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.

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.