Recycling old electronics is a great way to promote good environmental practices; however, this can also be risky with certain types of electronics. If your company is replacing the old computer systems, you will need to find a way to safely dispose of the old hard drives. If you are not careful with this, someone could access information on the devices, compromising your business's information and secrets. Here are a couple ways hard drives can be safely disposed of and you can choose a method that is right for your business.

Overwriting/Shredding Services

You may think that if you hit "delete" your documents will be erased, but this is not the case. Hard drives are designed to store information and it is actually very difficult to erase anything that has been saved. Hackers are able to retrieve information, even if it has been deleted, erased, or written over. Because of this, you can never just throw hard drives away, nor should you donate them as-is.

Before you get rid of them, you may want to try clicking here so that you can hire a company that offers hard drive shredding. This is also called hard drive overwriting and is designed to replace the stored information with other information. Companies that offer this will come to your business and will perform various steps to protect all the information on your computer hard drives.

To accomplish this, these companies overwrite all information on the hard drive multiple times. As this is done, they overwrite the information with other information, or gibberish, leaving the computer full of information that is completely worthless. Unfortunately though, there are still times when hackers can retrieve information from hard drives that have gone through this process.

Hard Drive Destruction Services

Another type of mobile service you can choose from is hard drive destruction services. This service is available for the same purpose; however, it may offer better results. Through hard drive destruction, files are not simply overwritten because this is not a 100% guarantee that the files will be gone. Instead, the hard drives themselves are completed destroyed.

This process involves the use of a machine that actually disassembles, crushes, and pulverizes the computer parts. When the company arrives, you can hand them the old devices that you no longer want and they will take them to their truck. They will then place them in a grinding machine, which will destroy them, and the remaining bits and pieces will come out into a box. These pieces cannot be salvaged in any way, but they can be recycled. The machine used for this is similar to a paper shredding machine, except that it is designed to shred computers.

You can watch while this is done and you can even have the pieces back if you want. If you decide to leave the parts with the mobile hard drive destruction company, they will make sure that they are delivered to an electronics recycling company where they will be salvaged and used to make new computer parts and other types of hardware.

This option is the safest way to dispose of computers containing sensitive, personal information, and you can be certain that no one will ever get their hands on the information the computer drives once contained. You should also realize that this method is safer than destroying a computer with a sledge hammer, or any other type of heavy object.

If you run a law firm, medical center, financial business, or any other type of company that has sensitive information stored on computers, look into hard drive destruction services when the time comes to replace your old computers.