will needs to be totally destroyed using the above methods and if you are happy that none of your data is personal or sensitive (both business or personal) then simply dispose of it in an enviromentally responsibly way, but if you are at all unsure don’t take the risk.
Your local data recovery services company will be able to advise you on safe data disposal methods and will probably have a local service. Data recovery and disposal should always be left to professional operators who are happy to certify their work.
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