{"id":18804,"date":"2018-02-22T13:41:55","date_gmt":"2018-02-22T18:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/staging\/can-data-recovered-shredded-hard-drive\/"},"modified":"2023-09-06T16:14:28","modified_gmt":"2023-09-06T20:14:28","slug":"can-data-recovered-shredded-hard-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/en_CA\/blog\/can-data-recovered-shredded-hard-drive\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Data Be Recovered from a Shredded Hard Drive?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Physically destroying your company\u2019s old hard drives is all about getting rid of the data they contain. So naturally, it begs the question of whether data recovery is possible once a hard drive has been physically shredded.<\/p>\n
The short answer, according to Quantum’s vice president Mark Cooper, is no. It\u2019s virtually impossible to retrieve or recover data at any useful level from a shredded hard drive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mechanical separation of a hard drive using a shredding device or machine typically breaks that drive down into particle sizes of anywhere from 1\u00bd inches to 3\/8 of an inch,\u201d explains Cooper. \u201cSo not only do we believe that shredding is the<\/i> most secure method of hard drive destruction<\/a>, it\u2019s the best way to permanently destroy your company\u2019s data.\u201d<\/p>\n But what about businesses that might be looking for ways to recover some of the value from their decommissioned hardware? Hard drive erasure<\/a> is the way to go in that case.<\/p>\n Like shredding, data erasure<\/a> software gets rid of your hard drive data for good \u2013 not by physically destroying it, but by overwriting it with a random series of zeroes and ones, multiple times. The advantage of hard drive erasure \u2013 or sanitization \u2013 is that it allows a drive to be reused. The downside, says Cooper, is that there are multiple ways the process can fail.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes, the software fails because of a glitch involving compatibility issues. There are hard drives with drive architecture that\u2019s so specific to the server they came out of, for example, that when you try to insert them into a hard drive erasure server, they can\u2019t be detected. The data those drives contain remains fully intact and cannot be wiped.\u201d<\/p>\n The beauty of physical shredding, meanwhile, is that failure is never an option.<\/p>\n <\/a>\u201cWith shredding,\u201d says Cooper, \u201cthere\u2019s visual confirmation that a drive has either been destroyed or it hasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n For customers who are equally concerned with both value recovery and data security<\/a>, Cooper recommends what Quantum calls best-method data handling.<\/i> \u201cWith best-method data destruction<\/a>, we\u2019ll try to erase or sanitize a hard drive first. But if the drive fails the erasure process for whatever reason \u2013 or if it\u2019s just too old or obsolete to be usable even if we did manage to wipe it \u2013 we\u2019ll shred it instead.\u201d<\/p>\n But while it\u2019s one thing to just shred a drive, what many businesses want is some sort of verifiable proof that a specific hard drive has been destroyed. And that\u2019s where the element of data capture<\/i> comes in.<\/p>\n \u201cData capture is standard in Quantum’s destruction package,\u201d explains Cooper. \u201cWe scan the serial number or bar code of each individual drive from a particular project, then convert that list of shredded hard drives into a Certificate of Destruction<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n There are companies out there that will perform the data capture portion of this process themselves, then pass the buck and have someone else do the actual destruction. \u201cThat,\u201d warns Cooper, \u201cmeans your company\u2019s hard drives – and the data they contain – could be leaving those facilities intact.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s the very fact that things can go wrong when destroying data that makes it so important for your company to use only a certified and reputable vendor for this type of work. Service providers like Quantum have multiple policies and procedures in place that dictate data handling methods throughout the destruction process, including:<\/p>\nPhysical Shredding vs Digital Destruction<\/h2>\n
Quantum Promises Zero Data Recovery from Shredded Hard Drives<\/h2>\n
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