Best Way to Destroy Data

[Zachariah Fratus]

Electronic media needs to be destroyed beyond recovery, possibly using magnetic degaussing or physical destruction; etc.

We are looking at purchasing equipment to destroy data on hard drive etc. I'm in the process of researching cost and vendor information.

Any ideas or suggestions?

[Jefferson Humber]

I've heard stories in the UK of acid baths and industrial grinding machines being employed to destroy HDD's.

Depends how secret the data is, total physical destruction is the only sure fire way.

Hope the helps,

Jeff

[Rob Leadbeater · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Take a look at DBAN.
http://www.dban.org

This is a utility that allows hard drives to be completely erased to military standards.

It is Freeware and therefore offers no warranties, so if you need proper verification look at the commercial version:

http://www.techwayservices.com/eban-data-destruction/

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rob

[Zachariah Fratus]

Thank-you both very much. This is exactly the information I was looking for.

[Zachariah Fratus]

The commercial version of EBAN was pretty much what we were looking for.

It seems that even with EBAN, if the drives are mechanically flawed, they would need to be physically destroyed anyway.

[Zachariah Fratus]

I actually ended up going with techwayservices.com - thanks for the tip.

Apparantly, they do have an industrial grinder of some sort. The service was affordable and secure. They send you a lockbox, you fill it up and send it back. They destroy the drives for a minimal charge and send you compliance certs.

[Zachariah Fratus]

Closed thread.