Repurposing and Erasure
Here at Southwest Digital Laboratory we often find ourselves working with outdated, used or salvaged equipment. One thing we have noticed is that 9 out of 10 used hard drives have data on them from their previous owner. This abandoned data is often pretty harmless, but sometimes these devices contain information we are sure the owner did not intend to share with the world. We have run across drive with years of email history, intact Quickbooks or MS Money files, and document collections containing sensitive business or personal information. While here at the lab we erase and 'zero' drives before we use them, not everyone does the same.
If you or your organization decide to repurpose some equipment run it by the experts here at the lab first. Depending on your plans for the equipment we can take the appropriate steps to make sure you are not accidentally allowing confidential information out of your control. The investment in time and money is minimal, and maintaining your confidentiality is worth it.
A Step Beyond Erasure
There really is no way to erase data from a hard drive. The only way remove or destroy the saved data is to overwrite it. Southwest Digital Laboratory has the hardware and software to overwrite vitually any kind of hard drive. We are capable of meeting or exceeding Department of Defense standards for sanitizing a magnetic storage device by repeatedly overwriting a disk with random data, followed by strings of zeros. Bring us your storage device for erasure and we will make sure no trace of your data remains.
In Addition To Hard Drives...
Devices other than hard drives need to be erased before they are sold or passed on for others to used. It is common for used PDA's, cell phones, digital cameras or thumb drives to contain recoverable information from their previous owner. Here at Southwest Digital Laboratory we can permanently destroy any data stored on these devices without damaging the device itself. You can then pass the device on to it's next owner confident that all important data has been removed. Contact us at 915-544-2034 we can get started preparing your digital device for its next career!
