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Media Destruction Services
Media Destruction Services: When Deleting Just Isn’t Enough!
At our site or yours, securely and definitively destroying storage media brings peace of mind.
Hitting the “delete” button or throwing old hard drives in the recycling bin is a massive security risk. Even if you think a file is gone, hackers have tools that can easily pull sensitive information right back off the drive. For ultimate peace of mind, you need a definitive way to destroy old storage media so that your company’s private data can never be recovered. S2|DATA provides expert media destruction services designed to meet the strictest security and privacy rules in your industry.
Depending on your requirements, we provide several secure methods to permanently wipe your historical data, including:
Physical Shredding
We run backup tapes, hard drives, and all other types of removable media through industrial shredders, chopping them into tiny pieces (typically no larger than 2 millimeters). This destroys the physical drive itself, making it absolutely impossible for anyone to piece the information back together. Once the job is done, we dispose of the shredded particles in a completely environmentally conscious way.
Magnetic Degaussing
For magnetically stored media like tapes and disk drives, we run the media through an incredibly powerful electromagnet, completely scrambling the magnetic signals that hold your files. This process, depending on the strength of the degausser, my simply delete all of your data or render the device useless by not only erasing the data, but destroying the internal hardware of the drives, such as the drive heads. When it comes to servo track style backup tapes, the tracks are destroyed, preventing the tape drive from even accepting the tape when inserted.
Tape Data Eradication (for Reuse)
Some modern tapes have built-in tracking systems (called servo tracks) and smart chips (RFID) that you might not want to ruin. For these, we use highly precise magnets to surgically wipe out your private data while leaving the tape’s internal tracking system completely untouched. We also reset the smart chips to clear out any leftover hidden information. This wipes the tape completely clean while leaving it perfectly usable for the future.
Remote Data Write-Over
Sometimes, you need to securely wipe out the data on a network drive, but you physically cannot unplug the hard drives and ship them to our facility. In these situations, we can securely connect to your network remotely and permanently write over your data, completely erasing the files without the hardware ever having to leave your building.
By properly and safely disposing of your outdated media, you close the loop on your data security, eliminate massive legal risks, and confidently future proof your past.